The Best Ice Cream Scoop

To determine the must-haves (and must-avoids) for home scooping, we’ve interviewed a number of enthusiast ice cream bloggers over the years. For some pro opinions on how scoops stacked up after hours of high-volume use, we once worked with three ice cream stores in San Francisco to get their expert opinions.

Updates writer Abigail Bailey, who conducted our 2024 testing, is a member of Wirecutter’s kitchen team and previously worked at Good Housekeeping. Senior staff writer Lesley Stockton scooped a fair amount of ice cream in her time as a restaurant line cook, dishing up 50 orders of bananas Foster each night. This guide also builds on research and testing by writer Tim Barribeau.

The basics of a good ice cream scoop are pretty simple. We looked for a sharp edge for cutting through the ice cream, a nice round bowl for scooping it out well (and so the ice cream slides easily out), and a comfortable handle.

We avoided a few things:

Gimmicky designs: Ice cream scoops often suffer from the affliction of being overdesigned. You can find ones that are coated with Teflon, ones that are electrically heated, ones that remove a perfect cylinder core of ice cream, and others that are made out of nearly every possible combination of materials and shapes on the planet. But it turns out the most straightforward models seem to be doing everything right.

Finicky mechanisms: Complex mechanical designs do little to help you scoop ice cream. While a portion scoop (also called a disher), with its moving pusher, may be great for evenly dividing up cookie dough or muffin batter, the mechanical parts jam and stick when dealing with hard, frozen ice cream. A well-designed scoop should be able to release ice cream cleanly without the help of any mechanical gewgaws.

Unwieldy sizes: We looked at ice cream spades and paddles, but since they are better suited for cutting into large vats of ice cream, we opted not to test them. Even though they have the advantage of being able to cut through large amounts of hard frozen ice cream—thanks to a design that employs a lot more leverage—they’re not as practical for home use as a scoop.

But if you want a larger scoop that gives you some extra leverage, consider the Midnight Scoop from Midnight Kitchen Tools, which has an ergonomic design that allows you to push through ice cream.

Our tests

In some of our early tests for this guide, we brought our contenders to a few ice cream shops in San Francisco to scoop our way through large quantities of ice cream and get some input from the pros.

But because scooping out of an immense tub at an ice cream parlor is a bit different from carving out a pint of Ben & Jerry’s, we’ve since tested all our scoops on containers of store-bought ice cream.

We started by scooping smooth ice cream from 1.5-quart containers to see how easy it was to pull a smooth scoop when given an ample runway. Then we tried scooping ice cream with lots of chunks from pint containers to see how easily the scoops maneuvered around hard pieces and tight spaces.

We tested how efficiently the scoops cut into the ice cream, how well the tools released their frozen cargo, the roundness of the resulting ice cream spheres, and ease of cleaning.

We also asked a group of paid testers—which included people with joint pain or dexterity limitations, a wheelchair user, and people over the age of 65—to try out our finalists. Overall, in 2024 alone, we scooped our way through over $300 of ice cream, about 26 containers in all.

There’s no better tool for digging into frozen treats than the Zeroll 1020 Original Ice Cream Scoop. Its large, smooth handle is easy to hold, even without a silicone grip. It makes beautifully formed spheres of ice cream, and thanks to a heat-conducting fluid inside the scoop that slightly warms the (also very conductive) aluminum, it cuts into and releases ice cream more efficiently than any of the competition.

This tool has stood the test of time; it has remained essentially unchanged for more than 75 years and is considered an icon of modern design, even sitting in the Museum of Modern Art’s permanent collection.

It’s comfortable to use. The Zeroll scoop has a relatively fat handle, which is round, smooth, and simple to grip. Although it doesn’t have a cushy rubberized grip like some other scoops we tested, the actual scoop cuts into hard ice cream easily enough that you don’t have to bear down so much on the handle.

It’s also lightweight compared with many of the hefty stainless steel scoops we tested, which can make it less tiring to use.

It makes perfect little spheres of ice cream. When you scrape the ice cream with the front beak of the scoop’s rounded bowl, the ice cream curls onto itself, creating perfect balls for ice cream cones, brownie toppings, and sundaes. While it required some work and finesse to get a nice ball of ice cream with most other scoops we tested, the Zeroll scoop can form a beautiful portion in just one or two strokes.

And those perfectly rounded portions of ice cream release cleanly and easily from the scoop. Thanks to the aluminum body (which is a better heat conductor than steel), the heat-conducting fluid core, and hollow design, the scoop slightly melts the ice cream just enough for an easy dismount into your bowl. In comparison, solid stainless steel models needed at least a gentle shake to release the ice cream.

It’s widely loved by pros. The Zeroll scoop is one of the most famed and widely lauded ice cream scoops ever crafted. If it’s any indication of just how popular this scoop is, all three ice cream parlors that we talked to in our testing had already opted to use these scoops in a professional environment. The ice cream shop employees complimented it, saying it’s easy to grip, effortless to use, and lightweight, and they said it makes good-looking, consistently sized scoops.

It comes in several sizes. At the base of Zeroll scoops, different-colored caps denote size. The classic Zeroll scoop comes in six sizes: brown for 4 ounces, blue for 3 ounces, green for 2.5 ounces, gold for 2 ounces, silver for 1.5 ounces, and red for 1 ounce. For our testing purposes, we used the 2-ounce scoop.

How the Zeroll 1020 Original Ice Cream Scoop has held up

The Zeroll scoop is covered by a one-year warranty, and as long as you wash this scoop by hand, you can expect it to last decades. Apparently scoops from the 1940s are still in use. And after years of using the Zeroll scoop at home, we are still impressed with the quality and the build.

Marilyn Ong, supervising editor of our kitchen coverage, had one for more than 12 years before a neighbor accidentally put it in the dishwasher. Her family replaced the scoop, and she says they don’t expect to have to replace it again anytime soon. Their neighbors, meanwhile, bought one of their own because they loved it so much.

That said, if your scoop dates from before 2012 or has become oxidized or corroded, we recommend replacing it.

Flaws but not dealbreakers

The Zeroll scoop isn’t dishwasher-safe. The manufacturer warns against dish-washing and exposing the scoop to temperatures over 140 °F. The bare aluminum will oxidize or corrode in the dishwasher, a common complaint among the Amazon reviews.

More concerningly, a handful of people have reported to the US Consumer Product Safety Commission that the cap on the end of the handle flew off unexpectedly (a similar Zeroll-made scoop was recalled for safety in 2011). We reached out to Zeroll for comment, but we did not receive an answer in time for publication.

To be extra safe, and to keep your Zeroll scoop looking like new for as long as possible, always wash it by hand under warm, not hot, water.

The aluminum discolors easily. Even if you hand-wash your scoop, the aluminum can discolor. There’s no harm in a bit of patina, but if that will bother you, try to wash and dry your scoop right away. The Zeroll scoop that lives in our test kitchen has a ring in the bowl where water sat in it for too long.

If you prioritize being able to throw your ice cream scoop into the dishwasher and don’t mind sacrificing some efficiency while scooping, the OXO Good Grips Stainless Steel Ice Cream Scoop is the best choice.

While the OXO scoop doesn’t make as picture-perfect scoops as the Zeroll model, it produced round-ish balls of ice cream without too much effort. We did occasionally have to tap the scoop on the edge of a bowl to get the ice cream to release—the stainless steel gets very cold, and your hand won’t transfer heat through the rubber handle like it will through the hollow aluminum Zeroll scoop.

It cuts through ice cream better than most. The edges of the scoop’s bowl are thinner than that of some of the other scoops we tested, like the Sumo Ice Cream Scoop, so the OXO scoop could cut into the ice cream even without a pointed tip. In comparison, while the Sumo scoop’s tip was pointier, which some testers appreciated, the thicker metal gets stuck halfway through pushing down.

The rubbery handle is comfortable. Our testers liked the feel of the grip in their hands. Though this scoop is about twice as heavy as the Zeroll scoop, we liked the heft. It feels balanced in the hand, and you can use the weight of the scoop to help you push through the ice cream.

It’s dishwasher-safe. Best of all, you can throw the OXO scoop straight into the dishwasher. The Zeroll scoop isn’t all that hard to wash by hand, but we do understand the appeal of not having to worry about that. Sometimes you just gotta be done for the day, and doing even a single dish is too much of an ask.

This scoop is also covered by OXO’s lifetime guarantee.

Admittedly, the Midnight Kitchen Tools Midnight Scoop is not going to get you a clean ball to rest atop your ice cream cones. It’s kind of clunky and sometimes hard to maneuver in a smaller pint-size container of ice cream. But it has a bulbous, easy-to-grip handle and an ergonomic design that allows you to scoop by pushing forward through the ice cream rather than pulling or twisting it towards you.

It’s easy to hold. The large handle fits comfortably in your palm without requiring you to grip too tightly. Our paid testers with limited dexterity, grip strength, or mobility (including a quadriplegic wheelchair user and folks with neuropathy or joint pain) found the Midnight Scoop easier to hold than the Zeroll scoop, and in some cases, less painful to use.

This scoop is the heaviest of our picks, at around 12 ounces, but it’s well balanced. So much so that some testers remarked that it felt lighter than our pick from OXO.

It scoops big chunks of ice cream with less effort. While again, you won’t get neat spheres, the Midnight Scoop did dig up large hunks of ice cream, and the pointed tips on the front and sides of the scoop allowed us to really dig down into the container.

You’re meant to push the scoop forward into the ice cream (like a plow pushing through a field) to pop out your treat. But it also works in reverse, pulling the scoop toward you. Either way, using the Midnight Scoop feels like you’re putting in less effort to get ice cream out of the tub; you’re relying on the weight of your body and the leverage of the scoop instead of your arm and wrist strength. While the Zeroll and OXO scoops are easy to use as well, you’re relying more on your own strength and finesse to get a scoop.

This scoop isn’t going to win you any ice cream beauty contests. But for some people, it could be a game changer. One of our paid testers with carpal tunnel syndrome commented that she doesn’t buy cartons of ice cream because it’s too difficult to scoop and causes her too much wrist pain. If she had the Midnight Scoop, she said, she’d start buying cartons again.

It’s durable and dishwasher-safe. The all-stainless steel scoop won’t rust or discolor and is covered by a lifetime guarantee.

We liked the Sumo Ice Cream Scoop (and its clone, the Balci Ice Cream Scoop) well enough, but we just couldn’t ever get a nice round scoop with it. The closest we managed was “almost approaching quenelle territory” as one tester put it. Some testers liked how the pointy tip could dig into the ice cream, but the edges of the bowl are so thick that it was ultimately less effective than the sharper edges of the OXO Stainless Steel Ice Cream Scoop. And once, when scooping homemade ice cream out of a deli container, we stabbed right through the brittle plastic with that pointed tip.

We tested an older version of the Zyliss Right Scoop Ice Cream Scoop, and its weighted handle and ability to curve perfectly around a pint container earned it some fans. But it was widely critiqued for making overly large scoops, for shoveling rather than rolling, and for sticking to ice cream. Amazon reviews also complained that the metal’s coating comes off after just a year or two of use, which seems to be a continued problem in the newer version.

The Rösle ice cream scoop was not a favorite with our testers. The three ice cream shops were unanimous in saying the Rösle scoop was by far the worst of the four testers in our original review. It was awkward and unpleasant to use with hard ice cream, the handle is too short, and ice cream sticks to it.

The OXO Good Grips Classic Swipe Ice Cream Scoop has a lever that is supposed to help pop the ice cream out. Instead, ice cream gets everywhere inside its mechanical works. One Amazon reviewer called the button-activated lever “useless.”

The Cuisipro Scoop and Stack is an overly complex contraption that, by many accounts, barely works. The ice cream has to be in a very specific state of frozenness for this one to be functional.

The Tovolo Tilt Up Ice Cream Scoop looks almost exactly like the Zyliss scoop we tested and dismissed. It suffers from a really deep bowl that doesn’t release ice cream easily, and owners make the same complaints about the metal pitting and flaking.

The square-shaped Gorilla Grip Ice Cream Scoop was equally confounding and annoying to use. It was difficult to get a round scoop of ice cream. Instead, the ice cream kept coming away in oddly flat sheets, like we were just scraping off a thin layer instead of attempting a scoop.

The OXO Good Grips Classic Ice Cream Scoop looks deceptively like our runner-up pick, but instead of the neck and head being all stainless steel, this one has a plastic covering. It made nice enough scoops, but the ice cream was almost impossible to remove from the scoop. Even after banging the scoop on the side of the bowl, it wouldn’t let go, and we ended up prying it out with our fingers or a separate spoon. Plus, the seam on the back of the scoop where the plastic meets the metal is just begging to get all icky when ice cream inevitably gets stuck in it.

Katie Okamoto contributed reporting. This article was edited by Marguerite Preston and Marilyn Ong.