Dairy processors are adding spicy peppers, herbs and other botanical ingredients to dairy foods. What’s going on? Our panel says consumers’ desire for more flavor, more stimulation and more experience is behind the trend.
If there’s a universal truth we can all count on, it’s that America’s three favorite ice-cream flavors will always be vanilla, chocolate and strawberry. Right? Wrong. Per the International Dairy Foods Association, Washington, D.C., our top three picks last year were vanilla, chocolate and butter pecan.
Okay, so that hardly heralds a revolution in consumer tastes. But look beyond this reigning trio and you will see an old guard being overthrown, or at least involuntarily entered into a power-sharing agreement with unruly upstarts. After all, IDFA’s own 2015 Innovative Ice Cream Flavor Competition (sponsored by Dairy Foods) featured entrants like chipotle chocolate and cherry, apple butter and biscuits and black cherry veggie. But these sound downright pedestrian next to the smoked salmon, cucumber vodka and kimchee profiles you might find at artisan ice creameries and hipster food co-ops across the country.