Grocery Store Strawberry Ice Cream, Ranked Worst To Best

Like a few ice creams looked at before this, Jeni’s strawberry ice cream is made with buttermilk, but this is the first to market it as a featured flavor. It’s our favorite strawberry buttermilk ice cream because of its ultra creamy texture, bolder strawberry taste, and straightforward ingredient list. Aside from strawberries and buttermilk, this ice cream includes cream, nonfat milk, cane sugar, citric acid, tapioca syrup, and radish, whole apple, and black currant extracts for color. There are 220 calories in a ½-cup serving, which is comparable to other premium ice creams. A pint of Jeni’s Strawberry Buttermilk ice cream also comes at a premium price, at $12 a pint, which is admittedly a lot — but worth it knowing you’re getting an ice cream made with high quality ingredients.

Jeni’s sources strawberries for this ice cream exclusively from Ohio-based Hirsch Fruit Farm, a relationship that began early in Jeni’s ice cream production. Supporting local businesses was a core value when Jeni Britton-Bauer started her company over two decades ago. Jeni’s doesn’t just puree the strawberries or toss chunks into the ice cream, but first roasts the strawberries to concentrate the flavor and reduce the water content in the berries for a stronger strawberry-flavored ice cream. At one point, the Strawberry Buttermilk flavor was only available seasonally, but it appears that Hirsch Fruit Farm has been able to scale up production alongside Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams, and this ice cream is now available nearly year-round.