My Top Ten Ben & Jerry's Hall of Fame Flavors
To All the Pints I've Loved Before...
Comfort Me With Ice Cream
Every January, any aspirations toward healthy eating and embracing “New Year, New BTP” is usually undermined by March with the arrival of Girl Scout Cookies season quickly followed with the release of new Ben & Jerry’s ice cream flavors.
One of my first regular freelance writing gigs was as an Ice Cream Correspondent for Serious Eats, where I sought out and reviewed new flavors, limited release pints, and store-exclusives. It didn’t pay well, but it was a fun topic to cover and an engaging side hustle while I was living in Seattle working on my first book, Bitters. By the time I moved to Brooklyn I was too focused on finishing the book to continue, and while I may have given up the ice cream beat professionally, ice cream has, and always will, be dear and close (and likely debilitating) to my heart.
Ice cream is on my mind today (and most days) because April 8 is Free Cone Day at Ben & Jerry’s (find a B&J Scoop Shop near you). I’m old enough to remember when these pints packed with quirky flavor combinations jammed with chunky fillings and thick swirls became commercially available across the Northeast in 1983, but it wasn’t until my college years until they seemed to be the go-to pint.
The summer between high school and college I was working as a line cook frying countless baskets of Buffalo Chicken Wings at Harpoon Eddie’s in Sylvan Beach, New York. I was in awe of and looked up to the slightly older bartenders there. One in particular, a super chill guy with a J. Crew catalog vibe and head of James Spader Pretty in Pink hair, always looked out for me and actually talked to me and asked about my life rather than just bark food orders at me. His white polo shirt and khaki shorts were always neat and spotless compared to my rumpled, sweaty, Frank’s Hot Sauce-stained demeanor, and whenever he came back into the kitchen for his break he’d hop up on a prep counter and pick at a his Grilled Chicken Caesar Salad while talking with me about movies, books, and music and regale me with stories about his life outside of Harpoon Eddie’s. The time he told me about a recent weekend with his beautiful girlfriend in Vermont and their visit to the Ben & Jerry’s factory he was Tom Cruise and I imagined a similar outing with my own future you-don’t-know-her-she’s-lives-in-Canada imaginary girlfriend.
I still haven’t made it to the Ben & Jerry’s factory to pay my respects at the Flavor Graveyard (heck, I haven’t even been to Vermont), but you can usually find a pint or two of Ben & Jerry’s in my freezer. There are stalwart flavors in the Ben & Jerry’s lineup and many come and go (and sometimes return) along with new concepts like Cores, Topped, Non-Dairy, Gluten-Free, and the all-new Sundaes series—but the colorful design, typeface, and colorways of my favorite Ben & Jerry’s pints over the years still hang on the wall of memory like the oversized Elvis Costello Trust poster taped to the wall over my futon in college.
With this palate cleanser out of the way, here is my selection of Ben & Jerry’s Hall of Fame Flavors. There was no period of formal nominations or judging panels beyond my own personal taste.
And lest you think I’m a solely a Ben & Jerry’s stan, here are my go-to flavors from some of my other favorite brands of ice cream you might find in my freezer.
Häagen-Dazs (Butter Pecan, Chocolate Peanut Butter, Vanilla Swiss Almond, Strawberry)
Salt & Straw (Salted, Malted, Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough; Sea Salt with Caramel Ribbons)
McConnell’s (Mint Chip, Double Peanut Butter Chip, Sweet Cream Caramel Brownie, Toasted Coconut Almond Chip)
Jeni’s (Double Dough, Salted Peanut Butter with Chocolate Flecks, Goat Cheese with Red Cherries, Strawberry Buttermilk)
Tillamook (Brownie Batter, Malted Moo Shake, Tillamook Mudslide)
What’s Your Favorite Ben & Jerry’s Flavor?
Ben & Jerry’s Top Ten Hall of Fame Flavors
1. Chubby Hubby
Vanilla Malt Ice Cream with Peanutty Fudge-Covered Pretzels with Fudge & Peanut Buttery Swirls
Malt is one of my favorite flavors in any context, but especially in ice cream and milkshakes. But there’s not a lot of commercially available malt ice creams available out in the wild (shout out to Tillamook’s Malted Moo Shake ice cream). So Chubby Hubby is my steady based on its base of vanilla malt ice cream alone. I would honestly be just fine if the signature fudge-covered pretzels were out of the pictuer as the thick swirls of fudge and peanut butter carry that weight (speaking of weight, I do get the dark comedy of crushing a pint that also describes what it may turn you into).