The One Non-Dairy Ice Cream Even Non-Vegans Will Love — Plus, 7 More Vegan Ice Creams to Try

We were really impressed and surprised by how good this vanilla is, and by what an on-the-nose dupe it is for vanilla ice cream in general. The texture is definitely a touch less creamy than a standard dairy version, but the flavor was exactly what you want from vanilla, whether to eat on its own or to accompany a slice of pie. But for a vegan ice cream with no bells and whistles to hide behind, it tastes as vanilla ice cream should.

Though none of the plain chocolates we tested delivered on an ideal, deep chocolatey flavor you would normally crave in ice cream, this one was the most chocolate-forward and overall very rich. The oat milk base flavor comes through a bit, but the oatiness does not overpower the chocolate flavor, which we liked. Our tester would even compare this flavor to more of a brownie than plain chocolate, as it's not only rich in chocolate but also buttery and fudgey.

Confession: This taster long ago wrote off Ben & Jerry’s as just too sweet. So imagine the surprise to find this non-dairy version of their popular Phish Food to be absolute heaven. The flavor was named for the band, Phish, and is an oat milk-based chocolate ice cream with marshmallow and caramel swirls and chunks of “fudge fish." And said fish are super huge and super chocolatey, while the ice cream itself is also deeply cocoa-y! So, overall, a fantastic chocolate experience. Maybe the best thing about Ben & Jerry’s Non-Dairy options, though, is that they’re mid-priced and very easy to find — we’ve even seen them at the gas station.

A bite of this is simply astonishing, a creamy base with crumbles of shortbread and swirls of bright-tart lemon curd that tastes like it was made for you a la minute in a high-end restaurant. (Let’s appreciate for a moment that lemon curd typically includes butter and egg; Jeni’s has ingeniously come up with an all-coconut version that tastes better than many jarred curds, an achievement in itself). Despite having tasted ice creams all afternoon, this tester kept finding her spoon going back for more. Interestingly, Jeni’s doesn’t make a dairy version of this at all; but even without that knowledge, our tester had already decided that this will be in her freezer from now on. Though this, like the other non-dairy Jeni’s, is made with a coconut cream base, the coconut flavor isn’t as prominent here; it behaves like a carrier for the vanilla-y crumbles of the shortbread.

Unlike the other Oatlys, there is zero trace of that oat milk flavor coming through here — and in the case of mint chip, it’s the right call. This tastes exactly like what you want from mint chip, and its slight iciness that comes with many oat milk-based ice creams works in its favor, heightening the refreshing quality of the mint. The chocolate chips are neither large nor small, a minty Goldilocks situation.

Ben & Jerry’s having already conquered this flavor in a dairy version, understood their own assignment here. How can it be cheesecake if it doesn’t have any milk? You may ask — and the answer is right there in its name: cheezecake. And yet, one bite of this tastes, quite seriously, like strawberry cheesecake. It’s surprising how much strawberry flavor and texture come through, since the magenta hunks are not that big, but you even get the seeds occasionally that bring fresh strawberries. And the cheesecake — pardon — cheezecake, is all there too, with that tang of cream cheese filling and a bit of crunch and salty-sweet graham of crust. Just delicious.

It can hardly be called a classic flavor, but sticky bun ice cream is definitely onto something. Though the label mentions pastry mix-ins, you don’t detect chunks, but rather, the flavor of sticky bun permeates all the cream. The pecans, too, are really special, large and toasty and so fresh and crunchy, fresher than what you sometimes find in the baking aisle. What a good bowlful.

Though the caramel here tastes a bit artificial, this ice cream is so satisfying to eat. With perhaps the densest distribution of mix-ins of all the ice creams sampled, there are so many huge chocolatey chunks to chew on in every bite, and it adds up to some wonderful spoonfuls. The caramel, though yes, a little fakey, is also butterscotchy and offset with some salt, so though this is VERY sweet, you might find yourself dipping that spoon in again and again.