Pacojet Competitor? The Ninja Creami

[Dave_E]

Just wondering  if anyone has tried to use this in the same way as a Pacojet? 
 

finally grabbed on of these as I wanted to do a dish for Christmas from the Alinea cookbook.  
 

first impressions are amazing. Food prep is super important.  So, in my first week I have made the following;

 1.  No sugar vanilla ice cream ( why don’t  commercial ones taste this good)

2.  Smoked salmon, crab and prawn pâté

3. three sorbet’s (pineapple, papaya, mango).  All amazing and made a spiced rum sauce to drizzle.

4. pumpkin purée. This is to accompany a dish. Sous vide pumpkin and garlic.

5.  Coconut mousse for a dish.

 

I have prepped some olive oil to try and make a butter. (Only 16 more hours until that is ready). 
 

so far I am loving this unit. I am sure there will some failures and I may need to grab another blade as a back up. 
 

Christmas lunch will include 4 to 5 elements using the Ninja Creami and only one of those is dessert

 

 

Edited December 22, 2022 by Dave_E
Typo and replaced picture (log)

[ElsieD]

@Dave_E. Impressive!

[blue_dolphin]

Welcome to eGullet, @Dave_E!  Cute avatar!

 

3 hours ago, Dave_E said:

Just wondering  if anyone has tried to use this in the same way as a Pacojet? 

 

I think a few of us have posted about using recipes written for a Pacojet.  I made the silky smooth chicken liver paté from the Modernist Pantry blog and posted about it over here in the Paté and Terrine cook-off topic.  It was very luxurious!

[Dave_E]

4 hours ago, blue_dolphin said:

Welcome to eGullet, @Dave_E!  Cute avatar!

 

 

I think a few of us have posted about using recipes written for a Pacojet.  I made the silky smooth chicken liver paté from the Modernist Pantry blog and posted about it over here in the Paté and Terrine cook-off topic.  It was very luxurious!

Thanks @blue_dolphin. He is my 19 YO food demanding cat. super fussy like me

 

That Paté looks divine and will have to give it  a go.  I know that Ninja has marketed the Creami for the sweet tooth (which is definitely me), but it is great to see it used for other stuff.

[Dave_E]

Merry Christmas to everyone. Been a fun day in the kitchen with the Creami.

Worked out the single point of failure is the outer lid.  Now have a new one on order.  

 

Today's dishes are the back up from the last post. 

 

1. Smoked salmon, prawn, crab dip (ninja creami)

2. Oysters and Spanish  onionn mingnonette

3.Tuna and Ocean Trout Sashimi 

4. Scallops with puree garlic pumpkin ( sous vide then ninja cream) and pancetta panko crumb

5 Lobster, parsnip, and young coconut (ninja creami)

6. Chocolate Mousse with lite vanilla ice cream ( ninja creami)

[Smithy]

5 hours ago, Dave_E said:

Merry Christmas to everyone. Been a fun day in the kitchen with the Creami.

Worked out the single point of failure is the outer lid.  Now have a new one on order.  

 

 

What lovely and inspirational photos, and great ways to use the Creami! Thank you for those!

 

Now, please explain what you mean about the outer lid being the single point of failure. First: do you mean the black locking lid that holds the pint in the processing jar, or the grey lid that snaps onto the pint for storage? Second: what happened? (You didn't, er, drill a hole through one of those plastic lids, did you? 😉) 

 

You make me wish I had my Creami handy so I could try some of these recipes. No room in my current location.

[Dave_E]

6 hours ago, Smithy said:

 

What lovely and inspirational photos, and great ways to use the Creami! Thank you for those!

 

Now, please explain what you mean about the outer lid being the single point of failure. First: do you mean the black locking lid that holds the pint in the processing jar, or the grey lid that snaps onto the pint for storage? Second: what happened? (You didn't, er, drill a hole through one of those plastic lids, did you? 😉) 

 

You make me wish I had my Creami handy so I could try some of these recipes. No room in my current location.

 Thanks  for the comment. I always wanted to a Pacojet for some recipes I have so I had to grab the Creami when I saw it come up.

 

The single point of failure issue was me being clumsy and dropping the outer bowl lid (the main one) after I did the first spin on the ice cream. The result was it broke two bits off. The only issue is the bit included the locating lug that tells the Creami that the bowl is installed.  Luckily the ice cream was pretty good on the first spin, but wasn’t as creamy as I would have liked. 
 

I have now glued it together and hoping it works until the replacement arrives as I have some serious prep to do for New Year’s Eve in the ice cream department. 

[sverreef]

Unfortunately, I haven't had the time to experiment much with the Creami this fall/winter, but besides a few more batches of the Modernist Cuisine sour rhubarb sorbet, I made a cloudberry sorbet for Christmas Eve, which turned out great.

 

 

Recipe is a mix between the MC sour rhubarb sorbet and a cloudberry sauce/coulis I've made for years:

350g deseeded cloudberries (sous vide pasteurized @ 57 degrees C)

46,1g glucose powder DE42

11,6g sugar

115g Müller-Catoir Herzog Rieslaner Auslese (reduced from 230g)

Salt 1,5g

Citric acid 1,93g

Apple cider vinegar 3,5g

 

The complex flavour notes of fresh/raw cloudberries came out wonderfully. Even my sister liked it a lot, and she's not a big fan of cloudberries. Texture was good too, but I'll try to add a gram or two of locust bean gum next time I make it. Due to availability, I'll also try to switch glucose powder for liquid glucuse, and I can probably reduce the amount of the somewhat expensive dessert wine without affecting the flavour profile too much.

 

 

This week, I tried the Creme Fraiche ice cream (sherbet?) recipe Chefsteps released a few weeks ago:

https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/creme-fraiche-ice-cream

 

I replaced water in the recipe with elderflower extract though, to make a play on a blue cheese, pickled elderflower, cream and honey dessert I got at restaurant Kontrast in Oslo back in 2019:

 

  

 

Should have added more pickled elderflowers as garnish and grated a bit more frozen blue cheese on top of the caramelized white chocolate, but this was absolutely amazing. The recipe was also quick and easy to follow, so I think I've found the base recipe I'll use for a lot of my future Ninja Creami experiments 

 

I put a little bit of the mixture in a separate beaker to test spin the recipe, so I can't say for sure, but if you use 150 grams of creme fraiche to adjust the recipe on CS, you should come pretty close to the max fill line in one creami beaker. I used the sorbet setting with one respin by the way.

[sverreef]

New version of the CS Creme Fraiche ice cream, this one flavoured with spruce tips:

 

Not quite as good as the one I made last week with elderflower extract, but still very, very good. I'l definitely pick more spruce tips this year. Flavour pairing with raspberries and dark chocolate (55%) soil was also great, but my second serving with caramelized white chocolate instead of dark chocolate, worked even better. Scooping and plating was a bit rushed, since I'm not used to serve ice cream as a desert, but it's fun to try something new. The creami and this base recipe is already proving to be a game changer for me  

 

Spruce tip juice was made by blending 150 grams of frozen spruce tips with 150 grams of water and passing the resulting puree though a fine mesh sieve. Next time I'll try to juice the spruce tips in my slow juicer instead. 2 grams of citric acid was also added to the base recipe to adjust the flavour.

 

Both the raspberries and the spruce tips were picked less than 20 meters from my parents' porch by the way  

[sverreef]

Spun an extra virgin olive oil version today. In order to keep the total fat percentage close to the original base recipe (using commercially available creme fraiche 35% and whole milk 3.5% here in Norway), I opted for a low fat creme fraiche (10% fat), and replaced only 45 grams of the water with evoo.

 

 

This was another resounding success for the CS recipe, which worked great as a vehicle for the fruity arbequina evoo I used, with just a small hint of pepper in the aftertaste.

 

It was a mistake to pair it with caramelized white chocolate however. I went with the white chocolate because I was afraid that dark chocolate would overpowered the subtle and delicate flavours of the evoo, but I couldn't be more wrong. The bitterness from the dark chocolate on my second portion complimented and highlighted the best parts of the olive oil perfectly.

[Mars]

On 1/23/2023 at 9:50 AM, sverreef said:

Spun an extra virgin olive oil version today. In order to keep the total fat percentage close to the original base recipe (using commercially available creme fraiche 35% and whole milk 3.5% here in Norway), I opted for a low fat creme fraiche (10% fat), and replaced only 45 grams of the water with evoo.

 

 

This was another resounding success for the CS recipe, which worked great as a vehicle for the fruity arbequina evoo I used, with just a small hint of pepper in the aftertaste.

 

It was a mistake to pair it with caramelized white chocolate however. I went with the white chocolate because I was afraid that dark chocolate would overpowered the subtle and delicate flavours of the evoo, but I couldn't be more wrong. The bitterness from the dark chocolate on my second portion complimented and highlighted the best parts of the olive oil perfectly.

I've had recent success with an EVOO gelato as well. I can send you the recipe if you'd like to compare?

[sverreef]

@Mars, that would be much appreciated 🙂

[andrewk512]

I haven't done much interesting lately except this past week I did a pressure cooked hibiscus sorbet I am very happy with

 

Pressure Cooked Hibiscus Sorbet

• 25g dried hibiscus
• 450g water
• 150g sucrose
• 40g atomized glucose
• 22g inulin
• 2g sorbet stabilizer
• Pinch of salt

The hibiscus and water are pressure cooked for 15 mins on high (I did it in a bowl set on a rack in the cooker). Everything then blended together for 60 seconds on max in the vita mix, strain, freeze, and process. There is a lot of air bubbles which didn't create a nice appearance so I ran it a few times through the vacuum sealer. Super intense hibiscus flavor with very smooth texture in the end.

 

I want to translate the technique to other dried ingredients. When I am back at home I am thinking a pressure cooked black lime sorbet will be the next idea.

 

I was showing someone how to make ice cream today on their Cuisinart Ice-30. Even when using a good recipe and technique the difference in the ice crystal size in what I am used to in the Ninja Creami and the product from the Ice-30 was night and day. I am not sure how the Creami compares to a compressor machine but this comparison really reaffirms my love for the Creami. However, it does highlight an issue with the creami and that is the air gaps it introduces. The ninja sort of whips a vortex through the center of the pint and then my quenelles often have little air gaps in them. I am thinking maybe moving the ice cream to a different pint and pressing it down to get all the air out for using might be my next move.

 

Last month I took the creami to a friend's restaurant and we used it to process the sorbet course. While it was only a seating of 16 people, things worked quite well and I convinced him to buy one afterwards. 2 pints was plenty for 16 quenelles. He was also previously using an Ice-30

 

 

Edited February 18, 2023 by andrewk512 (log)

[sverreef]

This week's Creami project was Modernist Pantry's dairy free pistachio gelato

 

https://blog.modernistpantry.com/recipes/dairy-free-pistachio-gelato/

 

My first homemade gelato, and also the first time I've tried the gelato program on the Creami.

 

 

Served with crystallized dark chocolate crumb ans some store bought preserved cherries. The gelato was great! Perfectly smooth and a wonderful pistachio flavour. For those interested, I used Saracino pistachio paste. Unfortunately, the cherries didn't taste much, so this summer I'll have to try to vacuum ferment some cherries from the trees which have popped up like weeds in my garden...

 

Also tried a portion with roasted white chocolate and dried apricots:

 

 

This time I also recorded the pre and post spin temperatures. Should have documented it with pictures too, but forgot about that untill the last respin:

 

Pre spin: -20.7°C

After 1 gelato cycle: -12.2°C

After 1 respin: -8.7°C (probably ok at this stage, but it still looked a bit granular

Afrer second respin: -6.6°C

 

 

This is the first time I've seen something close to the flat surface the Pacojet seems to create, so I'll definitely try a second respin with other recipes as well. As you can see in the first picture, there are some tiny air bubbles incorporated however. This was the first scoop, made without doing anything to the mixture other than a few minutes rest in the freezer to lower/stabilize the temperature a bit.

 

On 2/18/2023 at 6:33 AM, andrewk512 said:

However, it does highlight an issue with the creami and that is the air gaps it introduces. The ninja sort of whips a vortex through the center of the pint and then my quenelles often have little air gaps in them. I am thinking maybe moving the ice cream to a different pint and pressing it down to get all the air out for using might be my next move.

 

As I've mentioned before, this is my main gripe with the Creami so far. For a hobby cook/amateur like myself, it's not really a problem if the quenelles are a bit inconsistent (they usually are anyway 😋), but I'm curious to know if it's caused by insufficient blade speed, different post spin temperature, if it's over pressure related, or if Ninja has messed up the blade design or spin cycle parameters?

 

I've thought about moving it to a different pint too, but I've been worried about incorporating some of the unprocessed ice crystals around the edges, and it's also somewhat inconvenient to always have empty pre chilled beakers taking up freezer real estate 🤔

Edited February 25, 2023 by sverreef (log)

[andrewk512]

@sverreef your photos are convincing me now on the double spin technique, very smooth

 

Re: quenelles, I believe the difference in this matter is that the Pacojet actually runs with a vacuum so no air is introduced. Ninja does not, and as you mention, other issue is the tolerance with the walls leaving walls icy. The price we pay for saving thousands of dollars 😛

Edited February 27, 2023 by andrewk512 (log)

[blue_dolphin]

On 2/25/2023 at 2:05 PM, sverreef said:

I've thought about moving it to a different pint too, but I've been worried about incorporating some of the unprocessed ice crystals around the edges, and it's also somewhat inconvenient to always have empty pre chilled beakers taking up freezer real estate 🤔

 

I've had good luck with scraping the sides and bottom with a firm spatula to incorporate any unspun mix then using a spoon to compact and level the contents in between spins.  The ridiculously priced Blendtec spectacula works exceptionally well. I didn't buy the spatula for this purpose, it was included with a ridiculously priced blender jar. 

[sverreef]

Another week, and another wacky ice cream flavour experiment...

 

Rutabaga (swede) is one of my favourite vegetables, so naturally, I had to try it in the Creami 😀

 

Rutabaga three ways:

 

 

CS creme fraiche base flavoured with lightly pan roasted rutabaga, pickled rutabaga and a "fruit glass" made of rutabaga juice.

 

I liked it a lot, and once the rutabaga is back in season, I'll definitely make more and test different ways to add the rutabaga flavour. The texture/consistency was absolutely perfect. That could be a result of the rutabaga in the mix, controlled sous vide hydration of LBG or the addition of 1 drop of Polysorbate 80 as an additional emulsifier...

 

If anyone wants to try this, or something similar with turnips, dark chocolate crumbs was a better pairing than caramelized white chocolate in my opinion.

 

[Kerry Beal]

Modernist Pantry looks at the growed up iCreami - here. Watch with the CC on for extra amusement. I'm picturing Janie drinking on the duck. 

[palo]

3 hours ago, Kerry Beal said:

Modernist Pantry looks at the growed up iCreami - here. Watch with the CC on for extra amusement. I'm picturing Janie drinking on the duck. 

Duck vs dock - tiny feet and good balance 😀

 

I didn't know there was an upgrade - if I was starting over again, I would go for the new version (depending on $CDN price), but as I already have one I would stick with the original - larger size containers, more functions and a more substantial build seem to be worth the additional cost

 

p

[Chris Birkett]

Has anyone ended up getting a Pacojet after trying the Creami? I recently ordered a Creami, and I'm amazed at how quickly it became a daily part of my life, particularly for making low-calorie fruit sorbets. I don't like the icy edges where the blade doesn't reach, or having to re-spin several times to get a good texture. I'm also not confident about its longevity with frequent use, but given how many Creamis you could buy for the price of a Pacojet, that's really a non-issue. A Pacojet seems like a ridiculous thing to have in a home kitchen, but it's certainly on my radar now.

[Anna N]

1 hour ago, Chris Birkett said:

Has anyone ended up getting a Pacojet after trying the Creami? I

Yup

@Kerry Bealcould answer for herself but I couldn't resist!  She is the queen of kitchen toys!

[Kerry Beal]

3 hours ago, Chris Birkett said:

Has anyone ended up getting a Pacojet after trying the Creami? I recently ordered a Creami, and I'm amazed at how quickly it became a daily part of my life, particularly for making low-calorie fruit sorbets. I don't like the icy edges where the blade doesn't reach, or having to re-spin several times to get a good texture. I'm also not confident about its longevity with frequent use, but given how many Creamis you could buy for the price of a Pacojet, that's really a non-issue. A Pacojet seems like a ridiculous thing to have in a home kitchen, but it's certainly on my radar now.

As Anna says - I had to get one!

 

When I was using the iCreami I found that after the first spin if I went around the canister with one of my bone handles knives before respin I got rid of the icy edge. But wanted to be able to make bigger batches and add overrun. 

[Chris Birkett]

2 hours ago, Kerry Beal said:

As Anna says - I had to get one!

 

When I was using the iCreami I found that after the first spin if I went around the canister with one of my bone handles knives before respin I got rid of the icy edge. But wanted to be able to make bigger batches and add overrun. 

 

Interesting. I definitely like the idea of a used one, particularly since the cheaper "Junior" is now unavailable, and the new Pacojet 4 is absurdly expensive even by Pacojet standards.

 

I find with the stuff I'm making, which is largely blends of fruit, almond milk, and erythritol, the re-spin setting doesn't adequately break up the icy edge pieces if I push them off with a knife, so it negatively impacts the texture of the whole tub. On the other hand, it's absolutely brilliant with regular ice cream bases, and the mix-in setting is very popular with my nephew.

[Kerry Beal]

24 minutes ago, Chris Birkett said:

 

Interesting. I definitely like the idea of a used one, particularly since the cheaper "Junior" is now unavailable, and the new Pacojet 4 is absurdly expensive even by Pacojet standards.

 

I find with the stuff I'm making, which is largely blends of fruit, almond milk, and erythritol, the re-spin setting doesn't adequately break up the icy edge pieces if I push them off with a knife, so it negatively impacts the texture of the whole tub. On the other hand, it's absolutely brilliant with regular ice cream bases, and the mix-in setting is very popular with my nephew.

I picked mine up used from a chocolate shop in Toronto that had been making ice creams but it just wasn't practical for them. You should make a mix, put it in a fat deli container and bring it down to me frozen and we can run it through the Pacojet and see if one spin does it with your mix. When I travel with frozen stuff I put in inside a Donvier ice cream maker canister - keeps it solidly frozen for pretty much days. 

Edited March 22, 2023 by Kerry Beal (log)

[sverreef]

On 8/25/2022 at 7:59 PM, andrewk512 said:

Apricot Sorbet

500g lightly cooked* apricot flesh (I didn't bother to remove the skins)
25g atomized glucose 
100g sucrose
citric and malic acid to taste

 

Blend, strain and process.

 

Made a version of this last week after adding 1 liter of apricot puree to an online order of dextrose powder.

 

Based on your comment about the sorbet being a bit sweet (and in case you've used a lower DE atomized glucose), I reduced the amount of sucrose:

 

500g apricot puree (Les vergers Boiron)

75g sucrose

25g Glucose DE 42 powder

1g Modernist Pantry Perfect Sorbet 

1.5g salt

malic acid to taste*

citric acid to taste*

 

 

Very good on both flavour and texture.

 

* I didn't write down the recipe when I made it, but I think I ended up with 4+4g of citric/malic acid. I know I started out with 2+2g. The acid really made the apricot shine, so it's worth it to taste and adjust in the blender.

 

I bought 1 liter of mango puree as well, so I'll try that during the Easter holidays. Possibly with slightly reduced sucrose/increased atomized glucose to to see if/how that affects the texture.