Do you want to make soft and crunchy ice chips like Hospital at your home? Hospitals are using ice chips during labor and other surgeries to relieve pain. When you undergo invasive surgery, hospital personnel will give ice chips to crack on to prepare you for the surgery. They are also recommended if you have mouth sores or oral mucositis.
Ice chips, unlike ice cubes, are easy to chew or munch and it provides instant relief from any pain or tensions you are having. It is one of the good things when you think about the hospital. They carry and stock these ice chips to help many patients to have successful surgeries.
The main thing to discuss here is you may crave these ice chips while you’re at home – either to munch leisurely or to relieve from any pain or vomiting sensation. So, in this blog, we’ll see how you can make ice chips at home like they do in the hospital.
What are ice chips?
Before going further, let’s discuss what exactly these chips are and how they appear.
Ice chips resemble normal chips and have flat and translucent surfaces. They are irregular in shape and often have pointed edges. Easy to hold and chewable in small bites, ice chips have become everyone’s favorite household items to store and use.
You can also use flavored ice chips instead of normal ice cubes. You can put them in your favorite cold drink and keep a stock in your fridge so that you can eat them whenever you feel like it. If you have kids who have frequent vomiting sensation, then you can give them chips to suck on to get relief from the sensation.
How to make ice chips like hospital?
Now, let’s discuss the main topic – how to make them like they do in the hospital.
Making ice chips is easy and quick. Whether you want to make them urgently like in the middle of the night or store them beforehand – ice chips have an easy process.
Things you require:
- A flat aluminum tray
- A container to store
- A freezer
The time required to make ice chips
- You need 30 – 40 minutes, provided they are made -2 degrees F
Steps to make ice chips at home
- Pour drinking water on the tray and fill it to a thickness of the chips you want. Depending on the width you want, you can pour water either to the brim or half of the tray height.
- Now, carefully put the tray into the freezer and wait for about half an hour.
- After waiting, take out the tray and twist it to break the ice into a small number of chips
- Collect these chips into a container and store them in your fridge to use whenever you want.
- If you need them urgently, wait for some time and let the chips melt a bit. Now you can suck or chew on them without having any inconvenience.
Tips to make ice chips like hospital
Almost all of you may feel that even after you followed the right instructions to make ice chips, they are not exactly like you had them in hospital. It can be too hard or too cold for you, making you dislike them in an instant. So, here are a few tips that you can follow.
- The taste of the chips is related to the hardness they achieve in the freezer.
- Once the ice freezes in the tray, allow it to cool down further till it reaches ambient temperature i.e., between 0 and 10 degrees.
- Once it melts a little, ice chips become chewier allowing you to have that happy feeling like you do having the hospital ice chips
- Also, you need to take care of the storage. Hospitals keep the storage drawer at 30 degrees so that ice chips are in a delicious state.
- So, next time you are preparing the ice chips, make sure you are maintaining the right temperature.
Benefits of Ice Chips
Why go to such lengths to prepare ice chips when you can have ice cubes instead? If you’re thinking the same question, then you need to know the following points about ice chips.
1Easy to chew and munch
Ice chips are soft and crunchy to chew and they add nothing to your body except a good amount of water. Unlike junk food like chips and sauces, these are a better way to quench your appetite.
Also, with ice cubes, it might be difficult to chew as they are not handy. They slip through your fingers not allowing you to enjoy. It’s this reason why hospitals prefer giving chipped ice to patients than cubes.
2Freeze quicker
Ice chips are quick to make as a thin layer of water freezes quicker than blocks of water poured in trays. Normally, to get ice cubes, you need 3-4 hours, whereas ice chips are formed in just 40 minutes.
This characteristic is helpful when you have kids in the middle of the night suffering from vomiting sensation. You can quickly prepare the chips and give them to your kids to save them from the awful sensation.
3Occupy less space
Ice chips occupy less space. Whether you’re storing them in a container or while freezing them in a flat tray – you don’t feel chips cramming your refrigerator. It is beneficial to the people who have a medium or small-sized fridge. They can utilise these techniques to make their fridge space-friendly.
4Provide instant relief and joy
With ice cubes, it’s difficult to take a bite out of them. You only have to chomp on them which is not that enjoyable. However, with ice chips, you can bite the crunchy surface and enjoy that sound, all the while relieving yourself from any unpleasant sensations.
5Use them in cocktails
You can use ice chips as a replacement to cubes in drinks like cocktails, cool beverages, etc. They not only cool the drink but you can also bite on them while drinking the liquid.
Prepare Ice Chips Now
If you are not getting up to prepare ice chips, then it’s time to do it now. Enjoy soft, crunchy ice chips any time you want after you store them in the freezer in a container. Whether to get relief from any unpleasant sensations or to simply enjoy the crunchy chips – ice chips are perfect to snack on leisurely.
