Every Milkshake On Shake Shack's Menu, Ranked Worst To Best

At Chowhound, we've covered a number of Shake Shack-related stories, including how many states have a Shake Shack and how its burgers rank against one another. We've also explored why Shake Shack is a solid choice for gluten-free diners. These are, of course, all important questions ... but is anything as important as milkshakes? While I'm open to dissenting points of view, I'm going to go ahead and say no, because milkshakes are everything.

Now, we're not a terribly adventurous family. Late adopters in general, we hadn't even been to Shake Shack until last year, where we chose pretty vanilla flavors — in some cases, literally. As such, we'd tasted the classic trifecta of chocolate, strawberry, and the aforementioned vanilla, but nothing more. We knew we had to see what the full menu was all about. Without further ado, the husband, small girl, small boy, and I raced off to our nearest Shake Shack to sample every milkshake on offer. Here are the results.

There are a few ways Shake Shack's milkshakes are different. For one thing, they're hand-spun, which means they're mixed to order rather than getting pumped out of a machine from a mix. For another, the frozen custard from which Shake Shack produces shakes is made from cage-free eggs and real sugar rather than lower-quality replacement ingredients (which is part of why its food is so expensive as well). Together, this means its milkshakes are super thick and creamy.

That said, this particular flavor was kind of meh. It had all the creaminess of the others, but it was definitely too sweet, with an odd fake banana aftertaste. The closest thing we could compare it to is banana Runts, but in milkshake form. Add to that the weird cookie bits that only made it harder to suck through a straw, and it was a no for us. However, the whipped cream was good — because whipped cream is always good.

Again, the Campfire S'mores Shake was kind of hard to suck through a straw because of the chunks. Now, we like a thick milkshake, but when you straight up can't get anything at all because a cookie blob has blocked the bottom of your straw and created a cheek-hurting vacuum, well, that's not the goal.

The flavor purports to be a s'more stuffed into milkshake form, with the website showing colorful sprinkles, chocolate-marshmallow fudge chunks, and Graham cracker bits strewn across the top of the whipped cream. This is not an accurate portrayal of this milkshake, which didn't have colorful sprinkles at all that we could see. As for the shake itself, it mostly just tasted like chocolate, yet not as good as the actual Chocolate Shake. If you're a cocoa lover, steer clear of this one and go for one of the actual fudge-forward flavors.

It was when we tasted the Black and White Shake that our faith in the system started to slip a bit. Shake Shack describes this item as "Chocolate fudge sauce hand spun with our house-made vanilla frozen custard," but we had two problems with that. First, that basically just means it's a vanilla-chocolate shake, of which there is already an option (see No. 7). Second, the official Vanilla and Chocolate Shake was straightforwardly better in flavor, probably because it wasn't a weird mix of fudge sauce in a vanilla milkshake. You can't swirl up a sundae and expect it to taste like an actual sundae, was our conclusion.

It is at this point that we should clarify our underlying assumption, which is that all milkshakes are good, and we are just comparing apples to apples. Some apples are going to win; some are going to lose ... but they're all apples. All of which is to say that if someone walked up to me on a hot day and handed me this milkshake, I would give them a resounding thank you and a giant hug. So keep this in mind as you're making your decision. With that disclaimer out of the way, though, you're better off choosing the Vanilla and Chocolate Shake or the plain Chocolate Shake if those are your fave flavors.

If you're looking at the pictures and starting to think, "Gosh, these milkshakes all look a lot alike," then you can be forgiven, because they really do. Head to their website, and you will see that a lot of effort has been taken to make them seem like 10 separate members of one big, happy milkshake family, but in reality, they're more or less three flavors spun out in different ways ... and the photos reflect that.

As far as the Vanilla and Chocolate Shake, it tastes exactly like what it is: a combination of chocolate and vanilla. Now, that's not a bad thing, given how tasty these shakes are. But if you're comparing apples to apples, as discussed above, then you need some differentiation. This one didn't have it. Our family didn't dislike this flavor, we just felt it was extraneous. There's chocolate; there's vanilla; and for those who truly can't decide, there's the Black and White Shake. What need is there for this one, too? None. Pick a lane.

You know those scenes on "The Great British Baking Show" where Paul Hollywood takes a bite of something, squinches up his face, thinks really hard, and then says something like, "Yeah, I'm just not getting [flavor that was promised in the bake]"? That is how this milkshake felt to every single member of the family. Again, as the immortal Mr. Hollywood has said with any number of baking fails: The strawberry's just not coming through. And it wasn't, people. It wasn't.

Our question was, why make the milkshake, then? One assumes that whoever does the main thinking in the Shake Shack hierarchy was like, "Hey, we can make a whole 'nother menu item if we just instruct our workers to mix half-and-half chocolate and strawberry. Let's do it!" Boom: idea rubber-stamped. The problem is, some flavors are more dominant than others, and the chocolate completely swamped the strawberry, even worse than in the case of the Vanilla and Chocolate Shake. Perhaps if Shake Shack had more carefully balanced the two flavors, giving a bit more prominence to the strawberry to give it a chance, this might have worked better. Once again, please just pick a lane, because driving on the lines is straight-up dangerous. (Okay, it's not in this case. But you get what I mean.)

We all love a chocolate milkshake, so we had high expectations for Shake Shack's Chocolate Shake. For the most part, we were not disappointed. It had such a rich, thick texture and flavor that it almost tasted like a malt, though you certainly couldn't miss that chocolate flavor, which was the dominant one in the mix. The only downside was that it wasn't really much different from most of the other chocolate ones in flavor, including the Campfire S'mores Shake, Black and White Shake, Vanilla and Chocolate Shake, and even the Chocolate and Strawberry Shake (though the latter at least had a hint of fruit in it). Still, it was darn good, and it does deliver on its promise of being a regular chocolate shake.

It is also worth noting that these milkshakes stay pretty thick and creamy in the freezer due to their extremely high fat content, so it wouldn't be the worst thing to tuck away and eat later when you're experiencing a craving. If you want to remix your shake, I cannot recommend the Ninja CREAMi Deluxe Ice Cream & Frozen Treat Maker more highly. It blends up totally frozen mixtures into super smooth, buttery, and convincing ice cream, unlike a lot of other home ice cream makers I've tried, which rely on finishing the freezing process after mixing, which leaves water unblended and therefore tends to develop ice crystals. Not so with the CREAMi, which remixes milkshakes into either ice cream or shakes with aplomb.

The Chocolate Fudge Shake was a straight-up, no-holds-barred "yum" in everybody's book. If you like the darkest of dark chocolates, then this is about as close as it gets in a milkshake. It actually did taste like fudge, or like someone poured a whole thing of Hershey's syrup into one milkshake ... then just kept pouring. Trust me when I say that this one went fast and was on everybody's list of double-dipping once the taste test proper was over.

One note, however, is that this milkshake was not listed on the online menu when we looked ahead of time. Even when we put in our zip code and pulled up the exact location we were going to, the menu wasn't entirely accurate. Point being, make sure you explore the menu once you get there so you don't miss anything. There are two ways to do this at most Shake Shacks: ordering at the counter or using the little monitors near the door. We've found both to be quite reliable.

Now here is a real winner. There were absolutely no complaints about the Cookies and Cream Shake from a single member of the family. It was basically like an Oreo milkshake, except the cookie bits were small enough that they didn't clog any straws or stick in any throats. The crumbly, crackly texture of the chocolate sandwich cookies didn't get lost, though; it was the perfect mixture of cream and crunchy, like an Oreo Blizzard from Dairy Queen, but that much better due to the frozen custard.

This flavor came in No. 1 for the small boy, who insisted on drinking the whole thing as soon as the taste test was finished. "It's 850 calories of heaven," was his report. Did he have a stomachache later? Yes, of course, he did. Would he do it again? He says he would, so there you have it. I also loved the Cookies and Cream shake, the small girl was a fan, and it came in No. 2 for the husband. If you want to move beyond the vanilla-chocolate-strawberry trifecta, this is the way to go.

Let me just make it clear from the outset that I am not a vanilla girl. Chocolate is everything to me. Everything. I can honestly say that not a day goes by that I don't consume it in some form, even if it's just a handful of chocolate chips. (LOL, as if it's only one handful.) So, given the chance to glug down a whole bunch of chocolate shakes, you best believe I took on the challenge with gusto. Therefore, the fact that this humble vanilla milkshake was my favorite of the lot — with no less than seven choices containing chocolate in some form — is really saying something.

It is, quite simply, amazing for what it is. The closest thing we could compare it to is a McDonald's ice cream cone, but in milkshake form. If you like McDonald's ice cream cones as much as we do, this is also saying something. Overall, it ranked high on everyone's list, coming in second for the small boy and small girl, first for me, and third for the hubs. On a final note, this is a great milkshake flavor in which to dip your French fries.

Again, and I can't say this enough, Shake Shack has the best-tasting product in town — likely due to the fact that it manages to cram 700 calories into 16 ounces. This may sound like a criticism, but it's likely reflective of Shake Shack using actual egg yolks in its frozen custard, which are then hand-spun to order. Yum.

This was the No. 1 flavor for both the small girl and the husband, and it was high on the small boy's and my list as well. It tasted refreshingly like actual strawberries, with a thick custardy backing. It was just the right amount of thickness, sweetness, fruitiness, and coldness, and I could seriously drink this milkshake for the rest of my life and be happy — and me being a chocolate girl at that. It deserves its top spot, and if you haven't tried it yet, well, you obviously should!

Tasting 10 kinds of milkshakes is hardly burdensome, but you do want to get it right. We took as unbiased an approach as we could when tasting. First rule: No one was allowed more than a sip or two of each milkshake, so that we didn't fill up on the first several and love them, then hate every second of the final three. (We stuck to this rule pretty faithfully, considering there were two hungry children who'd just gone rock-climbing.) 

Second rule: We tried to vary the product flavors, so we weren't getting back-to-back chocolate, as that was the dominant ingredient profile in most of these shakes. Third rule: We took comprehensive notes on each tasting as we went, so that we wouldn't forget and our memories would be fresh for ranking.

Once we had our opinions down, we tasted and re-tasted as necessary to create this ranking. We used factors such as flavor, add-ins, and creaminess. The last one ended up being a pointless determinant, as they were all creamy as heck. As for price, the shakes cost either $5.99 or $6.49, depending on whether they were regular flavors (like Chocolate, Strawberry, or Vanilla) or specialty ones (like Banana Pudding or Campfire S'mores). Given such a small price difference, we didn't bother to use that in our ranking.