3 Fast Food Chains Serving Real Ice Cream

When you think of fast food ice cream, do you picture a swirled McDonald's cone or Dairy Queen Blizzard? Believe it or not, neither of those are actually ice cream. Both McDonald's and Dairy Queen, along with a slew of other fast food restaurants, use the term soft serve when referring to its frozen desserts. That's because the USDA and FDA have rules in place for what can and can't be called ice cream.

So which fast food chains have frozen desserts they can legally call ice cream? From In-N-Out's simple three-flavor milkshake lineup to Carl's Jr.'s hand-scooped shakes to Braum's farm-fresh ice cream scoops and sundaes, each of these three chains bring a different approach to its ice cream offerings.

True ice cream must contain at least 20% milk solids and no less than 10% milk fat, according to the USDA. For instance, McDonald's soft serve is labeled as reduced-fat ice cream on its website, meaning it contains one-quarter the fat of real ice cream, obviously disqualifying it as real ice cream (via International Dairy Foods Association). Likewise, while custard has become a popular fast food dessert option and qualifies as real ice cream (due to similarly high milk solids and milkfat percentages), custard is in its own category thanks to the higher percentage of egg yolks added to make it so creamy.

While In-N-Out Burger is known for its delicious, never frozen burgers, its milkshakes also deserve high marks. Rather than using a soft-serve-style mix like so many other fast food places, In-N-Out's shakes qualify as real ice cream because it uses a 10% butterfat ice cream mix from Rockview Farms in Downey, California, as seen in photos and videos on Reddit and TikTok. As In-N-Out has its roots in Southern California, some local residents may recognize the dairy's name from their school lunch or local theme park milk cartons.

Interestingly, the classic In-N-Out milkshake treat wasn't on the original menu – that was added in 1975. According to the company's website, a few restaurants already offered malts but would hand-mix shakes right in the cup upon request. Apparently, the original malt cups were pretty flimsy though, "requiring associates to have plenty of skill at avoiding ripping those cups during preparation."

As with many of its offerings, In-N-Out's milkshakes remain largely the same since their introduction. There are three basic flavors: vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry. Alternatively, you can order a black and white shake (chocolate and vanilla) or a Neapolitan shake (chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry) off In-N-Out's secret menu. Based on the ingredient lists, though, it looks like all In-N-Out shakes start as vanilla, with either chocolate or strawberry syrups added for the other flavors.

Known as a fast food restaurant that still cooks burgers on a grill and featuring a Happy Star mascot (that hilariously has its own LinkedIn page), Carl's Jr. also offers shakes made with real ice cream. What sets its milkshakes apart from other brands is the ice cream is hand-scooped and mixed with real milk. Eight ounces of ice cream is used for each shake, and they're sometimes hand-scooped into cups ahead of time and placed in the freezer to save on time, according to an employee on TikTok.

Having ice cream on the menu is a relatively new addition to Carl's Jr.'s 85-year history. The brand famously debuted the desserts in the 2000s with a series of wacky commercials showing a man shaking a cow (milk shake, get it?). Around 2013, they even added ice cream sandwiches, according to Dairy Foods Magazine, although those are no longer a part of the regular menu.

Today, Carl's Jr. keeps things relatively classic with its ice cream menu offering vanilla, chocolate, strawberry, and cookies & cream shakes. For those who want something a little more adventurous, there's also the triple berry shake, which combines blackberry, strawberry, and raspberry flavors. Whichever option you try, the hand-scooped element of its shakes is a definite selling point.

Perhaps the realest of the real ice cream served at fast food places comes from Braum's, a Midwest chain with over 300 locations across Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Texas. Braum's is unique in that it raises its own A2 dairy cows on nearby farms in Texas or Oklahoma. With the largest A2 dairy herd in the country (that took the company 12 years to build), Braum's sets itself apart from other fast food chains. Regular milk contains both A1 and A2 proteins, but Braum's ice cream is made exclusively from A2 milk, which is said to cause less digestive discomfort in people sensitive to dairy (via Foods). With Braum's unique processing system that takes out some of milk's natural water, the result is a richer, more nutrient-dense ice cream. And because the restaurant chain sources its own A2 dairy, all of its locations are within 330 miles of its processing plant in Oklahoma to maintain fresh delivery.

With Braum's, you're not limited to just fast food milkshakes, either. The Midwestern chain also offers ice cream cones, sundaes, and banana splits made with its A2 ice cream. Best of all, many of its flavors are "premium" ice cream, meaning less air is created in processing (also known as overrun), and there's more fat content and higher quality ingredients (via IDFA). With more than 120 flavors, rotated every one to two months at each location, Braum's is truly in a league of its own when it comes to fast food ice cream.