The Winners, at a Glance
The Zeroll ice cream scoop’s shape has changed little since it came out in 1935, and for good reason. Inside the comfortable one-piece design is a food-safe liquid that transfers heat from your hand to the bowl, making it easier to form tidy ice cream mounds. With no moving parts, the scoop should last for years—just be sure to clean it by hand, as it’s not dishwasher-safe. Because the Zeroll’s bowl and handle are symmetrical, it works equally well for righty and lefty users.
With a comfortable grip and pointed tip, this scoop could easily dig into even the hardest ice creams, with a head shape that could scrape flat along the sides as well.
Though it may look gimmicky, this scoop released ice cream the easiest with its come-apart bowl. Its cast aluminum construction was sturdy, and its round bowl created neat scoops.
Halfway between an oval and a spade, the Gorilla Grip is a heavy-duty ice cream scoop with a comfortable rubber handle. It also features ridges along the bowl to help the ice cream release after scooping.
This scoop’s extra-long handle and finger swell made it the most comfortable model we tested. Its oval-shaped head also carved out near-perfect scoops time and time again.
Though it’s only angled for right-handers, this scoop from Farberware has a flat edge that helps you dig down into the corners of an ice cream container. Though the resulting scoops weren’t as neat as our other winners, it was hard to deny its utility.
The Testing
A good ice cream scoop makes it easier to form rounded mounds from a variety of frozen desserts in a range of containers. We tested with pints of “super-premium” chunky ice creams, like those from Ben & Jerry’s and Häagen-Dazs’s, as well as one-and-a-half-quart tubs of smoother, “premium” Turkey Hill and Friendly’s ice creams. We also scooped from pint-sized containers of sorbet.
These ice creams offered a range of textures and densities for our scooping tests. “Super-premium” ice creams feel firmer out of the freezer than other brands because they’re denser. The density is largely determined by “overrun,” which is ice cream industry lingo for the amount of air incorporated into the product during churning. Higher overrun means more air is trapped in the ice cream, making it easier to scoop and portion. “Super-premium ice cream is around 20 to 30% overrun, while premium brands are around 80 to 100%,” says Professor Robert Roberts, head of the food science department at Penn State University.
We lined up four testers, a mix of righties and lefties, with varying hand sizes and strengths. Testers scooped two or three times from containers of ice cream using the tools, emptying the portions into pint containers or onto sugar cones. As testers evaluated the scoops, we recorded their observations on the shape of the ice cream portion, how comfortable the handle was, and how easily the scoop released the ice cream.
The one-piece scoops with oval bowls performed the best and were the easiest to use. Testers preferred the simple design to models that released the ice cream mechanically using a sweeper bar or lever. Many of the scoops had an ambidextrous handle that was comfortable for both righty and lefty testers; in the end, we found that an unadorned, round shaft was the most pleasant to use.
The scoop on ice cream scoops
What is ice cream scoop?
Ice Cream Scoop cooking information, facts and recipes. A kitchen utensil that is made to form ice cream into a slightly rounded or a well-rounded ball shape as the ice cream is taken from the container and placed into a cone, a bowl or onto a dessert.
What is the best ice cream scooper?
It’s lightweight and durable and its heat-conducting handle produces perfectly rounded scoops of ice cream. For a lever-style portion scooper, we recommend the Oxo Squeeze scoop. It has a fairly ergonomic handle you squeeze to release the ice cream and it makes pretty, round scoops when you do.
Are ice cream scoops rounded?
Ice cream scoops are available in many different styles, but they are all well rounded, some more than others that vary from flatter spade formed scoops to very round ball-shaped utensils, some with extractor mechanisms.
Are ice cream scoops good?
If an ice cream scoop has a lever and a rounded bowl (like this one) it’s sometimes called a “disher.” These types of scoops are good for portioning out cookie dough and other baking applications, but aren’t as good at scooping ice cream as our top pick. How do you clean ice cream scoops?