Blue Bell Ice Cream's Most Popular Flavor Might Surprise You

When it comes to ice cream, everyone seems to have their own favorite flavor. There are so many flavors and flavor combinations to choose from, it can be hard to pick just one. From cookies and cream and moose tracks to mint chocolate chip and fudge swirl, there's an ice cream spin to meet everyone's preferences. But the most popular flavor of Blue Bell ice cream might surprise you.

Blue Bell has come up with some wild flavors. They even claim to have invented one of the most beloved flavors out there — cookies and cream — though their competitors challenge them on that. Blue Bell even created a dill pickle flavor of ice cream. To no one's surprise, it wasn't exactly a winning flavor and it didn't take off (via Houston History Magazine). It certainly does not make the cut as Blue Bell's most popular flavor. Instead, the most popular flavor is homemade vanilla ice cream.

It all started in the 1960s when Howard Kruse wanted to develop a flavor that would replicate the flavor of homemade hand-cranked vanilla ice cream on a larger scale for Blue Bell. Naturally, the hand-cranked flavor couldn't actually be cranked by real people, so it was a difficult task to recreate the same flavor and texture. "Ice cream is the most difficult frozen food to work with," Howard Kruse explained. If you don't clearly watch the temperature, he said, the taste can suffer (via Chron). Kruse must have done something right to create the deliciously smooth and creamy vanilla flavor that he did.

It took Kruse an astounding two years to develop before he requested that the homemade vanilla flavor be tested. Blue Bell began producing the flavor in 1969 and it was an immediate best-seller flying off of the shelves of grocery store freezers. Even today on the Blue Bell website, they continue to claim homemade vanilla to be their most popular ice cream.

So, rethink the classic flavor and give this one a try the next time you are buying ice cream.