ottawa foodies

This has been a favourite of ours for quite a while. The comments are priceless. I need to put a link to this on my website for reasons not to use ice in favour of DrinkPucks. Making ice cubes is hard.

www.food.com

There is an art to making clear ice . . . :-) really.

Oh, for sure there is. One of the gimmicky silicone ice cube thingies I've seen online has an insulated tall cube that seems to work. The insulation on it forces it to freeze from the top down and that pushes the impurities or bubbles or whatever down as it freezes. The top half or so is clear and you just chip the unwanted bottom part off and use that for chipped/shaved ice.

So they say.

Some of the comments are priceless! I wasted a good amount of time reading some of them!

Francis, when are you going to share the art of making clear ice? Enquiring minds want to know. ;-)

To echo organicgirl, I'm curious too! Francis, please do tell?

Kevin Liu seems to know his ice:

drinks.seriouseats.com

"...the clearest ice is ice that freezes slowly and without supercooling—that is, ice that forms right at 0°C"

He offers three methods to accomplish this.

Nice. I know if I fill a thermos with water in a put it in the freezer it freezes slowly and clear (uncapped of course).

Try putting it in a hot air popper.

Ryzak, if I use your hot air popper method to make clear ice, do I need to plug in the popper before I put it into the freezer?
;-)

Check yo self... to make an Ice Cube with character, it must come from Compton.

Tupperware + insulating wrap = clear ice

You can make a large ice lens by freezing clear ice in two concave bowls and putting the two halves together. It focuses enough light for starting fires, on a clear day.

www.primitiveways.com

Oh cool I want to try that at Cubs winter camp this year!

Make a big one and you can probably melt metal. I think you can even vaporize a diamond (not that you'd want to) with a large lens.