I Tried 13 Vanilla Ice Creams & This Is The One You Should Buy
Delish, June, 2025
Call me basic, but I LOVE vanilla ice cream. The ultimate accompaniment for everything from cherry pie to brownies, it’s also perfect for melting down and whisking into French toast batter or drizzling into a white Russian. And there’s nothing more superb than a scoop of vanilla ice cream served on its own. Maybe with a drizzle of hot fudge.
But finding a truly great vanilla ice cream can be surprisingly difficult. Vanilla beans are the second most expensive spice in the world, and many brands skirt the cost by skimping on the flavor. Also, without any big blockbusting chunks or rich swirls to distract, the subtle nuances of texture and the prominence (or absence) of egginess in the ice cream become VERY apparent. So, which brands can you count on to deliver?
I blindly tasted 13 different brands of vanilla ice cream, scoring each one on a scale of 1-10 as I tasted. My producer, Halle Burns, scooped each sample directly from the container (kept carefully out of my sight, of course!) so I could get the freshest tasting possible. After I tasted and rated all 13 samples, I determined my top brands in several different categories and named an overall favorite. Here are the results:
Best Premium Vanilla Ice Cream: Adirondack Creamery
If you’ve ever wondered why people are so obsessed with “French” vanilla, one bite of Adirondack Creamery’s offering will make you a believer. With a gorgeous golden yellow color and a warm toasty vanilla flavor to match, this ice cream handily topped all the ice creams in its category (except the best overall—see below!) It’s worth mentioning that of all the offerings in the premium category, this ice cream seemed to melt faster, which is probably the biggest reason it lost out to the best overall champion. Also, it’s definitely a prima donna in the world of vanilla ice cream—those toasty vanilla notes (which according to the brand is the product of a “special blend of vanillas from Tahiti and Madagascar”) are poised to steal the spotlight wherever it appears. But if you’re looking for big Vanilla flavor (with a capital V), this is definitely it.