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[–] 161 points 23 hours ago (45 children)

I always judge ice cream shops on their ability to do the basics. If they can't pull off a good vanilla, then I'm not scrounging around to see if they do anything else well.

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  • [–] 105 points 23 hours ago (8 children)

    Everyone disses vanilla, because it became commercialised.

    But a good vanilla ice cream? Better than most other flavours. Excluding sorbets, because a good lemon and raspberry sorbet is best.

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  • [–] 7 points 12 hours ago

    A place near me always fucks with my requested spice because I’m a tiny white girl and they assume indian curry spice is too much for me (my ex grew reapers and I can cook with them even though they only bring heat and metallic flavor. I prefer the flavor of ghost peppers, but either way, a spicy vindaloo is workable)

    But they always give me several mango gelato servings on top when they tone down the spice in my order, so I order the hottest thing I can, and they give me the toned-down version which is about what I want, and I get free mango gelato. Sexism win.

    (and yes, I have compared what I get to what a friend gets from the same place, and it’s entirely different.)

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  • [–] 3 points 6 hours ago

    I have an ice cream machine and make my own. And frankly there is not much that beats a good homemade vanilla icecream made with quality dairy and vanilla. It is completely different from all of the mass produced ones.

    But yeah, homemade sorbets are fantastic too, and so incredibly easy to make.

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  • [–] 2 points 20 hours ago (2 children)

    Excluding sorbets, because a good lemon and raspberry sorbet is best.

    My top 2 ice creams are :

    1. Lychee sortbet, Lyon
    2. Mango gelato/sortbet , Rome
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  • [–] 61 points 22 hours ago (6 children)

    Vanilla is actually one of the most complex and layered flavors you can experience. It's a shame it somehow came to be associated with being plain, bland, and boring.

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  • [–] 27 points 22 hours ago (1 child)

    For the longest time I thought vanilla was the base for ice cream and other stuff was added to it to make flavors. I apologize to vanilla for not treating and appreciating it as its own flavor for so long.

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  • [–] 16 points 20 hours ago

    For the longest time I thought vanilla was the base for ice cream and other stuff was added to it to make flavors

    this is how they do shakes at fast food places

    they only carry vanilla ice cream. chocolate or strawberry syrup gets added to make it a different flavor

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  • [–] 6 points 16 hours ago

    Vanilla carries ice cream. I've had plain (as in no flavorants at all) ice cream before, and that shit is vile. Cold dulls taste, so even though it's made with cream an unflavored ice cream tastes like frozen skim milk.

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  • [–] 20 points 23 hours ago (7 children)

    This is how I evaluate a new fast food place. I order regular fries.

    If you can’t get that right, I’m never coming back.

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  • [–] 2 points 16 hours ago (1 child)

    I'm not sure how accurate a metric that would be. Burger King has changed their fries a dozen or more times over the years, but I'm pretty sure one of their worst fry recipes was back in the nineties when the rest of their food was still pretty decent.

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  • [–] 2 points 11 hours ago

    Yeah, fries are made very differently from most other foods. Some places might focus on them while other places might add them as an afterthought because people want more than the burgers they put most of their effort into.

    Also, the better a place's sushi is, the lower the chance they even serve fries.

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  • [–] 4 points 22 hours ago (6 children)

    I’d rather have their take on pistachio or chocolate than end up with a shitty vanilla.

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  • [–] 12 points 22 hours ago (5 children)

    If their vanilla is shitty then their chocolate and pistachio will be too.

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  • [–] 3 points 20 hours ago (4 children)

    Yeah, but IMO, chocolate is hard to screw up. Even very shitty chocolate ice cream is still pretty good.

    If you find yourself in a situation where you only have shitty ice cream available, always go for the chocolate.

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  • [–] 5 points 20 hours ago (3 children)

    I have only had one chocolate ice cream that didn't have s nasty, chalky texture. I made it myself.

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  • [–] 4 points 16 hours ago (2 children)

    That or the taste of butyric acid (the infamous 'vomit' aftertaste people associate with Hershey's), which you can't escape in the US because most of our cheap chocolate uses that process.

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  • [–] 2 points 7 hours ago (1 child)

    Holy shit have you tasted Hershey's made in the last ~5 years? It is unreal how bad it is now. Completely inedible. Like they raced to the bottom and plunged through like an admin in Minecraft blowing through bedrock. I tried making smores with it last year, for nostalgia's sake... Nobody at that campfire could eat them, it was horrendous. We all talked about it, trying to figure out if that's just how it always was and we've most grown up, or if it really has gotten that much worse. Everybody agreed it was never that bad. Like it was always shit-tier chocolate, but at least it was actual chocolate. Not spongy brown drywall. Chocolate isn't supposed to get spongy.

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  • [–] 1 point 16 minutes ago

    Depending on the time of year, candy manufacturers add food-safe wax to their product to keep it from melting in the package. It's not noticeable when the chocolate is solid or melted, but it absolutely is during the in-between state. Smores are one of the few foods to feature warm-but-not-molten chocolate bars and are usually made during the summer when wax content is at its highest.

    (And I'm sure Hershey's adds as much wax as legally allowed since it's cheaper.)

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  • [–] 3 points 21 hours ago (3 children)

    If they don't have cotton candy I leave. If they have that bullshit funfetti cotton candy with chocolate bits in it, I complain loudly then leave.

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  • [–] 4 points 18 hours ago (2 children)

    I can’t tell if you’re joking. I have never seen cotton candy with chocolate bits, but also… do you only like cotton candy ice cream or are you just checking to see if they have it?

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  • [–] 1 point 15 hours ago (1 child)

    i swear i read this exact comment under this exact comic strip months or years ago and i dont know if its just deja vu or a weird coincidence

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  • [–] 1 point 22 hours ago (3 children)

    Order plain pulled chicken at a BBQ pit for the same effect

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  • [–] 3 points 22 hours ago (1 child)

    I dunno, I grew up in the south and some of the best BBQ I had came from places that couldn't do chicken. They added that on as an afterthought to fill out the menu and treated it like red meat.

    I always did the mac and cheese and the burnt ends as my quality check.

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  • [–] -2 points 23 hours ago

    It can be surprising at how different different vanilla ice creams taste. Not only þe recipes, but þe quality and sources of vanilla and of þe cream make a huge difference. I like to experiment wiþ flavors, but þere is noþing better þan a good, quality vanilla ice cream.

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