I Tried TikTok’s Frozen Sour Strips Hack – And It Didn’t Exactly Deliver
Maybe you’ll have better luck.
Amy Reiter
I love a TikTok food hack. I like sour candy. And I enjoy experimenting with new things. So it wasn’t a big stretch for me to try the TikTok trend in which people are putting sour candy strips into the freezer and then eating them. The idea is that the slim, colorful, sugar-covered strips of sour candy harden in the freezer and then you can bite into them with a satisfying crack: kind of a sweet-and-sour ASMR thing. Lots of TikTokers are trying it, so I figured I’d join them and see what happens.
@yeshipolitoo Omg these are addictive! I love food textures so I’ll be eating my stour strips like this from now on!! #frozensourstrips #sourstripsfreezer #sourstrips #sourbelts #froZensourbelts #sour #frozencandy #sourstraps ♬ original sound - Yesenia Hipolito
I tried the trend with two different kinds of sour-candy strips: Haribo Sour Streamers, which come in solid orange, green, red and blue, and Airhead Extremes, which are rainbow colored. (Both kinds are popular among those who’ve tried the hack on TikTok.)
Next, I tossed them in the freezer and pulled them out about six hours later. They were still soft, so I put them back in, covered them in ice cubes and let them freeze overnight. Twenty-four hours after I first put them into the freezer, the Airhead strips (some of which I had looped into pretty folded ribbons, because some TikTokers do that) were still super soft. A total bust.
Amy Reiter
The Haribo Sour Streamers offered a hint of what I was going for, but I wouldn’t call the experiment a raging success. The ends of the strips could be snapped into bits in a somewhat gratifying way, but the rest of the strips remained stubbornly pliable. And to get a crack as I bit into them, I had to hurry to eat them within seconds or they would go limp and stretchy again.
TikTokers who tried another Sour Strip brand seemed to have better luck with the crunchy crumple factor. But I’m with this TikToker, who said they felt like they “did something wrong.”
Or this one who said, with obvious irritation, “These are not crunchy. Why aren’t they crunchy? Is my freezer not cold enough? … I don’t know what’s going on.”
One commenter suggested she’d left the strips out too long. (Suggested consumption time: within seven seconds!)
Another insisted that it would have worked out if she’d left them in the freezer longer. (Suggested freezing time: 48 hours. I tried that — made no real difference.)
In the end, in my experience, this TikTok trend (unlike, say, that delicious Fruit Roll Up and Ice Cream hack, which is a keeper) was pretty disappointing. Feel free to try it out yourself and see if you get different results, though. Worst case scenario, you get to eat a lot of sour strips.
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