The best Ben & Jerry’s flavors are over-the-top in the best way possible. If you believe ice cream should be indulgent and absolutely packed with mix-ins, Ben & Jerry are your soulmates. But how do you pick the best Ben & Jerry’s flavors from their substantial ice cream catalog? Allow us to help.
Sometimes the most fun taste tests we do are also the most grueling. Like, for real, shout out to Ben & Jerry’s for making about 1,000 ice cream flavors, but, goddamn, I thought I was going to croak after trying more than a dozen of their most popular flavors. My stomach had a lot to say, and none of it was good.
The upside of my temporary gastrointestinal turmoil? I now know exactly which Ben & Jerry’s flavors to pick up at the grocery store; no more hemming and hawing in the frozen aisle while someone tries to reach around me for their Chubby Hubby. These are the best Ben & Jerry’s flavors.
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- Peanut Butter Half Baked
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If you’re buying Ben & Jerry’s, you probably like an indulgent ice cream. Well, this mix of chocolate and peanut butter ice creams packed with “gobs” of peanut butter cookie dough and fudge brownies is about as indulgent as it gets. The chocolate and peanut butter ice creams are super rich and flavorful, and the peanut butter cookie dough adds a little bit of saltiness and chew. If you like the taste of Reese’s peanut butter, I think you’ll like B&J’s take on peanut butter cookie dough. “I think this would be good if you had a hard week,” I said when I tasted this, but, let’s be honest; every week has its tribulations and you always deserve a big-ass bowl of chocolate-peanut butter ice cream. Peanut Butter Half Baked also scored high marks when Rhett & Link set out to find the best Ben & Jerry’s flavors on a 2020 episode of Good Mythical Morning.
Credit: Sarah Demonteverde / Target
- Gimme S’More
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Is there a more pleasing phrase in the English language than “toasted marshmallow ice cream”? I’m not certain there is. And, in the case of Ben & Jerry’s Gimme S’more, it tastes as good as it sounds. This s’mores-inspired ice cream, which also includes swirls of graham cracker and chocolate cookie and a generous allotment of fudge flakes, was my personal favorite of the bunch, largely because the mix-ins are nice and small. I know plenty of people like gobs, hunks, and chunks in their ice cream, but I love how the finer grind of the cookies and chocolate chips in this ice cream makes it so you get a uniformly delicious bite every time. If you usually opt for cookies & cream ice cream at the grocery store and want to mix things up just a little, give this one a shot.
Credit: Sarah Demonteverde / Target
- Cherry Garcia
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My affinity for fruit-flavored ice cream is well documented, and I firmly believe that cherry ice cream should be way, way more popular than it is. Cherry Garcia is proof positive. While Haagen-Dazs makes an excellent cherry vanilla ice cream, B&J up the ante by incorporating big, luscious chunks of tart cherry into cherry-flavored ice cream. If you’re imagining cherry flavored as in medicine or candy, stop. This is more of a grown-up black cherry flavor, and it’s excellent. The fudge flakes add texture and dimension to the cherry flavor. Also, I love the Grateful Dead (it doesn’t get better than this live recording of “Brown Eyed Women” for my money) and appreciate a Jerry Garcia nod.
Credit: Sarah Demonteverde / Target
- Chocolate Fudge Brownie
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This is a chocolate ice cream for die-hard chocolate lovers. The ice cream base has a powerful chocolate flavor, and the fudge brownie chunks are unreal—soft, gooey, and super chewy. If you like the edge-of-the-pan brownies, you’ll like these big brownie chunks, which are apparently made special for Ben & Jerry’s by Greyston Bakery in Yonkers, New York. (I thought these tasted different and better than the brownie chunks in another flavor, and I was right!) I generally think straight chocolate ice cream can get a little boring if you’re eating a whole bowl, but there’s enough going on in this pint to keep things interesting to the last bite.
- Dublin Mudslide
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I worked at Applebee’s in college, so I’ll always have a soft spot for a Mudslide. The ice cream-based cocktail (okay, cocktail is a stretch—it’s more of a boozy milkshake) is usually made with vodka, coffee liqueur, and Irish cream. B&J adapted that recipe by creating an irish cream ice cream (made with Irish cream from Wheyward Spirit) with coffee fudge swirls and chocolate chip cookies. I doubt this will give you a buzz, but I will say it genuinely tastes like Irish cream and it’s delicious. It’s the best Ben & Jerry’s flavor if you’re similarly nostalgic for chain restaurant bars in the early aughts.
Credit: Sarah Demonteverde / Target
- Strawberry Cheesecake
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Whenever I buy ice cream from one of the nice dudes with those little carts on the beach, I always opt for a Good Humor Strawberry Shortcake bar. B&J’s Strawberry Cheesecake is like a vastly improved version of that ice cream truck classic. This is a strawberry cheesecake-flavored ice cream with chunks of strawberry and a nice big swirl of graham cracker crumbs. The graham cracker pieces are small, but they’re flavorful enough that they don’t get lost amid the sweet, delicious flavor of the strawberry ice cream. You’ll even detect a little bit of saltiness just like you’d find in a well-made graham cracker pie crust. Of all the Ben & Jerry’s flavors we tried, this one reminded me the most of a fancy ice cream, like something from Salt & Straw or Jeni’s.
Credit: Sarah Demonteverde / Target
- Brownie Batter Core
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Everyone loves eating straight-up, raw-egg-filled batter before it becomes an actual baked good. This pint of ice cream channels that experience without the threat of salmonella poisoning or getting your tongue caught in a hand mixer. The brownie batter core is so indulgent, so silky, it almost feels wrong—but eating brownie batter is supposed to feel a little wrong! It’s part of the experience. With all that chocolate, the vanilla ice cream swirled into the base is a nice counterpart.
Credit: Sarah Demonteverde / Target
- Cherry Garcia Non-Dairy Frozen Dessert
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First, allow me to say that Ben & Jerry’s non-dairy frozen dessert is very good for a non-dairy frozen dessert. But I’m sorry, it just can’t really compete with full-fat, full-dairy, rich-as-all-hell ice cream. I tried three of the brand’s non-dairy desserts, and the best Ben & Jerry’s flavor, as translated to the non-dairy realm, is Cherry Garcia. I sometimes get a little bit of an off flavor from almond milk-based ice creams, but the almond flavor works in harmony with the cherry flavor of the ice cream here. Almonds and cherries are a classic pairing. This just makes sense.
Credit: Sarah Demonteverde / Walmart
Best of the Best
Best Cookies & Cream Glow Up
Best Fruit Flavor
Best for Chocolate Lovers
Best Boozy (Sorta)
Best Good Humor Upgrade
Best Core Flavor
Best Non-Dairy
Other products we tried: Phish Food, Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough, Topped Dirt Cake, Half Baked, Chunky Monkey, Americone Dream, The Tonight Dough, Peanut Butter Fudge Core, Cookies & Cream Cheesecake Core, Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Non-Dairy, The Tonight Dough Non-Dairy
Rhett & Link’s Pick
Peanut Butter World
Unsurprisingly, these two dyed-in-the wool peanut butter boys loved a peanut butter-flavored Ben & Jerry’s ice cream the most. “I am entering the world,” Link said when he took a bite during a Gut Check episode of Good Mythical Morning in 2020. “That is GOOD,” Rhett exclaimed.
