Now we have been by way of so many style assessments collectively now. We’ve braved kilos of cream cheese. Mountains of butter. Puddles of peanut butter. And but, nobody on our staff has been extra excited for a  style check than they have been about our mint chocolate chip ice cream showdown. It’s fairly! It’s polarizing! It’s fashionable! It ought to, in concept, make an entire bunch of you very comfortable and/or very, very mad. And the web wants extra of that sort of fodder, don’t you assume?

And so, the Severe Eats staff lately pulled collectively 14 (!) manufacturers of mint chocolate ice cream you are more likely to discover in your native grocery store and methodically, empirically, scientifically! tasted its manner by way of all of them in a quest to determine the easiest. And we liked each minute of doing it! Additionally, many people felt very, very unwell after the very fact. 

Ed. notice: Van Leeuwen and Goal’s Favourite Day have been, amongst others on our pattern lists, however we have been unable to acquire them the day of the check regardless of our greatest efforts. I can’t wait to listen to about how a lot you’re keen on them, although, in addition to all the opposite manufacturers our nonexistent West Coast correspondent ought to have contributed to the check. Xo!

The Contenders

• Adirondack Creamery Whiteface Mint Chip
• Baskin Robbins Mint Chocolate Chip
• Ben & Jerry’s Mint Chocolate Cookie Peppermint 
• Finest But Mint Chocolate Chip
• Breyers Mint Chocolate Chip
• Edy’s Mint Chocolate Chip
• Pleasant’s Mint Chocolate Chip
• Graeter’s Mint Chocolate Chip
• Häagen-Dazs Mint Chip
• Jeni’s Inexperienced Mint Chip
• McConnell’s Mint Chip
• Tillamook Mint Chocolate Chip
• Turkey Hill Mint Chocolate Chip
• Wegman’s Mint Chocolate Chip

The Standards

A superb mint chocolate chip ice cream is, and I would like you to take a deep breath right here, not too minty. Don’t get me fallacious—it’s undoubtedly minty! But when any a part of you takes a chunk and clenches as a result of a tiny dentist is yelling at you in your head, you aren’t consuming a pleasant mint chocolate chip ice cream. As with all our different ice cream style assessments, creaminess is essential—wateriness is inaccurate. Additionally essential (maybe equally so!) is that the chocolate current all through is high-quality, evenly dispersed, and considerably chunky. In loads of these samples, we encountered smaller shards drowning in ice cream, little squares that kinda clumped, and/or meteorites of chalky junk floating within the nook, ready to take your tooth #16 out, sending you proper again to the dentist as a enjoyable, full-circle bit. 

Two issues that shocked me: In just a few cases, the staff picked up on distinct minty-ness from the chips themselves, reasonably than the encompassing ice cream. These cases didn’t correlate to excessive rankings! The ice cream must be nudgingly however distinctly minty, and the good, uniform chocolate must be distinctly chocolatey. Secondly, we…don’t actually care about shade!? I went into the day meaning to blindfold my coworkers to make sure they couldn’t let the colour of the pattern impede their opinions. It seems there isn’t a snug or acceptable method to blindfold your coworkers and force-feed them ice cream, so…they noticed every little thing going into their mouths. And their prime decisions ran the gamut from stark white to mild grey to greeeeeeen! What enjoyable. 

Of notice: Equally to our chocolate ice cream style check, we carried out this spherical on a sweltering and disgustingly humid NYC day. These ice lotions have been transported from everywhere in the metropolis and sat in a freezer I yanked open near-constantly over the course of the day. There was no method to protect their textural integrity as we’d’ve preferred to, however…we did our greatest! And, as with the chocolate ice cream style check, I constructed the uncontrollable variability of iciness/meltiness into the sampling templates, asking folks to separate temperature unintended effects out of their rankings as a lot as attainable.

The Rankings

Ben & Jerry’s Mint Chocolate Cookie Peppermint, 3.87/5

This Ben & Jerry’s pint—which is a nice muddled greenish-gray—ate the best way good skincare feels. It was viscous upon contact (in an opulent manner), it smelled good (in a pleasant afterthought–kind manner), and consuming it felt such as you have been doing one thing good for your self (in a very uplifting manner). I’m not suggesting each different mid-millennial on the market studying this could start slugging with Ben & Jerry’s mint chip, however I’m not not saying all of us shouldn’t cleanse with this whereas we eat it. Extra related to this explicit article, maybe, is the truth that this pattern felt very low on stabilizers however held its personal properly, significantly in distinction to the luxe and substantial chocolate-y cookie crumbles.

Baskin Robbins Mint Chocolate Chip, 3.43/5

Behold: the fourth consecutive Severe Eats style check by which these predictable little monsters gave a deeply nostalgic providing the silver medal. Fascinating! It’s tough to extrapolate the info right here: Is Baskin Robbins mint chip (a spearmint gum-green ice cream which was “very chocolate-y, and I do love that,” per our visuals director Amanda with a “implausible chip-to-cream ratio,” per our product lead Alison) really the second-best ice cream right here or do my coworkers all want bi-weekly remedy? Exhausting to say!

Häagen-Dazs Mint Chip, 3.33/5

One other SE ice cream style check prime three staple: Häagen-Dazs! This explicit taste was creamy and candy, and although it was one in all solely three with out the phrase “chocolate” in its identify, it featured luscious, chunky chunks that everybody took notice of. These chunks even outshone the precise ice cream, to some. Amanda put it finest: “These chips command loads of consideration.” TL:DR; when you’re in search of a mint-heavy, chocolate-light mint chocolate chip, this isn’t fairly the one for you, however if you’re a chocolate lover who likes a delicate mintiness, you’re most likely going to like this one. Oh! And it’s snooow-white.

Wegman’s Mint Chocolate Chip, 3.35/5

Sufficient of a blended bag of suggestions right here that this one squiggled its manner towards the highest. Of notice: This isn’t the primary time a Wegman’s product has accomplished that! It had a big hit of mint on the entrance—some, like our social media editor, Kelli, adored this, whereas others, akin to Amanda, likened it to toothpaste—and never in a great way. Both manner, it stretched properly, had good chip distribution, and wasn’t overly candy. Coloration-wise, it was like…man-handled white chalk. However in a enjoyable manner!

Graeter’s Mint Chocolate Chip, 3.25/5

My pre-tasting notes learn: “Appears fancy.” It was milky-white, agency sufficient to type a scoop shop-ish scoop, and it smelled good. Genevieve seen its “milkiness”, however famous it tasted watery along with creamy. Kelli and Amanda clocked a gumminess that wasn’t solely nice or disagreeable. All this to say, this was a satisfying choice, if not precisely a satisfying one?

Pleasant’s Mint Chocolate Chip, 3.125/5

It was so wild how I opened this pint and, proper as I started scooping, Frankenstein’s monster mentioned again to me: “If I can’t encourage love, I’ll trigger worry.” Tasting notes ranged from: “Dentist!! Dentist!” to “I’ve had this earlier than…” to “Idk what this tastes like nevertheless it doesn’t style like mint.” After our tasting was full and I revealed this choice—probably the most jarring, neon-adjacent inexperienced—to be Pleasant’s, Helen, our visitor taster/resident website positioning genius, threw her head again and laughed in an “I knew it”-type manner. Once more, they ranked this one above-average!

McConnell’s Mint Chip, 3.17/5

Unequivocally the mintiest of the bunch. If! You! Need! A for-real-minty mint chocolate chip ice cream! You need to! Decide! This! One! Comparisons have been made to Ice Breakers commercials of yore. It regarded like vanilla bean ice cream from the soar. It served as a pleasant palate cleanser for all that got here after it! It additionally was a really useful pattern in figuring out standards for this check—mint chocolate chip mustn’t, the truth is, be three-sticks-of-spicy-gum minty.

Tillamook Mint Chocolate Chip, 2.56/5

An alternative choice by which the chunks shone (“These are the chunkiest chunks which have ever been chunked,” wrote Kelli), however the ice cream enveloping them didn’t as a lot. Tasters craved an ice cream with extra mint and a firmer structure. The entire expertise, although aesthetically pleasing (we’ll name the colour “white-ish”) and straightforward to scoop, felt muted.

Adirondack Creamery Whiteface Mint Chip, 2.56/5

Right here we enter icy territory. Not, like, the aforementioned Ice Breaker ice. We simply ended up with a ice- and chocolate shard-heavy pint. And with shard-shaped chocolate chips kinda-sorta scattered all through, it wasn’t the creamy, balanced expertise the group hoped for. This pattern factors for prettiness, heft, and what might need been a extra outlined mint taste on a unique, much less freezer-burned day.

Finest But Mint Chocolate Chip, 2.4/5

I used up my two permitted dentist references three or 4 samples in the past, so I can’t sit right here speaking concerning the toothpaste-iness of this man for too lengthy, however I’ll inform you: It felt like Finest But R&D thought “Nobody else has gone full-steam-ahead on the toothpaste choice. Let’s fill that area.” They usually completely understood that task. Dental hygiene taste? Test. Dental hygiene shade? Test. Dental hygiene texture? It was “like whipped cream and ice cream met up,” per Alison, so nah.

Jeni’s Inexperienced Mint Chip, 2.25/5

From right here on out, every ice cream was a cloudier shade, whether or not it fell beneath the realm of “grey,” “inexperienced,” or “mossy cement gray-green.” (Once more, shade didn’t appear to issue into these rankings, however I am noting them in case you do fall squarely right into a “inexperienced chip” or “white chip” camp.) Jeni’s regarded just like the latter and…hear, all of us sincerely love Jeni’s in our private lives, however this merely didn’t maintain as much as the warmth for even a minute, nor did it style nice in its shortly puddled type. That mentioned, the chips have been small, yummy, and evenly dispersed sufficient to make folks comfortable, and the mint taste—A extra spearmint-forward power I’m going to chalk as much as the presence of honey in its components listing—was totally different sufficient from the remaining that everybody took notice.   

Edy’s Mint Chocolate Chip, 2.05/5

OK. So! This was good however extraordinarily candy! How good to have an choice that awakened and mentioned “I’m going to place each different sugary choice to disgrace.” Generally, you actually do exactly have to eat one thing you already know goes to take you out later!! There have been loads of chocolate chips all up on this ice cream! Plus, if I needed to describe the colour, I’d name it “Lana Del Ray’s seafoam of selection,” in order that’s cool in some circles!!!

Breyers Mint Chocolate Chip, 1.86/5

A well-intentioned ice cream with a prevailing sense of artificiality all through. In the event you served this to me in an ice cream cake at a four-year-old’s birthday celebration on the world’s hottest day that will utterly monitor for me!!

Turkey Hill Mint Chocolate Chip, 1.5/5

See above, however I’d most likely duck out of that social gathering earlier than dessert. That’s all!

Our Testing Methodology

All style assessments are carried out with manufacturers utterly hidden and with out dialogue. Tasters style samples in random order. For instance, taster A might style pattern 1 first, whereas taster B will style pattern 6 first. That is to forestall palate fatigue from unfairly giving anybody pattern a bonus. Tasters are requested to fill out tasting sheets rating the samples for numerous standards. All knowledge is tabulated and outcomes are calculated with no editorial enter with a purpose to give us probably the most neutral illustration of precise outcomes attainable.