Pacojet Competitor? The Ninja Creami

[rotuts]

@DesertTinker 

 

very interesting on the pressure feature

 

also that the blades do not get close enough to the sides

 

its my understanding that the PJ

 

used rock-hard very very cold substrate

 

and the Nija does not

 

points to a much less durable motor 

 

in the Nija

 

looking forward to 

 

@mgaretz evaluation.

Edited August 31, 2021 by rotuts (log)

[Anna N]

1 hour ago, weinoo said:

My guess, though, is you're not buying a new one...more likely, it's one of those things where at one time, if you happened to see one in one of those second (or third, or fourth)-hand stores and you could pick it up for a few bucks (loons?), we'd be reading about it on your's and @Kerry Beal's blog about your trip to an island!

 

1 hour ago, weinoo said:

we'd be reading about it on your's and @Kerry Beal's blog about your trip to an island!

Ah. If only that were possible.

[mgaretz]

UPS says the Ninja is out for delivery!

[gfweb]

16 hours ago, Anna N said:

Those of us who love kitchen toys know it has a limited shelflife. We will re-home it fairly quickly but we have learned a great deal in the meantime. And had fun. 

 

May this rival the Big Easy oil-less fryer in our attention span.

[rotuts]

Indeed.

 

but to be fair ,

 

The B-E is an outdoor ' adventure '

 

@Dejah 

 

had or still has one , and

 

 

looks tasty to me.

 

I thought about it

 

looked @ HomeDepot

 

but it was a bit flimsy etc

 

if 

 

@mgaretz 

 

gets something out of it

 

Most Excellent.

 

this is not a criticism 

 

of either concept

 

or pairing Nija to Bigeasy 

 

why ?

 

just look at the Jus at the bottom of that chicken

 

perhaps most of us Missed

 

The BigEasy

 

now I think for Turkey ?

 

 

looks improved.

[Anna N]

2 hours ago, gfweb said:

 

May this rival the Big Easy oil-less fryer in our attention span.

Wait a minute. Somebody still uses that. Is it @Dejah? Didn’t someone else mistake it for an air fryer very recently?

Edited to add that I did not read far enough in the thread and that @rotutshad already covered these points. 

Edited August 31, 2021 by Anna N (log)

[JoNorvelleWalker]

On 8/30/2021 at 7:10 PM, Anna N said:

I don’t think this appliance is geared to impressing ice cream connoisseurs.  
A number of reviews did point out  various “cons”. The blade does not scrape the walls or the base of the container leaving unincorporated ingredients. The containers must be absolutely level in the freezer and not be too cold. One of the major complaints was simply that it does not make enough ice cream in a single session. A pint of ice cream doesn’t stretch very far! Still I can see it being a fun toy. 

 

Anna I am not so sure.  If you can't level your blast freezer you should turn in your eGullet card.  And if you reflect upon -7 Fahrenheit, -22 Celsius sounds cooler*.  Likewise a little wastage on the sides sounds reasonable for a $10,000 savings.  Three pints?  I can't recall the last time I enjoyed three pints of ice cream at one time.

 

When I played scientist at TRI/Princeton we would oft visit the local ice cream emporium for lunch.  One of my colleagues would order up a quart for his meal, and a cone for his dessert.  How many of us on eGullet have stamina for more than three pints of ice cream at a single sitting?

 

Once when I dined at Le Bec Fin I enquired about the ice cream that was not eaten at the end of service.  The waiter assured me that the evening's uneaten ice cream went to feed the homeless and the hungry.

 

An advantage of a real PacoJet is one can process a fraction of a quart at one time without wastage.

 

I confess I am more than a little interested in the Ninja.  Sadly I need a tripod, which may not sound like a first world food related problem, but it is.  And I have several hundred dollars of new fall cookbooks on pre-order from amazon that I will have to pay for.

 

 

*if not colder.

 

[mgaretz]

The Creami arrived. It has been unboxed but that’s about it. I had a rehearsal tonight. I am now pondering what to make for the first try. Trying to decide between my normal churned non-dairy ice cream or a recipe from the book that came with it. 

[blue_dolphin]

1 hour ago, mgaretz said:

The Creami arrived. It has been unboxed but that’s about it. I had a rehearsal tonight. I am now pondering what to make for the first try. Trying to decide between my normal churned non-dairy ice cream or a recipe from the book that came with it. 

I vote for both!

[mgaretz]

@blue_dolphin wins!  I decided to make my normal peanut butter salted caramel ice cream using almond milk and the soft-serve mix, though I used about 25% less mix than normal and a little less of my normal anti-freeze hack (vegetable glycerin).  I also tried to make a recipe from the book (lite chocolate non-dairy ice cream).  I say "tried" because it turns out my canned coconut milk had expired long ago and didn't taste right to me.  So instead I opted for almond milk. (They recommend oat milk, but when I tried oat milk instead of almond before I didn't like the taste.  Could have been the brand of oat milk, but I never tried it again (well, except for "barista blend oat milk" with my Nespresso machine - didn't care for that either).  I also used an erythritol/monk fruit sweetener and added 50% more cocoa powder than they recommended and a teaspoon of espresso powder - another hack to increase the chocolate flavor.  Both are in the freezer now and they will get spun tomorrow evening. 

 

I haven't powered up the motor base yet, but so far my first impressions are good.  I especially like the fact that they have lots of vegan/non-dairy/low sugar options for almost every recipe and that's very rare in the frozen dessert field.  So this lactose intolerant guy gives them kudos for that.  They also have a number of recipes labeled Try It Now for folks that don't want to wait for the 24 hour freeze cycle, but most (maybe all) are milk-shake recipes.

 

They say if I register I get a coupon for additional Creami pint jars, but so far no coupon has appeared in my inbox.  I did get a 10% off coupon for signing up for the mailing list - hope the jar offer is better.  

 

I watched some of their videos tonight and it sure looks like it works exactly like the PacoJet, minus the air pressure feature.  On the other hand, PacoJet's website and manual is pretty vague about what the air pressure feature actually is good for.

 

 

 

[Anna N]

9 hours ago, JoNorvelleWalker said:

Anna I am not so sure. 

I still maintain I might be willing to fork over 10 grand to avoid a mouthfull of cocoa powder.

[btbyrd]

10 hours ago, mgaretz said:

On the other hand, PacoJet's website and manual is pretty vague about what the air pressure feature actually is good for.

 

The air pressure controls the amount of overrun, thereby letting you adjust the texture.

[pastrygirl]

PacoJets were never $10k, were they?  I thought only $3-4k.  And it is totally possibly they are grossly over-priced.

 

As for extra canisters, I used to freeze bases in pint deli containers if we ran out of the beakers, they're close to the same diameter.  Then transfer the frozen block to the stainless beaker before processing.

[Yiannos]

10 minutes ago, pastrygirl said:

PacoJets were never $10k, were they?  I thought only $3-4k.

 

Weird, you are right, when I did a search yesterday the first place that came up had it marked at $10K (discounted from $14K! ha), but now I can't find that page. But yeah all the others that are coming up now are in the $6500 range which is still insane to me but what do I know 🙃

[Anna N]

31 minutes ago, Yiannos said:

but what do I know 🙃

That you can’t afford one?

[rotuts]

Im a Student 

 

of Fantastic Stuff in My Kitchen 

 

PJ's  and Blast Freezers

 

were some of many 

 

Professional Items

 

features in the series

 

Great British Menu

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_British_Menu

 

as I understand it

 

there was the original PJ , and a V 2

 

still a PJ , and for professional Kitchen

 

and the V2 was less expensive,

 

[ed.:  not that V2 ]

[Yiannos]

Ok there it is, price is explained by the value of the Canadian dollar vs US. Was starting to think I had a dream about kitchen equipment...

 

https://www.cookstore.ca/pacojet-pacojet-2-system-pacojet-2-40530.html

[palo]

36 minutes ago, Yiannos said:

Ok there it is, price is explained by the value of the Canadian dollar vs US. Was starting to think I had a dream about kitchen equipment...

 

https://www.cookstore.ca/pacojet-pacojet-2-system-pacojet-2-40530.html

 

If anyone ever wondered why CDNs are hunched over it's probably due to being bent over on the receiving end of the price differences

 

p

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

i

[Anna N]

44 minutes ago, Yiannos said:

Ok there it is, price is explained by the value of the Canadian dollar vs US.

But our dollars are so much prettier than yours! And we can buy Coffee Crisps  with ours. And Nanaimo bars and butter tarts.  

[Yiannos]

3 minutes ago, Anna N said:

Coffee Crisps

 

We have a Cost Plus nearby that carries these, and I feel like the one or two times I go in there every year I clear out whatever they have on the shelf.

[ElsieD]

54 minutes ago, Yiannos said:

Ok there it is, price is explained by the value of the Canadian dollar vs US. Was starting to think I had a dream about kitchen equipment...

 

https://www.cookstore.ca/pacojet-pacojet-2-system-pacojet-2-40530.html

The difference in the Canadian dollar does not translate into such a great price difference.  With the Canadian dollar at .79 cents US if the prices were equal, one would pay appx. $8328 Cdn, not $10, 882.

[mgaretz]

First reports.  

 

The first spin was my "normal" peanut butter salted caramel.  It came out great.  Very dense texture, very much like gelato, very smooth with no iciness. This has ice cream texture right out of the machine - not soft-serve like when you churn. This took a single spin on the ice cream program. First picture is right out of the unit after taking a small spoonful off the top.  Second is a scoop into a bowl.  The real test will be to see how the scoopability is tomorrow.

 

   

 

Second spin was the zero sugar almond milk chocolate.  This took a spin on the lite ice cream program and three re-spins (there's a re-spin program) to get a creamy texture (vs crumbly).  The flavor was OK, but the texture was thin, more like ice milk or a chocolate sorbet than ice cream.  It wasn't icy, but it did leave a layer of hard frozen product coating the sides and bottom of the container.  This didn't happen with other recipe.  This either needs some stabilizer help or more fat or both.  I am guessing this will be rock hard tomorrow, but we'll see.

 

 

Tonight I went to the store and stocked up on lactose free half and half (actual dairy), canned coconut milk and coconut cream, Silk non-dairy whipping cream, and Tofutti non-dairy cream cheese to experiment with.  Then I took their main chocolate base recipe and made some mods:

 

Their recipe calls for 1 tbs cream cheese, 1 cup whole milk, 3/4 cup cream, 1/3 cup sugar and 2 tbs of cacao powder.  I substituted 1 3/4 cups of the half and half as this is pretty close to their milk/cream ratio, mine being a little more heavy on the cream side, the tofutti for the cream cheese and I upped the cacao to 4 tbs.  I also added a teaspoon of vanilla extract and 1 teaspoon of espresso powder.  Their recipe calls for whisking the sugar, cacao and cream cheese until it looks like frosting.  Didn't work, probably because of the extra cacao.  I ended up blending everything.  Now in the freezer and will spin it tomorrow night.

 

General thoughts.  Pretty easy to assemble and use.  Not messy - the outer container didn't even need a rinse.  I expected the blade to be super sharp, like a food processor blade, but it isn't.  Easy to handle safely.  Takes about 2.5 minutes for a full spin, the re-spin is shorter.  It is quite loud.

 

 

[palo]

Won't be on my "to buy list" - but thanks for your excellent feedback - I hope it works for you 

 

p

[rotuts]

@mgaretz 

 

Kudos your way.

 

looking forward to further

 

experiments.

[jandreas]

Chrisophe Loeffel has two eBooks for making ice cream and sorbet in a pacojet. 

 

https://www.christopheloeffel.com/all-ebooks