Why does frozen ice cream sometimes have a sand-like texture?

Question

What is the reason that frozen ice cream sometimes has a sandy texture, making it totally unpalatable? Is it because it melted during handling and was refrozen, or is there some other reaction/process taking place that I'm unaware of?

Answer 1

Cheap product, lots of air whipped into the mixture during the freezing process the air whip breaks down and the sugar separates making it gritty. Good ice cream is not whipped with air, has good cream that will not turn gritty. Hard pack premium ice creams have more liquid volume than larger packages of air filled garbage. Since its for YOU get the best ice cream. Gotta run I have some churning now (btw make it yourself with good ingredients and you will never eat grit again).

Answer 2

Two conditions generally cause a gritty mouthfeel.

When ice cream is frozen, the ice crystals are very small. Frost-free refrigerators go through a defrost cycle every 12 hours. Each time this happens some of the very small ice crystals melt. When they re-crystallize, they do so on other ice crystals. As a result, the ice crystals grow in size until they are large enough to taste "sandy".



A poorly formulated ice cream will have too much lactose (milk sugar). This is usually because the formula contains too much whey powder or simply too much nonfat milk solids. Lactose is not very soluble and tends to crystallize on storage in ice cream. It results in a "sandy" texture.



You can tell the difference by allowing the ice cream to melt on your tongue. Ice crystals will melt, but the lactose crystals will not dissolve and will leave a "sandy" residue on your tongue.

Answer 3

Most of the time it is because you are opening and closing your freezer door. As you open and close this door the temperature is changing too much in the freezer causing large ice crystals to form within the ice cream. These large ice crystals (water frozen) is the sand-like texture you described.

In reality ice cream is held at about - 15 degrees F which is about 15 degrees colder than we set our home freezers. It is held at that temperature to keep the natural ice crystals very small giving us that smooth texture.

If the temperature rises and falls the natural water in the ice cream starts to change to water vapor but them as the temperature gets colder again it refreezes but those ice crystals are very large. (they are large because our home freezers freezes too slow which creates those larger crystals.

Answer 4

You are correct in your assumption. The texture difference

is a result of melting and refreezing. Each time this happens,

the ice crystals reform larger than before, making the ice

cream grainy.

Answer 5

yeah!! i know what you mean! i hate that. its so hard to eat it. its because it was melted and refrozened, so the ice crystals form. i watched it on Good Eats on food network.