Its been making me wonder for a while

Eventually it does, it's just that ice cream is sitting around in a cup or a bowl, the heat from the surrounding temperature melts the ice cream.

While in fried ice cream, the fried batter acts as somewhat of an insulator, and keeps it from melting so quickly. If you leave out fried ice cream for an hour or so, it'll melt and if you take a spoon to it, the melted ice cream flows out.

Same thing happens if you put a scoop of ice cream into a styrofoam cup, then fold the styrofoam cup all around the ice cream.

Hi all...

I'm pretty sure the ice cream doesn't melt because they take the ice cream, roll it in a ball and then wrap it in plastic wrap and freeze it in ice bucket until absolutely rock hard. Then they batter and flash fry in high heat oil in which, as stated by ISF, the batter acts as an insulator and only allows the outer layers of ice cream to melt.

Some restaurants are even using liquid nitrogen to prepare this dish.

When freshly prepared the ice cream is still hard at center but melty soft under the batter shell! A little chocolate drizzle and whip cream and I'm all set here... YUMMY!

Good night all!

MARK

Yeah its flash frozen like solid super frozen first and only fried for a short amount of time. And they do use liquid nitrogen.

You know I wondered the same thing...

I have only had it once and I didn't really like it. Maybe I will try it again somewhere else.

Yes, it really comes down to flash cooking the batter in very hot oil. When done fast enough, the ice cream inside remains cold.