Freeze-dried ice cream: the snack that nobody needs - but everyone wants to try
What tastes good to astronauts could also delight us on Earth - or could it? My team and I try freeze-dried ice cream from a tin and find out whether the space dessert passes our taste test.
According to Super Garden, "Ice cream that doesn't melt" is supposed to be the next best alternative to real ice cream. My inner boomer cries out in irritation: "Do we really need an alternative to real ice cream now too?" Very probably not. But what's delicious has a right to exist. That's why I want to know how it tastes - and so do my team members.
We all scream for mango ice cream!
My boss Simon tears open the aluminium foil of the mango tin, smells it and grimaces as if someone had driven one in his immediate vicinity. "What's that supposed to be?" Mango sorbet. Or something. He hands me the tin. Inside are yellow, hard stalks that remind me of chips. I bite off a piece with a loud crunch. "Really crunchy to bite off," my work colleague Lorenz paraphrases the comment from Community member GefassterLegolaus52 under the freeze-dried ice cream on Galaxus. He seems enthusiastic about the concept.
Source: Screenshot Galaxus
And my team? For now, it's just crunching around me. My first impression: as soon as the hard mass comes into contact with saliva, it melts on the tongue. It is sweet, fruity, with a sour note and tastes slightly artificial at first. But I'm still not sure whether that's why I don't like the freeze-dried ice cream. "It reminds me of dried mangoes," says Darina and takes another loud bite: "But I prefer the real ones, you can really chew on them." She is right in her assessment, the flavour of dried mangoes is pretty much spot on. Lorenz replies: "Actually, it's nothing more than freeze-dried fruit cream - the gimmick is the only selling point."
And how does stracciatella taste, ella, ella, e?
I sniff the second tin and the smell of powdered milk hits my nose. "Are the lumps powdered?" asks Lorenz. No, that's the powder that has separated from the vanilla chocolate nuggets. In contrast to the hard mango sticks, the stracciatella chunks are porous. Almost chalk-like. I try one and am surprised. The flavour is very similar to ice cream. The vanilla flavour is subtle and the chocolate pieces are crunchy. Like the stracciatella ice cream from the swimming pool. Just not as refreshing. The others agree with me. "Not bad at all," says Patrick. The sweet drinks sommelier loves crazy snacks and apparently loves this one too.
Planet Earth is blue, and there's nothing I can do
We wonder who the target group of these sweet bites is supposed to be. People with particularly cold-sensitive teeth? Those with a tendency to extreme brainfreez? Or perhaps those who eat so slowly that the ice cream melts in their fingers? Michael thinks he knows the answer: "It's just the kind of stuff you only fall for once because you're never curious and you want to try it out." He'll probably be right. It was like that for me.
Patrick has an alternative explanation. "Maybe it's ice for astronauts!" And he's not far wrong with this theory. In the 1970s, the Whirlpool Corporation was commissioned by NASA to develop freeze-dried desserts for the Apollo missions that would not melt. However, they were never used, even though this myth persists in the USA. The dessert has been known there for a long time, with established varieties such as "Freeze Dried Ice Cream Sandwich", i.e. freeze-dried ice cream between two biscuits or hard Prince Pückler ice cream.
A new snack for the ages?
Probably not. "They're far too expensive for what they are," says Simon. The price per kilo in particular shows that it is an expensive snack. Ramon comments: "They're wild. And when they're around here, I nibble on them, but not because I think they're cool." I'd like to say the same about myself, but the more the afternoon progresses, the more often I reach into the tin. I start to like the chunks. Not because they taste like ice cream, but because the consistency is addictive. Shortly before closing time, I look in the tin. Empty. Crap! I should have taken photos of it. Oh well, I'll just have to get two new tins.
Header image: Stefanie Lechthaler
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Painting the walls just before handing over the flat? Making your own kimchi? Soldering a broken raclette oven? There's nothing you can't do yourself. Well, perhaps sometimes, but I'll definitely give it a try.
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