Ice cream stays soft. Wonder why?

boston blacky wrote:
Thanks for all the kind tips and hints. DW now informs me that when she switched the fridge from Auto to the gas (only) option - her sugarless ice cream stays hard. Go figure! I simply say she's right, smile and nod:C

yep, all of my refrigerators in RVs have done a much better job on gas than electricity.
bumpuy

Thanks for all the kind tips and hints. DW now informs me that when she switched the fridge from Auto to the gas (only) option - her sugarless ice cream stays hard. Go figure! I simply say she's right, smile and nod:C

I put my ice cream on the bottom floor of freezer. It the coldest on my fridge.

ksg5000 wrote:
I find that if the freezer gets super cold I end up with freeze issues in the main compartment - put the ice cream near the back wall and think of all the people sleeping in tents who would love to have some of your soft ice cream.

+1, I also have this problem.

And as others have said, The back of the top shelf is the coldest place in our freezer so that's where I keep my ice cream.

boston blacky wrote:
Our 5 yr. old Norcold works fine. Only issue is DW ice cream (sugar free) stays soft. All other items in the freezer compartment is frozen solid!! :h

Nothing wrong with your frig. I monitor freezer temp in both out Norcold Absorption frig and our Norcold MRFT-40 compressor type frig and the Absorption frig runs between 10 and -1 where as our absorption frig stays at around -10 consistently. As mentioned keep things like IC and popcycles along the back and they will be harder than anywhere else.

It's just the way things are.

Larry

Injecting air into the ice cream creates more volume and the air part is called "overrun" and by law in California I believe there cannot be more than 50% "overun" in ice cream sold to the public. Yup, if you let ice cream melt and sit long enough and all the air bubbles are released, you will have a lot less volume of material. I believe emulsifiers are added to keep the ice cream from getting rock hard when it's frozen like the home made stuff. And, of course, it's easier to scoop.

the main reason is when they make ice cream they inject air in the mix, because they know people don't like to work so hard on getting the ice cream out of the container. THAT is why her ice cream is soft.

Hint

I look at the sweetener in sugarless foods. If the sweetener is xylotol, sorbitol, or mannitol, I leave the bathroom light on and put runner's starting blocks at the foot of the bed. I do not consume stuff with these ingredients and then do get caught in bumper to bumper traffic, either.

Just Sayin'

boston blacky wrote:
Our 5 yr. old Norcold works fine. Only issue is DW ice cream (sugar free) stays soft. All other items in the freezer compartment is frozen solid!! :h

The temperature between "soft", "hard" and "rock Hard" ice cream is only about 10F at most. Our S&B freezer is about 5F colder than the fridge freezer and fridge ice cream is "hard", regular freezer is ROCK HARD. Raising the temp in the fridge freezer a few degrees turns the ice cream to soft. What I've found is that at about 0F ice cream is reasonably hard, +3F is soft, and below -5F is really hard.

All that said, getting our trailer fridge freezer section will get down near 0F regularly, but not much colder, w/o the fridge section getting to cold. so our ice cream,depending on where in the freezer it is, varies from reasonably firm to softer. If it's against the back wall, pretty firm. In hot weather when the freezer section gets up around 5F, ice cream is getting pretty soft.

Just like when your making ice cream, even heavy salted water doesn't quite near 0F and the ice cream is pretty soft till it's in the freezer for a while.

Most likely cause is that the freezer isn't cold enough. Turn the temperature down, add a fan or learn to like it soft.