The reason why you should never refreeze melted ice cream

There’s nothing better than an freezing cold ice cream to cool you down in the summer and warm your heart in the winter.

But if you’re the kind of person who takes their time putting the tub back in the freezer when you’re done with it, then you may be leaving yourself open to a world of pain – in the form of food poisoning.

In a column for the Daily Mail, Dr Amreen Bashir, who is a lecturer in life and health sciences at Aston University and a registered biomedical scientist, detailed just how dangerous refreezing melted ice cream can be.

“Ice cream melts fairly rapidly at room temperature and the milky, sugary, liquid concoction is a perfect petri dish for bacteria like Listeria, essentially the second time you dig into the tub,” she said.

She claims the best thing to do is to take your ice cream out of the freezer, scoop out your serve and put it back straight away.

Dr Bashir also warned against double-dipping, saying it’s an ‘invitation to every nasty bug nearby’.

Not only might it give you a bad case of stomach cramps, but if you do decide to refreeze ice cream, it will more than likely lose its flavour and take on a strange, icy, texture.

Dr Bashir recommends always washing your hands and ‘monitor the temperature of your food’ so you don’t leave it out in a warm place for too long.

According to a post on The Kitchn, melted ice cream loses its air, which makes it freeze into a dense ice block.

That means that when you go to scoop it out the next time, you’ll have to rechurn it to get the texture back to normal.

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