If you have a look at this photo of a tub of ice cream from our freezer you'll see it's got loads of ice on the top:
Why is that? Is the freezer too cold, too warm or is it indicative of some other problem? It's been doing this for a couple of months now (we haven't adjusted or changed anything) but it never used to do that so I know it's not normal.
How old is the Ice cream ? I think what you are seeing is basically freeze distillation of the water content of the product and nothing wrong with your freezer.
If the ice cream has been in there for a couple of months, ice on the surface is perfectly normal.
It does look old.
It occurs to me it could happen early if the temperature is fluctuating a lot. Do you have much in the freezer? Ours has a couple of big plastic things full of ice to stabilise it.
Andy
Probably a week old, that's all - we get through a fair amount of it here so it's never in there long :')
I'd say the freezer is probably 80% full.
Never lasts that long :D We probably use a tub a week - a tub never lasts more than two weeks.
The ice cream is too old and diffusion limited growth of ice crystals has allowed some of the water content to escape from the icecream foam. Basically original icecream is a closed cell foam but after a long time the cell walls fail and then the surface area exposed increases.
I recently got to eat some icecream made with LN2 at a RSC chemistry lecture. It tasted the same once it had warmed up to eating temperature.
The fresh pineapple and chilli jelly was a bit weird though.
I think you will find it always does it if you keep the ice cream for several months longer than its notional use by date. You can keep it for longer by storing it much colder but at higher cost.
-18C is about right in a domestic freezer as a compromise between personal safety and longevity of frozen food.
Well after a long time my stuff goes ice crystally on top. I put it down to the frost free device that has, presumably to raise the temp for short perioods to remove any ice, but the melt inside of things like ice cream have now whare to go. Brian
I appreciate the science bit Martin but as I said above, we go through a lot of ice cream here and a tub *never* lasts longer than two weeks, if that. Obviously I don't know how long it's been in the Asda/Sainsburys freezers before we buy it but I'd not expect them to have it very long.
See above - during winter it may last two weeks but during the summer months and especially the strawberry season, it doesn't even last a week but we still get the ice crystals.
I'll buy a freezer thermometer and see what's going on in there. Thanks for your reply ^^
I've picked up packets of frozen vegetables in Sainsbury - leaf spinach broccolli, mushroom slices, peppers, which were frozen solid into a single lump. Where they'd obviously been allowed to thaw out at some pont.
I'm not necessarily saying they wouldn't be safe to eat only that maybe in many Supermarkets frozen goods don't necessarily go straight from the freezer lorry into the cold store or from the cold store immediately into the cabinets.
michael adams
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I would have thought a frost free freezer would dry things more than a conventional freezer?
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