Ice cream has gotten pretty inventive over the years. Especially when it's beautiful to look at and made "Instagram worthy."
Trends from the past year have been incorporating savory flavors into the traditionally sweet treat.
However, not all flavors should be made into an ice cream dish. We went to Reddit to find out which ones were the absolute worst.
Redditor BringInTheBunz asked:
"What would you say is the most disgusting ice cream flavor?"
Some of these will really make you wonder what they were thinking.
Mac and Cheese flavored ice cream.
"I did NOT enjoy mac&cheese ice cream."
- UConnUser92
"That sounds gross! Did it have macaroni in it or was it just artificial cheese flavored ice cream?"
- SpecterCody
"I assume they're talking about Van Leeuwen Kraft Mac and Cheese Ice Cream which has been talked about quite a bit lately and also was featured on Stephen Colbert's show."
"It's... confusing. It's not bad. It's just confusing."
- HalflingMelody
Flavor of the week: Old Bay.
"White corn and old bay. It was a flavor of the week at a local creamery."
"It failed."
- Harvard-23
"I had sweet corn ice cream once in Mystic CT."
"It didn't suck."
- TecumsehSherman
"Corn flavored desserts can be delicious! There's a popular corn shaped/flavored Korean ice cream (찰옥수수) and its my favorite. Not sure about the spicy corn flavor though.."
- MsAndooftheWoods
This just sounds painful.
"Wasabi. Yes it exists."
"The cold and nose-spicy combo is so disorienting and odd."
"I'll take Rocky Road, thanks."
- T98i
"If people think bubblegum, mint, and cotton candy are disgusting flavors, wasabi is going to wreck their worlds. Just awful."
- Optimal_Towel
A Norwegian kind of treat.
"I raise you herring icecream, with onions."
- RubnDubn
"Bro. Report that to police as a crime against humanity."
- Rbfam8191
Okay, what's with the fish in ice cream?
"Smoked salmon ice cream."
- livingcool22
"New variant of lockjaw has been discovered. Scientists say it comes from tasting something so disgusting, your face just stays in the vomit position. They call it loxjaw."
- yourlocalwaluigistan
"Ceviche."
- nofacenofood
"Wait…..:was it sea urchin ceviche from dorsia?"
- jjfriedd
"No, it was random fish ceviche from a little wooden cart."
- nofacenofood
It's over at that point.
"Refrozen vanilla."
- BandOne77
"It's when it melts too much and goes just the teeniest bit sour and you refreeze it."
- DogsBeerCheeseNerd
"The reason it tastes so bad is because a huge part of what makes ice cream taste the way it does is the amount of air in the ice cream. I think it's somewhere around 40% air usually."
"So when it melts, all of the air pockets melt, allowing the ice cream to 'go flat.'"
- skoomd1
"To add on to this, ice cream can be ruined even before it gets so melted that you lose the air. The ice cream churning process folds in air but also prevents the ice cream from forming large, crunchy crystals while it freezes.
"By keeping it moving churning forms small, smooth crystals with a creamy texture. If the ice cream half-melts, it can keep the air but lose the crystals, and then when it refreezes it will form large crunchy crystals."
- lukebn
Sounds like a New England thing.
"Lobster ice cream."
- livingcool22
"Was looking for this!! I saw it in oak bluffs, Martha's vineyard....they wouldn't give out samples of it either, you had to buy a whole cone."
- PM_ME_PICS_OF_SNOW
"Sounds like a scam to me."
- SpecterCody
"Hipster" flavors.
"Our local creative ice cream shop makes all sorts of hipster flavours... some are good, some are... well... one was something like "Sour cherry with toasted hay," and it tasted like a sweaty horse ran through a cherry orchard."
- kickitkitsune
Liver and onions.
"Liver and onions at some place in Ft Collins Colorado."
"It was foul. But this place specializes in 'unique' flavors. Wish I could remember the name."
- Kuriakon
"...no words can describe how gross that sounds."
- BringInTheBunz
If you think it sounds gross, it probably is. Thankfully, these people tried these ice cream flavors so you didn't have to.
We'll just stick with vanilla and chocolate.
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People Recall The Worst Ice Cream Flavor They've Ever Tried
There is just no reason to inflict that sort of pain to my pallet....
Ice cream is one of life's greatest gifts. They say it's a dessert, but that is only for those who are ice cream amateurs. Ice cream is perfect any moment of the day and for any occasion. It's there for you when you want to celebrate and when you want to cry. So one would think that it would be impossible to ruin ice cream, and if you think that... you be shockingly wrong. It takes a special kind of crazy, but yes, ice cream can be destroyed.
Redditor u/Middleman86 wanted to hear about the times ice cream became the enemy by asking....
Generic is a NO!
GiphyI had some really cheap peach flavored ice cream one time. It was awful. It was all grainy and ice-crystal-y and clearly flavored with fake ester chemicals, rather than any kind of real fruit. It was like artificially sweetened milk with sidewalk chalk dumped into it. That's the impression it gave.
Also, I kinda mislike fruit-based ice cream flavors other than strawberry, to begin with. So it started in the basement of the ice cream world and dug a hole downward from there. datreddditguy
Stay in the Sea...
Lobster. They sell it as a novelty in Bar Harbor, Maine. It truly is horrific. moonprismpower
I just posted about this. I tried it at the Big E once. It literally made me gag when I was chewing on the pieces of cooked lobster inside the ice cream. _Cyanide_Christ_
The Stinking Rose.....
Place called The Stinking Rose in San Francisco. Home of the worlds largest garlic braid. Everything on the menu has garlic in it. Ice cream was, as expected, terrible. Everything else was amazing though. Two thumbs up, ten stars, love the place, would go again. AngrySmapdi
A Fine Line.
I've have 2 that come to mind. The first was a lemon sorbet that tasted like it was made with the pith not the juice. The 2nd was vegemite gelato. As an Aussie, I love vegemite but there's a line that shouldn't be crossed. ero_senin05
Jarring and unpleasant.
GiphyTeaberry- I'm just really not a fan.
Chicken n' Waffle- was ok until the you tasted the protein-y chicken piece in it. Jarring and unpleasant. Kimbee13
Mom's Fav....
My mom's favorite is chocolate with peanut butter swirl. Only, I hated it, because it was a cheap brand, so the peanut butter was subpar and froze into the consistency of plastic. She used to get it all the time, and I never touched it despite loving ice cream. trans_soul_rebel
Why God Why?
My dad once went to an ice cream place and saw they had a wasabi flavor. He asked how it was and the employee replies "It's awful, do you want to try it?"
Apparently it was, in fact, awful. KitchenSwillForPigs
I definitely remember selling wasabi ice cream when I worked at a Cold Stone. Nobody touched it, not the customers or the employees. We didn't get any mix-in recipes to go with it either, which is good because I can't imagine anybody figuring out what toppings would pair well with wasabi. The flavor pretty much existed solely so that people could make bets with each other on who could stand to try it. redmage311
Agent Orange.
It was a sorbet (idk if this would count). Was supposed to be "orange" flavoured but actually tasted like boiled baby carrots. Turned me off from Carrots and Orange Sorbet ever since. If I have to have a cooked carrot (i.e. in rice), I will just swallow it instead of chewing it. CUHACS
No Hints....
GiphyDurian ice cream... I definitely played myself with that one. It tasted like garlic and mango together with a hint of vanilla. l0v3l0v3
Options.
I used to regularly go to a sort of nerd camping event each summer where we would make ice cream from liquid nitrogen out in the woods. Great fun. Each year people would pre-mix ice cream ready to be frozen, and the challenge was to come up with something interesting or different.
I've had ice cream in these flavors:
- Oyster
- Limburger Cheese
- Shrimp
- Celery
Unquestionably the limburger cheese was the most vile. But I guess I can say I've had it. penkster
A PNW What?
GiphyA PNW special: lemon geoduck ice cream.
We were road tripping on the coast, stopped in a tiny ice cream parlor, and decided we had to try it, because when the heck else are you going to try GEODUCK ICE CREAM?
Yes, geoduck is ~that one clam~. It tasted like lemon ice cream with chunks of rubber band in it and a hint of something deeply unsettling. Not recommended. wisebird24
Shut it Down!
Cicada Ice Cream. Living in the middle of the US we tend to get a lot of cicadas every 7 years or so. A small shop in town decided they would bag the cicadas, dry them out and add them as a crunchy element to some ice cream.
Local health department must have thought it tasted like poop too because they shut them down in a fast hurry. dr_camp
Call the Police!
My grocery store has a brand of ice cream that's meant to be a cheap alternative to Ben 'n Jerry's style ice cream. This flavor was lemon cheesecake, and it tasted okay, but after one spoonful, it felt like it left a residue of wax in my mouth. I tried another spoonful and afterwards I could scrape my spoon across the roof of my mouth and it came away with a waxy white substance.
It was so horrible. I tried to call to report it but this whole pandemic thing happened. darsynia
Seriously?!
Blue cheese and chocolate.
We were on a tour of our local ice cream factory with school and we had an ice cream tasting.
Some were great, some were blue cheese. Wertical21
NO!
GiphyI had a fish flavored ice cream once in Japan. It's called shirasu (baby sardines), on Enoshima Island. AoiRenga
Without Chunks Please!
So someone I knew attempted to make beer ice cream once. Apparently it needed to be heated and cooled and have egg added in. I guess they didn't wait long enough for it to cool before they added the egg in so it ended up cooking the egg. So they ended up with beer ice cream with chunks of cooked egg in it. scarletnightingale
The Bite is Ruined.
Jalapeño Pineapple... In retrospect still sounds pretty good but when I tried it in person it was like syrup and hot sauce. I still think that with proper execution it would have worked. ZucchiniFace44
That does legitimately sound like it would be good. Don't make it TOO sweet, and you gotta pickle the jalapeños to pull that bite out of them first. PolloMagnifico
No cows yet.
Pine tree. Not the worst taste but weirdest, it tasted exactly like a pine tree smells like. Pikkususi
Amusingly, pine tree also happens to be one of the few modern ice cream flavors that also would have been possible to make back when dinosaurs were alive. You'd have to use some primitive early mammal's milk to make the cream, though. No cows yet. havron
"The Baconalia"
I worked at a Denny's when they did their "Baconalia" menu with a maple bacon sundae. It didn't take anyone long to realize the maple syrup on vanilla ice cream was way better without the bacon, because they just became ice hard chunks of meat that really don't add to the flavor, just an odd texture to your dessert. BongRipsForNips
Le Pew....
GiphyBrussel sprout or spinach. Both are equally terrible. An ice cream parlor in France called l'igloo. They have like 1k different flavors, many good but some weird. RagePandazXD
We'd all be lying if we said we'd never taken even a little bit of joy in messing with someone. You may have to lie to the people who know you in person, but c'mon. This is the internet, we're all friends in our mutual horribleness here.
One Reddit user really wanted to bond with their fellow scumbags, so they asked:
Fellow scumbags of reddit, what's the worse thing you've ever done?
Some of the answers were legitimately awful, some were hilariously terrible, all of them were downright scuzzy ... just like we like it! Here are some of our favorite responses. They've been edited for clarity when needed. Enjoy!
H/T: Reddit