What kind of containers for homemade ice cream?

If you want something really sturdy, glass is a good option. I recently bought a glass container for homemade ice creams, and it works well. But you have to choose the right container.

• temperature tolerance. Some glasses can spring in the freezer. Buy a container which is marked as freezer-safe.
• closing. Buy a container which has a tightly-closing lid. You want to minimize smell contamination, freezer burn, and the chance that a non-tight lid will slip when you are getting something else from the fridge and let some other packet fall in the exposed ice cream.
• corners. The nice thing about glass containers is that they tend to have rounded inner corners, making scooping easier than from plastic.

The glass container will have a higher temperature capacity than your regular tupperware container. This means that if you fill freshly-churned ice cream into room-temperature glass, the outermost layer will melt before you have finished filling it. You should pre-chill the container. To avoid heat shocks, I put the empty container in the fridge together with the just-made ice cream base, and when the base is chilled and goes into the churner, the empty container goes into the freezer.

The upside is that, when you take out the container to scoop and serve the ice cream, the glass will keep cold for a longer time than a thin plastic container, or also than a metal one (because metal conducts heat better). Also, this type of tempered container is usually heat-proof too, so, when not in use for ice cream, you can bake casseroles in it.

This is the container I got. I chose the rectangular type, because it stacks better. The 1.3 liter size fits well for one ice cream recipe (about 800 ml base).