Turkey Hill Original Vanilla Ice Cream Review
This is a middle-of-the-pack brand; it was just OK. The texture was off-putting to some who described the mouth feel as "more like milk than cream." In terms of flavor, one of our tasters suggested this brand would be much improved "if it had chocolate syrup all over it."
Several of the panelists in our blind ice cream tasting pronounced Turkey Hill Original Vanilla to be kind of "blah" and one or two said it was slightly better than okay. The general consensus was that it's "run of the mill," even though one panel member said it "tastes like vanilla ice cream is supposed to taste."
Turkey Hill Original Vanilla didn't have the deep richness that's associated with the better vanilla ice creams; most of our tasters thought it was more milky than creamy. On the plus side, it wasn't overly sweet, and there was nothing artificial in the taste.
And there shouldn't be. Turkey Hill Original Vanilla doesn't contain any artificial ingredients -- only milk, cream, sugar, corn syrup, nonfat milk, and coloring appear on the list of ingredients. The coloring did nothing to elevate it in the eyes of our tasters, as its appearance was essentially unremarkable; that is to say, no one paid it any attention. Turkey Hill Original Vanilla does not have the yellowish color of a custardy type ice cream. To our tasters, it proved to be an OK, but not a standout, product.
Alone among the cheap ice cream brands we tested, Turkey Hill is not owned by a large conglomerate but was sold long ago to Dillons, a supermarket chain and subsidiary of Kroger. Its home base remains a dairy farm in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. You can visit what it calls the Turkey Hill Experience or encounter some cows out and about at local community events.
