How to Store Ice Cream to Prevent Ice Crystals (2024)

FAQs

How to Store Ice Cream to Prevent Ice Crystals? ›

To keep that air out, you want to make sure you're keeping your ice cream covered tightly — never store uncovered ice cream in the freezer! Besides keeping a lid on your pint or gallon, you can place plastic wrap tight across the surface of your ice cream before covering it with a lid.

Choose waterless recipes or cut back on the water required.

The more water there is in your ice cream, the more likely it will be to form ice crystals. You can normally swap out water for coconut milk or heavy cream. It may depend on the recipe or what your dietary restrictions are, though.

Store ice cream in the main part of the freezer. Do not store ice cream in the freezer door, where ice cream can be subject to more fluctuating temperatures since the door is repeatedly open and shut. Keep the ice cream container lid tightly closed when storing in the freezer to reduce the formation of ice crystals.

The most common ones used in ice creams are guar gum, cellulose gum and carob bean gum. They are used to reduce ice crystal growth, deliver flavour cleanly, increase smoothness, body and creaminess and slow down melting. They also help hold the air bubble structure together and give the ice cream a better texture.

Gums are the most powerful, flexible and the most useful stabilizers that are available to us. They suppress the growth of ice crystals better than any other ingredient. They can be used to alter the texture of ice cream in many different ways. They don't suppress other flavors, and are almost flavorless themselves.

Opening the freezer can cause warm, moist air to enter the freezer. This warm, moist air may become frost or ice crystals on packages as it condenses inside the cold freezer.

If you're saving the ice cream for an occasion any more than three weeks ahead of time, wrapping the tub with freezer paper or plastic wrap can help preserve the ice cream's quality.

Two words: dry ice! We'll spare you too much of the nerdy science of it all, but dry ice is the far superior option in terms of how to keep ice cream frozen. (Basically, dry ice is colder than regular wet ice - about negative 109.3 degrees - so it keeps your food colder and stays dry when melting.)

Guar Gum. Made from guar beans, guar gum works as a stabilizer, emulsifier, and thickener and may be used in the production of soft-serve ice cream.

Ice cream manufacturers often rely on added ingredients to keep their products creamy. Many add emulsifiers (such as lecithin), milk powders, gums, and other stabilizers that bond with free water in the mixture, making water less available for crystallization.

How to make ice cream scoopable? ›

A higher fat content will cause an ice cream to be more scoop-able since fat freezes at a different temperature than water. If you reduce the amount of water and replace it with fat then you're more likely to have an ice cream that will be scoop-able at lower temperatures.

Crystallization may be prevented by adding an interferent, such as acid (lemon, vinegar, tartaric, etc.) or glucose or corn syrup, during the boiling procedure.

Large ice crystals are usually the result of either too much water in the mix or excessively long freezing time. Or often both, since lots of water means the mixture will also take longer to freeze. Why would there be too much water in the mixture? Either the recipe is unbalanced or it wasn't prepared properly.

Unfortunately, your beloved dessert has fallen victim to freezer burn. Freezer burn occurs as ice begins to evaporate over time in the freezer. As moisture leaves the ice cream and mixes with the air, it refreezes on the surface, creating those unappetizing crunchy crystals on top, according to Ben & Jerry's.

Ice crystals would indicate that the product was not stored in optimal conditions, which caused the ice cream to melt and re-freeze. Several factors may cause this, such as if the ice cream was placed at the very top of a deep freezer box or if it was left at room temperature for too long.

Use a little corn syrup.

I say corn syrup is optional here, but a little bit of it can help the texture of your strawberry frozen. yogurt by preventing the formation of large ice crystals while the mix freezes.