The Storage Tip That’ll Help Keep Your Ice Cream From Hardening

After a long day of work, errands, cooking dinner, and chores, you head to the freezer to pull out a pint of high-quality vanilla ice cream to build a little ice cream sundae before bedtime. But what’s this — your ice cream is as hard as a rock, and without an actual scoop, you’re afraid you’ll break your spoon as you hack away at it. Isn’t there any way to keep this historically ancient sweet treat soft enough to scoop, even fresh out of the freezer?

As a matter of fact, there is, and you likely already have the key to your success in your pantry or kitchen drawers. Place your pint in a plastic resealable (freezer-friendly) gallon bag, and you’ll never have to deal with too-hard-to-scoop ice cream again. Alternatively, if you have a vacuum sealer, you could also use that to encapsulate your ice cream (but the bag gets the job done just fine).

The way it works is simple. Freezer air is cold and it is harsh, and that same air, which keeps food safely edible indefinitely, also works its way through the ice cream’s packaging and hardens it. By putting this delectable dairy product into a freezer bag, you’re preventing most of that chilly air from penetrating straight through, so the ice cream’s texture stays softer.

Aside from keeping ice cream soft by putting it in zip-top bags, you can take other preventative steps to keep it palatable for longer. First, try placing a barrier between the ice cream and the lid using a square of plastic wrap. This will help keep the air from touching the top of the ice cream, where it can crystallize and make the surface crunchy (the only crunch we want is cookies or candies).

You’ll also want to make sure the lid is on securely to help keep that frozen air out, but this becomes hard to do as you consume more of the ice cream and create more space in the container for air to permeate. You can combat this by moving your ice cream to smaller quarters where there isn’t so much space between the top of the slow-churned vanilla and the bottom of the lid; a glass or plastic container with an airtight lid is ideal.

Finally, there is the location in which you keep your ice cream to consider. If you have a side-by-side fridge/freezer, while it may be convenient to keep your pints in the door shelves, it could affect their quality over time, as the door opening and closing could cause the ice cream to soften and then refreeze over and over again. Instead, place it near the back of the freezer, where it receives less exposure whenever the door is opened.