The Aldi Ice Cream Shoppers Love For Its Short Ingredient List

There is a special satisfaction in whipping up homemade vanilla ice cream, perhaps most of all because you have a chance to select your own ingredients for the finished product. That said, fortunately for the many frozen treat lovers who may not have the time or equipment to undertake this process at home, modern grocers' freezers are stocked up with the scoopable goods, ready to go just about any time the craving strikes.

The downside to this grab-and-go situation is that sometimes we may find ourselves sacrificing quality or personal standards in exchange for that convenience. But loyal Aldi customers know that isn't always the case. Thanks to the store-brand Specially Selected Vanilla Premium Ice Cream, label readers can let their inner ice cream lover run wild. Boasting only five ingredients — as compared with some commercial brands' laundry lists – this product not only brings the flavor and creaminess in a big way, but it does so with elements that are totally identifiable and natural.

Given the fact that ice cream at its most basic, is a formulated mixture of dairy, sugar, and an emulsifying ingredient like eggs or starch, it's sometimes confounding to see how far off-base commercial brands go with the recipe. A cursory review of mass-produced ice cream ingredient lists reveals everything from high fructose corn syrup, to polysorbate and diglycerides – among other items that sound as if they'd be more at home in a lab than a home kitchen.

Many of these are added for purposes of stabilizing and emulsifying, or they're just plain cost-cutting filler. But when a more natural commercial alternative is out there at your local Aldi, why not opt for that carton instead? Aldi's product relies on the same stuff you'd use at home: Cream, skim milk, sugar, pasteurized egg yolks, and vanilla extract.

Not only does this concise compilation of ingredients provide peace of mind that you're not loading up on unknown, artificial, and perhaps unnatural additions to your treat, but you're going to get optimal flavor, too. By centering these five recognizable elements, you can actually taste the sweetness of the dairy, the rich, creamy quality that real egg yolks help create, and the floral notes of that vanilla emanating throughout. So how does this ice cream get away with being so simple when other brands don't?

A quick lesson in ice cream science actually makes it easy to answer that question. Dairy creates the foundation and presents the proteins necessary to trap air, making your ice cream light and fluffy. The sugar brings flavor and depresses the freezing point of the finished product, making it soft and scoopable. Eggs are all about emulsification, naturally bringing together the other elements in the ice cream and keeping them nice and creamy. And finally, vanilla extract adds the floral and delicate, always cravable flavor we know and love.

Other ice cream brand ingredient lists are novel-length at times because they rely on cheaper alternative emulsifiers and stabilizers, which are designed to mimic the effects of the egg yolk that Aldi's brand uses. Some of the chemical additions you find on labels are synthetic flavors, from cherry to strawberry and beyond, while others are there to function as preservatives, to prevent your ice cream from degrading if it sits on the grocers' shelves for an extended period of time. 

When you bring Aldi's Specially Selected Vanilla Premium Ice Cream home though, there's little chance it'll last very long. Whether you top it with hot fudge sauce or vanilla whipped cream, homemade caramel or candied pecans, or just eat it straight from the carton, you can have a delicious frozen fix in a snap — and feel good about it, too.