Salt & Straw's Newest Ice Cream Brings Huckleberry To The Masses

It's incredibly common to find blueberries, raspberries, strawberries, or blackberries in summer berry dessert recipes, but not so common for another type of berry, the huckleberry, to be featured in sweet treats. That is about to change, however, with Salt & Straw's July 2024 menu, "The Berry Series," which features one flavor that puts huckleberry front and center. And it's actually quite fitting for Salt & Straw to make huckleberry the star of the show for one of its flavors. 

The ice cream company got its start in Portland, Oregon, before expanding elsewhere, and huckleberries grow in the Pacific Northwest (including throughout Oregon) — so it's truly a match made in heaven. As for the flavor of huckleberry, the taste can range from sweet to tart depending on the type of huckleberry — red huckleberries tend to be quite tart, while the blue, purple, and black varieties are usually much sweeter. Huckleberries are sometimes described as tasting like a mix between a blueberry and a cranberry (fittingly, since huckleberries are related to both) — but the huckleberry still stands on its own against the blueberry. 

Further, huckleberries are typically in season from July to September, so Salt & Straw chose the perfect time to highlight the lesser known berry. In a press release shared with Tasting Table, Salt & Straw revealed that the new flavor, Huckleberry Cornbread Pudding, is made with purple mountain huckleberries, which are combined with "ribbons of dense, homemade buttermilk cornbread." In other words, you can expect plenty of sweetness thanks to the use of purple huckleberries.

Huckleberry Cornbread Pudding is not the only berry-centric ice cream flavor you can expect from Salt & Straw this July. According to the press release, the other featured flavors in "The Berry Series" include Birthday Cake & Blackberries, Wild-Foraged Berry Slab Pie, Goat Cheese Marionberry Habanero, and one vegan flavor, GoNanas Banana Bread with Strawberry Jam.

The Birthday Cake & Blackberries flavor consists of a double-vanilla ice cream base with "sweet hunks of rainbow-sprinkled crumble, folded with a ribbon of Oregon Hill evergreen blackberry jam." Meanwhile, the Wild-Foraged Berry Slab Pie is inspired by the classic combination of a slice of berry pie with a scoop of ice cream — it's vanilla ice cream with berry filling and pieces of crispy, double-baked pie crust. And the Goat Cheese Marionberry Habanero flavor combines sweet and spicy — it consists of a "tangy goat cheese ice cream with fruity, fiery marionberry-habanero jam."

Finally, there's the GoNanas Banana Bread with Strawberry Jam ice cream, which Salt & Straw fans may remember from last year's "Berries Berries Berries" series, except this year there's one key difference: It's vegan now. For this flavor, salted caramel banana bread from GoNanas — a women-owned and founded startup that features vegan and allergen-friendly baking mixes — is mixed into caramel coconut cream alongside swirls of strawberry jam. All in all, you have a few delicious berry flavors to choose from — after you discover the joys of huckleberries with the Huckleberry Cornbread Pudding, of course.