This Is Hands Down The Best Blue Bell Ice Cream Flavor

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The best flavors can capture a feeling, and according to customers, that's exactly what Blue Bell's Homemade Vanilla Ice Cream does. While the company's website describes the recipe as a "closely guarded Blue Bell secret," the Texas ice cream brand claims Homemade Vanilla is its most popular flavor, and when that flavor turned 50 in 2019, the brand anticipated selling millions of cartons. The staple does have some hefty competition — after all, Blue Bell claims to have invented Cookies 'n Cream ice cream — but Homemade Vanilla has been a standout since its inception in 1969.

This mainstay was the brainchild of former Blue Bell CEO and president Howard Kruse, who wanted to make a vanilla ice cream that tasted exactly like the hand-cranked kind. Kruse's first order of the flavor was a small 5,000-carton run, as he wasn't sure if consumers "were ready to accept something that tasted homemade." Once it hit shelves, however, it was a hit, and ice cream aficionados are still singing its praises decades later — it even placed third in our worst-to-best ranking of grocery store vanilla ice creams.

"We still receive letters from consumers who say our Homemade Vanilla reminds them of the ice cream they cranked out as kids," the company's present-day CEO and president Ricky Dickson said in the press release celebrating the flavor's 50th anniversary. "It's heartwarming to know, after 50 years, our ice cream can still capture that feeling Mr. Kruse set out to create."

Though it's not certain what makes Blue Bell's Homemade Vanilla taste so homey, we do know its ingredients include regular and skim milk, cream, sugar, salt, and both natural and artificial vanilla flavoring. The salt keeps Homemade Vanilla from tasting too sweet, and this may also be what gives the ice cream its distinctively hand-cranked taste. Salt is often used in homemade ice cream recipes because it reduces the water's freezing point, thus helping the ice cream freeze quicker.

As for other popular ice creams that lean into nostalgia, Tillamook's Old Fashioned Vanilla is also a favorite. This flavor shares some ingredients with Blue Bell's version, like cream, sugar, and vanilla extract, but Tillamook doesn't add salt to its Old Fashioned Vanilla, perhaps supporting the theory that salt is why Blue Bell's iteration tastes so much like childhood.

Regardless, the ice cream's popularity remains undisputed. Over on Reddit, Homemade Vanilla fans repeatedly praised the flavor when one user asked about the best vanilla ice cream. "Blue Bell Homemade Vanilla gets malty, but not quite boozey," one enthusiast wrote in the thread. "It's more kid friendly with just a slight foamy kind of experience. It's very enjoyable and a strong vanilla aided by some artificial flavors."