Simple Trick to Making Ice Last Longer in Your Cooler
There is nothing like heat and humidity to make you really appreciate the attributes of an ice-cold beverage. Here in Louisiana, we know about heat and humidity and we know how they tend to adversely affect the temperature of our favorite beverages. But alas, there is a secret weapon that you can employ to make the ice in your cooler stay frozen longer.
Many of you are aware that the best way to keep drinks cold in an ice chest is to pre-cool the chest you're going to use. You can do that by putting some ice in the cooler several minutes before you place your food or drinks. You can also store that ice chest in a shady cool place too. Both of those are wonderful ideas but we're really focused on keeping the ice around longer.
If there is an enemy of ice it is the heat from the sun. You probably learned that lesson from the holiday special The Year Without a Santa Claus. Aw, come on. You remember Heat Miser and Snow Miser right?
Since we don't have Christmas magic to help us keep that ice frozen we are going to have to take a different tack. According to those who know, that different tact is already in your kitchen and you've been using it for years to keep hot food hot, but now we'll use it to keep ice cold.
The substance in question is aluminium foil. Yeah, the same stuff you wrap around your baked potatoes for the oven can help keep your Rocky Tops ice cold with blue mountains included.
The process is really pretty simple. Just line the inside of your cooler with aluminium foil. Make sure you cover the sides, the bottom, and the lid. Add your ice and your beverages and you'll be amazed at how long the ice stays frozen and your beverages stay cold.
The aluminium foil acts as a heat barrier against the outside temperature. It also works with your cooler insulation to keep those temperatures colder longer. If you really want your ice to last a long time, don't use the small bits of crushed ice, use larger blocks. Of course, you'll sacrifice some storage space if you do that.
The only other suggestion we can offer is to keep the cooler out of direct sunlight. Granted that can be difficult to do you can still accomplish it by burying your ice chest in the sand at the beach. Seriously, that takes a little bit of effort but you'll have frost on your bottles in Gulf Shores if you give that a try this summer.
And since you have all that "cool" ready to drink you're going to need something "hot" to make you thirsty. We suggest these and not just because of the heat, there's a lot of flavor in every one of these.
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Gallery Credit: Jude Walker