Bagged Ice

We have a thing about the flavor of ice cubes from the freezer. The kind you make in those plastic or metal trays with either tap or bottled water. If you don’t use them within, say, a week, they usually take on a garlicky stale flavor, similar to the unpleasant taste of something freezer burned. Even freezers equipped with automatic icemakers dispense freezer-tasting cubes if there isn’t a lot of ice cube “turn over” (or if the water filter isn’t changed regularly).

Why the off flavor? It’s because the cubes are exposed to the circulating air inside the freezer. As they sit, they begin to melt (yes, ice cubes melt in the freezer, more quickly in a no-frost freezer than in a manual defrost freezer) and oxidize, which imparts that distinctively stale freezer flavor, and let’s face it, that always ruins the flavor of a good drink.

So, unless you use up your cubes pretty quickly (and regularly change the water filter in your water and ice-dispensing model) you may want to switch over to bagged ice like we have. We either buy bagged ice from our local market or gas station or we make our own cubes in the aforementioned trays and keep them in those nice, big, re-sealable plastic bags. The ice cubes stay fresher tasting longer.

Bottoms up!