Halloween is coming, which means it’s time to start doing all sorts of weird stuff to our food again. Cue gelatin that looks like earthworms, cupcakes decorated like spiders, and meatloaf formed into appetizing little brains.

This is terrible news for me.

First off, I’ve never been super artsy. Secondly, sometimes I get scared that we emphasize the way a food looks over the way it tastes.

But what if we had a way to make some really interesting food without having to bend over backwards to make it look festive? Even better, what if we could inject some “cool” into our food not just to make it look neat, but to actually give it some really, really cool properties?

Enter dry ice.

What is dry ice?

Dry ice is basically carbon dioxide (CO₂, you know, the stuff you exhale) in solid form. It’s just a block of ice, but it’s not made of water. With that being said, it’s totally non-toxic (but that doesn’t mean it can’t be dangerous).

Unlike regular ice, dry ice doesn’t melt into a liquid. Instead, it goes straight from solid to gas in a process called sublimation. This makes it extra fun for some kitchen applications:

• Drinks and foods with fancy fog effects
• Rapid, mess-free food chilling
• Carbonated ice cream

The key detail here? It’s cold. Really, really cold. At about -109°F (-78.5°C), dry ice is a big frosty chunk of frozen gas that’ll burn your skin faster than you can say "bad idea." That’s why you have to be at least 18 years old to buy the stuff and you should never sling it around like you’re having a snowball fight.

Safety considerations

Physical contact: Dry ice is minus 109 degrees Fahrenheit (-78°C for your metric dreams), so touching it is a one-way ticket to frostbite. Always wear thick gloves or use tongs. It’s not a "fun ice cube" for your hands to play with.

Pressure buildup: Dry ice sublimates (turns directly from solid to gas), and if you trap that gas in a sealed container? Well, congrats, you’ve made yourself a little bomb. Explosions aren’t part of the recipe, so use containers that vent or avoid sealing entirely.

Poor ventilation: I don’t really see this becoming a safety issue for people here, but for professionalism’s sake I should mention the ventilation thing. If you're working with a lot of dry ice in an enclosed space, it will fill the air with CO₂, and you could end up asphyxiating. Granted, in order for that to become a concern in my kitchen, I would need to keep my house unventilated and then drop 50 pounds worth of dry ice along the countertop. I’ve never worked with more than a few pounds of the stuff at a time, but hey, if you’re entertaining your mad scientist fantasies, please just exercise due caution and turn on some ventilation.

Keep away from children: The last thing is children aren’t generally aware of these safety considerations. Dry ice makes some really cool effects like smoke and fog, so a curious and enterprising little lad might get bonked by the good idea fairy and try to grab a hunk of dry ice in his fist. Don’t let that happen. Keep any and all dry ice out of the reach of children. It won’t kill them, but it’ll cause a reaction similar to letting them headbutt a hot stove—lots of crying and a probable trip to the ER.

Okay, I’ll be safe. But how do I have fun with it?

There are a lot of things you can do with dry ice. It’s a favorite among some caterers because it keeps food cold without leaving a big puddle. Restaurants that specialize in molecular gastronomy (or ripping off tourists) also love to use them for different eye candy or neat food effects. However, for our purposes I suggest we look at the three simplest applications:

Fog Effects: Get a pot (or cauldron, or hollowed out animal skull cause, you know, it’s Halloween) and fill it with water. Drop in a brick of dry ice. It’ll start fogging up more than the set of Michael Jackson’s Thriller. Congrats, you’re a wizard. This isn’t much of a food application, but it can create a fun ambiance for all sorts of parties (not just Halloween), and it’s a good preliminary step for the next culinary adventure.

Carbonated Drinks: Okay, take that same pot from the paragraph above, but this time instead of filling it with water, add sugar, licorice root, ginger, clove, vanilla extract, and star anise. Or just some root beer extract. Whatever. Maybe for simplicity’s sake, use a big water jug instead of a pot, but keep the lid off. Congrats! Now you’ve got a smoking cauldron of… what is this? Carbonated beverage! Look up a recipe for any of your favorite sodas, and you’ll certainly find a dry ice version of it. It’s always a hit at a Halloween party.

Fizzy Ice Cream: Dry ice can make some really neat ice cream for two reasons. First, like I said, it’s incredibly cold. Quick fact about ice: Ice is composed of a bunch of tiny, crystallized water molecules. The faster the ice freezes, the smaller those ice crystals. When it comes to ice cream, you want those crystals to be as small as possible.

So a reminder about dry ice: it is extremely cold. It’ll freeze cream and dairy super quickly, so if used right, it makes for some pretty darn creamy ice cream.

So why don’t you have ice cream made from dry ice more often…?

Because it’s totally weird.

The second thing that makes dry ice cool for ice cream is it makes your ice cream fizzy—almost like it’s carbonated! Remember how I said it sublimates or it turns straight into a gas instead of melting? Well that gas gets trapped in your cream while you mix, locking carbon into it the same it carbonizes root beer.

Have you ever eaten carbonated ice cream? Would you like to?

Here’s a weird recipe idea…

• Get some dry ice.
• Put on some heavy, protective gloves and an apron.
• Put it in a bag.
• Smash it with a mallet.
• Get some cream and whatever mix-ins you want (I recommend lemon juice or raspberries).
• Pour in your pulverized dry ice.
• Stir stir stir!
• Stir some more!

By the time that cream has frozen into ice cream, it’ll be a fizzy, delicious treat. This stuff doesn’t store incredibly well—eventually that carbonation will disappear.

I plan on making plenty of ice cream over Halloween. Let me know how your adventures go!