I drink plenty of iced espresso, and so, I am going by plenty of ice. For a very long time, I used no matter ice trays got here in my freezer, both left behind by previous tenants or by former roommates. I had a stint with the Joseph Joseph QuickSnap, however for the reason that ice cubes didn’t all the time snap out so simply, I’d wedge in a butter knife to assist loosen them. That’s, till the day — many mornings of this later — that I observed little white flecks in my iced espresso and realized solely then that I had been scraping off plastic together with the ice cubes.
So, postpone by the quantity of plastic I’d been ingesting, I upgraded to silicone ice dice trays. These are great, in principle: The trays are available in a number of measurement choices, and the ice all the time comes out cleanly, with just a bit twist. Then, in fact, there’s the fact of silicone ice dice trays: Whereas ice doesn’t actually stick with silicone, smells definitely do. And regardless of how clear I saved my freezer nor how typically I swapped out the baking soda inside it, the silicone tray and any ice made in it picked up an unwelcome funk. There are methods to repair this, certain, nevertheless it additionally doesn’t really feel like too huge an ask to need ice dice trays that don’t require fixed upkeep.
Unimpressed by the alternate options from main kitchen items retailers, I ended up on Amazon, the place the Phinox ice dice tray with lid and bin instantly appealed to me, partly due to its sensible design, which maximizes the quantity of ice I may make, and in addition due to its cute colours. My new ice tray — which is an lovely pink — has modified my mornings for the higher.
For $14 as of this writing, you get two ice dice trays that, collectively, make 64 cubes of ice, versus the 14 cubes of most different ice dice trays. Not solely do these trays stack on prime of one another, additionally they match snugly atop a bin for storing the ice — a lot operate throughout the similar footprint as a regular tray!
Though the molds of those ice dice trays are certainly made from silicone, they’ve an upside over those I’d been utilizing: They arrive with a lid that matches snugly excessive to maintain smells out. That lid does double obligation too. Contained in the lid is a plate with mushy, pokey nubs of plastic. To launch the ice cubes from the tray, you merely flip every tray the other way up over the bin, put the lid on prime, after which press down with some pressure so the nubs can push all of the cubes out directly.
One other upside? Each time I press the ice out, I really feel like a type of chiropractor influencers doing a again adjustment. My ice is all the time contemporary, it by no means runs out, and my morning iced espresso has by no means been higher.
