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Whether rainbow-striped or pickle-topped, an ode to the icy refuge of Texas’s essential hot-weather treat
It is, famously, hot in Texas. But you really can’t understand exactly how hot it is until it’s the dead of August, and the temperature has exceeded 100 degrees for 100 days in a row. It is a brutal, withering heat — one we can only expect to get worse. It keeps the luckiest of us indoors, parked directly in front of an air conditioner that can never quite seem to keep up, for weeks at a time. But when we do leave our dark, comparatively cooler dens, going in search of icy refuge in a fluffy, sugary snow cone is a must.
In both rural and urban areas across the state, tiny shacks and trailers slinging towering cups of syrup-drenched shaved ice dot the landscape. Perhaps your town is home to a beloved local purveyor, like Lubbock-born chain Bahama Buck’s, which has been serving up snow cones since its first location opened in the college town in 1990, or a mom-and-pop shop staffed almost entirely by local teenagers. When the summer heat is at its most brutal, lines wrap around all of these establishments — sweaty children and adults alike, looking for some brief moment of reprieve. In these moments, ice cream feels far too heavy; only frozen sugar water will do.
Shaved ice is prominent in many cuisines, from milky Korean bingsu to New Orleans’s beloved sno-balls. There really isn’t a consistent definition of a “Texas snow cone,” though, at least in terms of texture — but the lack of purism here means that variety is what defines the Texas cone. There are artisanal shops, like the now-shuttered Ruby’s Sno-Balls in Dallas, whose improbably light sno-balls covered in lavender-and-vanilla and Earl Grey infused syrups sustained me through many summers. I have equal respect for my hometown snow cone stand, which I believe was simply called the Snow Cone Stand, and its rainbow-striped cups of ice in classic flavor combos like Tiger’s Blood (watermelon, strawberry, coconut). Some shops offer scoops of Blue Bell ice cream, another homegrown Texas summer classic, at the bottom of the cup, or give patrons the option to garnish their cones with a layer of sweetened condensed milk or marshmallow fluff. Some keep it exceedingly plain, serving up waxed paper cones of ice akin to the ones sold at little-league concession stands. All versions have their pleasures.
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A customer makes a snow cone during a 2021 heatwave in Houston.
But the most satisfying to me is a uniquely Texas creation: the pickle snow cone. It sounds absurd, yes, but when it’s 100 degrees outside there’s nothing better than a slightly salty, exceedingly tangy cup of dill-pickle-flavored ice. Most shops use straight-up pickle juice, while others thicken it with a little sugar to delay the ice’s melt. I prefer the former, a straight shot of crunchy, briny, goodness.
My very favorites can be found at Latine-owned snack shops like Chamoy Locos in Oak Cliff, where I can pair elotes or a paper tray of hot Cheetos doused in nacho cheese with a mango raspa covered in chamoy and soft chunks of fresh mango. I also occasionally indulge in a “pickledilly” raspa, which takes the pickle snow cone to its most decadent conclusion, adding chunks of pickle and tons of Tajin. Sometimes, the pickles are soaked in Kool-Aid, making “Koolickles,” because there’s no such thing as too much sugar in the context of a snow cone: Shops will dice those soaked pickles atop a cone for textural contrast and puckery punch.
Though seasonal depression is most commonly associated with the wintertime, it’s also a very real thing for a lot of folks who live through seriously hot summers: I’m one of those people who’s cranky and miserable from July to September. It’s possible that my obsession with pickle snow cones is simply my body craving electrolytes after I’ve managed to sweat every drop of moisture from my cells walking from the car into the grocery store. But when I’ve got a snow cone, and I’m blasting my face with air conditioning while listening to Beyonce in my car, I feel like I can probably survive through to the end of the summer — or at least, until my next icy fix.
