If you want a machine that will churn out batch after batch without your having to pre-freeze a bowl, the Whynter ICM-201SB is the best compressor machine you can get. But if you want denser ice cream, you may prefer one of our other picks. Making your own ice cream can be magical, fun, and, often, more satisfying than swiping pints from the frosty towers in your grocery store freezer section. With your own machine, you can also customize desserts if you want to experiment with unique flavor combinations or adapt recipes to work for your dietary needs.
The cuisinart clermont pellet grill & smoker cover Ice-21does not use ice or salt. It has a gel-filled freezer bowl that must be frozen prior to use. If you mess up and you only have one freezer bowl, you’ll have to wait a full day until the gel freezes in the bowl again to try a new batch . If you’re like me though…and if you should do something very wrong, as I did and I explain below, it makes such a mess that I really doubt you’ll ever forget how to do it right in the future. We’ve tried the chocolate ice cream recipe that came with the product.
So it’s even more important to check the warranty and after sales service with these ice cream makers. Firstly, they’re far more compact than other ice cream makers. So they’re much more suitable for small kitchens and much easier to store away. But since this guide is aimed specifically at ice cream makers for everyday kitchen use, I’m not going to include them any further in this article. In my tests, the ice cream quality was no better than the ICE-21.
Each model was used to make both vanilla ice cream and peach sorbet using 52 pounds of peaches, 52 pounds of sugar and 15 quarts of both heavy cream and half and half. After prepping the recipe, I pulled the first bowl from the freezer, dropped it onto the machine, and secured the lid. The mixture will need to be completely ready to go ahead of time as your bowl will immediately begin to thaw when it comes out of the freezer. Turn the machine on before gently pouring the ice-cream mixture through the mouth of the machine.
The clear lid locks onto the machine and features a large spout making it easy to add chocolate chips, nuts, fruit, caramel or any other sweet idea you come up with. Four rubber feet under the motor base prevent the machine from shifting while it’s running. The ICM-201SB has a cuisinart clermont cover shallow, lightweight metal bowl that you can easily remove from the machine for cleaning. It has a thin handle, as on a pail, that flopped down when we scraped out ice cream, which made it slightly more annoying to wrangle compared with the simple bowl of the Cuisinart ICE-21.