Hacker News Reader

Comment by wrycoder | Hacker News Reader

Here in New England, we judge a town by how easy it is to get good ice cream (not from the market). We eat it year-round, even when it's snowing. In NH, we pour maple syrup on snow and eat that, also.

Most ice cream is too sweet - vanilla and pistachio are good choices.

View on HN

Pistachio is the easy way for me to test an icecream store (I'm Italian).

It tells immediately if they are cheap (powder tastes like almond), or they used actual pistachio. The flavor gets better (and more expensive) the more pistachios are used.

Great point. You can also tell by the color: The brighter the green the worse the quality.

So, the only reason why I don't focus on the color is because in Rome there was a special icecream place (only store in a residential area) where they had TWO pistachios flavor and one was quite bright green, it was made of raw pistachios, while the other used roasted pistachios.

Both AMAZING. Since then, I give the benefit of the doubt even with the green color, even though 99% of the time it's disappointing.

Indian ice cream called kulfi is fantastic in pistachio and saffron flavors. Its much denser ice cream since air is not usually folded into it.

Maple syrup on snow is amazing, I had that as a kid in Canada (Ontario and Quebec).

For real? When thinking about it it is quite strange there are no snow dishes to my knowledge.

Yah, you get some fresh snow, lay out popsicle sticks on it and then pour maple syrup over it and pick it up

https://happyhooligans.ca/make-maple-syrup-snow-candy-3-simp...

Its amazing.

There are a range of shaved ice deserts which are quite similar, sno-cones, hawaiian shaved ice, and some are popular in Asia as well.

I truly don't understand pistachio ice cream. Is it an acquired taste? Do you have to eat it as a small child to grow up liking it?

The problem with pistachio is that there are a lot of bad pistachio ice creams and gelatos (IMHO). There's really an art to getting it to where it both isn't bitter and isn't too sweet. Ben & Jerry's for example is typically way, way too sweet (in any flavour). There are a couple of exceptions but I can't eat B&J's Pistachio. YMMV.

My particular poison is pistachio of hazelnut gelato. In both cases with correct balance you get something with a nutty, creamy flavour.

It's not something I had until I was an adult so it's not a childhood thing either.

Do you have favorite pistachio brands? I’ve never really liked it, aside from one of the decent mass market brands, Breyer’s, perhaps.

Find an Indian grocery store and grab some from their freezer

Indian kulfi is also good, but it's not the same as Western ice cream, since the milk is intentionally caramelized during the preparation.

Like rum-raisin. It depends how they make it.

I've heard laboratorio del gelato in NYC is good. Never been to it --one day I may go pay a visit.

So years ago there used to be a gelato shop in the West Village called L'Arte del Gelato on the corner of Barrow St and 7th Ave if memory serves. It was right next to the Christopher St subway station and the place would actually shake when the trains went through.

They had an amazing pistachio gelato.

Years ago now the owners had some kind of split. I never knew the details but it resulted in that store changing its name. I honestly forget what to now. It's gone. But the other owner (I guess?) opened a store under the original name in Chelsea Market, which is still there today. I haven't been there in some years but I believe the pistachio gelato is the same. I would definitely recommend trying that.

Hm, to me, B&J's Pistachio Pistachio is one of their less sweet offerings. I used to like Cherries Garcia, but it's way too sweet for me these days.

At this point, everything Ben & Jerry's has way to much sugar/corn syrup/whatever.

The point of old school Ben & Jerry's was way too much cream. Apparently, that has gotten too expensive or too perishable for an industrial cold chain.

This might be a case where people genetically taste things differently, because pistachio ice cream wasn't an acquired taste for me at all. Just seems delicious, though maybe a hair off the map of the kind of taste you usually get in ice cream.

Hmm, that is an interesting thought that it might be like Cilantro where there is a genetic component.

i tried it as an adult and liked it the very first time. Its my go to flavor when i can't make up my mind.

The benefit of pistachio is supposed to be that it uses pistachio butter, which makes the ice cream creamier

Now a days, a lot of people just use pistachio extract, which mean the flavor has to stand on its own.

It’s a big thing in the Indian subcontinent.

My girlfriend judges icecream shops by their pistaccio. I really don't understand.. .

Lot of garbage places. It should taste closer to raw pistachios, but somewhat sweet. Color is closer to brown, it can be green but not bright green.

If it tastes like almond, it's terrible.

It’s the most delicious ice cream flavor. Pistachios in general, along with cashews, are god tier nuts

grape nut ice cream, kid.

or go north (or in your case, west) and get you a maple creemee

We often had home-made grape-nut and banana ice cream at my grandparents’.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com