THE HEIGHT OF DOMESTIC LUXURY? DESIGNER ICE
Nobody loves ice more than Americans. It’s a running joke, a quirk of the national personality: Iced drinks are as American as rock ‘n’ roll, pickup trucks and to-go cups.
Way back in 1895, Mark Twain wrote that ice had become so inextricably linked with the United States that “there is but a single specialty with us, only one thing that can be called by the wide name ‘American.’ That is the national devotion to ice-water.”
For years to come, all ice was good ice. But now it’s entering a new Gilded Age. Frozen water, which costs most Americans virtually nothing, is being redefined as a luxury item.
At fashion-brand parties, ice cubes stamped with the company’s logo are de rigueur. On tables at high-end weddings, fairy lights in Mason jars are out and wildflowers suspended in $14 ice cubes are in. TikTok creators routinely draw 30 million views overnight (and sizable paychecks) by showing off stocked ice drawers, along with retail links for buying specialty ice molds in all shapes and sizes. Then there’s the pinnacle of domestic opulence: a countertop ice maker that turns out the pebble-shaped “nugget ice” previously available only at fastfood chains.
“I have almost 75 ice molds,” said Kami Mehta, a TikToker who late last year started sharing the dozens of types of ice in her Florida freezer. Since then several other influencers have followed suit, drawing a huge audience: Ice isn’t just frozen water for your drink; it’s a blank canvas for your artistry.
“It’s amazing how many people are doing it,” she said of the videos. “You have to be creative now.”
We could have seen it coming. First there were the refrigerators that plop crescent ice out the front of the door (and often onto the floor). Then came the chic 1 1/4-inch cubes made with silicone molds. In cocktail bars
bars around the country, “on the rocks” now means having your favorite spirit poured over an extra-large sphere or cube of ice, and cloudy ice in a cocktail may warrant a complaint.
In 2020, 51% of the 2,000 Americans polled by the appliance company Bosch self-identified as “ice obsessed.” Even more said they wouldn’t drink water unless it was cold, and that if no ice was available they would simply drink less water.
As in so many arenas of culture, TikTok is leading the way. In the past year, #icetok, a hashtag with nearly 950 million views, has become a socialmedia phenomenon. Videos posted under the tag include tutorials for making “powdery ice,” and the pouring of all manner of liquids into ice machines. (Say hello to hot-sauce ice, SpaghettiOs ice and, perhaps as an antidote, Pepto Bismol ice.)
But most popular among the TikTok genre is the subgenre of icedrawer restock videos, which are themselves an offshoot of the strangely soothing #cleantok mania that swept social media through the pandemic. Restock videos, which show users decanting spices into jars and replenishing clear canisters with pantry goods, appeal to a large audience who crave organization or the comfort of repetition. The genre gets highly specific: guest bathroom restocks, coffee restocks and snack-drawer restocks.
During the pandemic, “I think some people made sourdough and kimchi, and other people made ice cubes,” said Camper English, a cocktail writer and ice obsessive best known for introducing a technique for making crystal-clear ice to cocktail connoisseurs about a decade ago.
“I know there’s been a steady increase, but some switch flipped in the past six months,” English said. “I feel like it’s everywhere, particularly with those videos.”
Here’s what one ice restock video looks like: An empty freezer drawer slides open and a pair of hands, in this case belonging to Mehta, slides in plastic containers. Then 13 types of ice cascade into each bin. First, ice in spheres, tiny rectangles, large cubes and heart shapes. Then the colorful ice: cubes the size of ring boxes filled with slices of orange and lime; pink bricks of blended fruit ice for smoothies; creamy hazel-colored ice made with frozen coffee in the shapes of roses, pumpkins and bulldogs. The video, posted in September, has more than 17 million views.
“It’s a fascinating thing that’s part of our daily life,” said Leslie Kirchhoff, the founder of Disco Cubes, a 4-year-old custom ice company in Los Angeles. “And you can make it as exciting or as normal as you want.”
For Kirchhoff, ice presented itself as an untapped market for creativity. “Baby me had always wanted to be an inventor,” she said, “and that came rushing back when I realized nobody was doing anything cool with ice.” Under the Disco Cubes banner, she creates custom ice for brandsponsored events and private parties.
After learning English’s method for making clear ice, Kirchhoff developed her own way of suspending objects — mostly flowers, produce and die-cut logos — in ice, a “pretty intense” procedure, she said, that “takes three very specifically timed steps over three days.” She closely guards her process, and charges a steep price: “The lowest we’ll go for floral spheres is $8 per sphere,” she said. For a suspended logo or a pricier flower, the tab starts at $14.
Americans have been commodifying ice for centuries.
“America has the oldest ice industry in the world,” said Jonathan Rees, a professor of history at Colorado State UniversityPueblo who has published three books about the development of American refrigeration. The nation’s ice industry was begun in 1806 by Frederic Tudor, who “deliberately cultivated a market for ice — he would give it away to bars, then get people hooked on it, and sell it.”
By 1860, Rees said, Americans had developed a taste for ice year-round. Before the advent of freezers, ice was cut from ponds and lakes in colder regions and shipped to warmer climates, as far as Hawaii. By 1875, the ice man was a ubiquitous figure, going door-to-door to fill the iceboxes in “every house, from the richest to the poorest,” he said. Electric household refrigeration was perfected in 1925, and the advent of ice cube trays quickly followed.
Today the same technology is still in use, but ice making is evolving.
Many ice lovers, rather than buying dozens of molds or learning timeintensive techniques, are simply investing in more sophisticated appliances. In 2019, the South Korean electronics giant LG released a fridge equipped with a freezer that dispenses what the company calls Craft Ice, including cubed ice, crushed ice and clear spherical ice balls — allowing consumers to entertain, as the ads put it, “like a baller.”
Rees, the historian, thinks there’s something distinctly American about splurging on ice. “We’re willing to spend on something that’s essentially free — that’s a sign that we value it.”
THE SHAPE OF THINGS
These are boom times for specialty ice. Here’s how to use each shape.
In homes and bars and on social media, ice is no longer a square-cut, predictable bit player. Today there are dozens of molds and machines that can create a different style of ice for every occasion. Here’s a quick look at the most popular shapes and the best ways to use them.
› Ice sticks: These thin sticks are great for plopping into insulated water bottles with narrow openings, thus their nickname: water-bottle ice. The molds come both uncovered and covered (to prevent spills) and range from steak fry-size to hot dog-size. Freeze cucumbers or lemon rinds in them to spruce up your hydration.
› Ice cubes: These are not like the cubes created by your standard freezer tray. They’re much larger, roughly the size of ring boxes, and can be made in silicone molds. You can use these cubes — which are slower to melt — for all kinds of drinks, to suspend pieces of fruit, herbs or citrus rinds, or to freeze coffee and smoothies.
› Ice balls: These small, marble-size bits — which sit somewhere between crushed ice and pebble (or nugget) ice — can be made in molds, without a pricey refrigerator. Use them to rapidly cool down drinks or make cocktails like cobblers and juleps.
› Ice spheres: First popularized in high-end cocktail bars, large ice spheres are great for keeping a drink cold, especially those of the alcoholic variety, without watering them down too quickly. With the rise of silicone molds, these larger ices now come in interesting shapes like roses and bulldogs.
› Ice shapes: As with ice spheres, there are now hundreds of unique ice molds for sale online that go beyond the simple cube: butterflies, cactuses, skulls, stars, hexagons and more. Use these molds for your next themed gathering, holiday party or just because it makes you happy.