Stone Ridge Creamery Ice Cream

With regular prices for brand-name ice cream hovering around $6.00 per "container" these days, I hardly ever buy the stuff unless it's on sale - and then I buy the limit and pack the deep freeze so I can go a couple of months between purchases.

I also keep an eye open for lower-priced alternative brands, which is how I found Stone Ridge Creamery ice cream in the case over at Shaw's.

Stone Ridge Creamery is a "private label" ice cream, made by SuperValu, a conglomerate that owns supermarket chains covering every segment of the grocery retail market from "premium" stores like Shaw's in New England and Bristol Farms in California, all the way down the ladder to national no-frills "limited selection" markets like Save-A-Lot. I didn't know that when I picked up a package of their vanilla "light" ice cream and a similar package of their regular chocolate at the local Shaw's. The low price ($2.50) caught my eye, and the well-designed packaging kept my attention. I chose "basic flavors" just to get an idea of what the stuff was like. Only later, after we had tasted the product, did I look closer at the packaging to see who the manufacturer was.

The light vanilla ice cream is pretty decent. It has good body and scoops tightly (I've noticed that some ice milks and light ice creams scoop out in fragile curls.) The ice cream itself is loaded with tiny flecks of genuine vanilla bean just like more expensive premium brands. Although the label claims half the fat and a third the calories of regular ice cream, it has a rich mouthfeel that is nearly indistinguishable from premium ice cream.

Unfortunately, the actual taste of the ice cream doesn't follow through with the same level of quality; the vanilla flavor isn't strong and robust as one would expect, but rather a bit weak and subtle on its own. Although that's a bit disappointing for eating straight up, it might not matter so much if you usually eat your ice cream with syrups or toppings, or as a base for a milkshake - the other flavoring components will make up for it.

The chocolate flavor regular ice cream by Stone Ridge had plenty of flavor but a thinner body. We felt that the light vanilla was actually creamier and smoother than the regular chocolate.

Despite these shortcomings, the family and I were pleased overall with Stone Ridge's two most basic flavors and we would certainly buy them again.

You should be able to find Stone Ridge Creamery ice cream just about anywhere in the US, since it's a SuperValu brand and they operate retail grocery chains across the country. Click here for a list of SuperValu-owned chains - from there you can find short descriptions and capsule histories of the various stores.

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