Chocolate Ice Cream and Creami vs Pacojet Shootout

Here you can learn a great, really smooth recipe and method for chocolate ice cream. Also, I compare the Ninja Creami to the Pacojet ice cream maker.

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All right! Today I’m very excited to finally get to do the shootout between the Ninja Creamy and the Paco Jet.

[see recipe]

So I went ahead and chilled down my ice cream custard just so there wouldn’t be any condensation in the beakers that might form little ice crystals and also so that it wouldn’t form a skin on top. The Pacojet beaker holds about 800 to 850 g and the CreamI beaker holds about 500 g. So, considerable considering its size. So, now I’m going to just fill these up and then I’m going to put them in the freezer, let them freeze overnight, and then come back tomorrow and we’ll go ahead and process these and compare these two machines.

All right, so we’re ready to process the ice cream, and I want to take just a minute to talk about these two machines. Pacojet was developed in the 1980s and launched as a product in the early 1990s. And for a long time, it’s been a great commercial machine. It’s got a very over-engineered motor and is very strong. It can withstand a lot of use in a commercial environment, and one nice thing about it is that you can get these beakers and fill them with lots of different ice creams. You could have 20-30 different beakers filled with ice creams and then you can program this to process the exact amount that you want for one serving. And then process that amount and have really nice fresh ice cream for that customer. And then put the beaker back and the ice cream will retain really nice quality.

When their patent ran out, Ninja took the opportunity to basically copy their design and make a scaled-down home version of it, and that’s what this is. So, instead of $6,500 or $8,000, this model is only $200.

I want to show you the blades for them as well. This is what actually processes the ice cream. This is the original Pacojet blade, and you can see the design: it’s got little cutting teeth on it. It’s pretty sharp. And this is the Ninja blade. Looks pretty similar: a little bit smaller, but basically the same design.

(Let’s see if I can do this backwards.)

And then with the Ninja you take your blade put it into this little lid.

And then this has a kind of neat design. You take this and lock it in here. You just kind-of twist it up, and it locks into place into the machine.

And now I’m going to process both of these and we’re going to try the ice cream side-by-side and see how they do.

[Music]

All right; it’s done. We will try this one, but next is the Pacojet.

[Music]

Okay; and it’s done.

So, first of all, this the exact same ice cream. You can see how very different the two of them look. I’m going to try the Ninja first.

[Music]

All right. They’re very different. The ice cream is the same, so obviously the flavor is going to be the same between the two of them. But the texture is very different. This, as you can see, is much smoother. A lot more creamy. It’s almost like soft-serve ice cream — in fact, I would say it is soft-serve ice cream.

And if you want it to have a little bit more bite, you can just put in the freezer for an hour or 3 hours or longer and get it just to the exact consistency that you want. I really like ice cream this soft, so for me this is perfect.

The Ninja has a very different texture. You can see it’s not super creamy like the Paco Jet is, but the ice cream itself is really nice and smooth and it tastes great. And for a lot of people this might be a texture that you prefer. And for $200, I think it’s pretty amazing that they were able to build a machine with a really nice design for home use that produces this quality of ice cream. I’m really very impressed with it.

So, I’d say they’re very different machines for very different purposes. I think they’re both great, but the Ninja really impresses me for what it does for the money.

And now I’ve got some ice cream to give away.

[Music]

In this tutorial you’ll learn to make delicious, creamy chocolate ice cream and we’ll compare two blade-driven ice cream machines: the Ninja Creami and the Pacojet.

Recipe

Formula (Ingredients):

125g sugar
20g malt powder
37g Dutch-process cocoa powder (natural cocoa powder will also work)
1.5g salt (anywhere between 1 – 2 grams is fine)
1/8 tsp espresso powder
160g whole milk (4% fat)
180g 1st cream (40% fat — see note below)
8 large yolks
85g corn syrup
60g bittersweet chocolate
600g 2nd cream (40%)
7g (1.5 tsp) vanilla

Notes on Cream/Milk Ratios:

Professional-grade heavy cream is typically 40% fat. Some grocery stores sell this, but many don’t, and the cream may not even say the fat percentage. 36% heavy cream is more commonly found at the grocery store, but some sell 33% fat or other percentages. If the heavy cream at your store doesn’t say what percent fat it is, don’t worry — it will work fine. In fact, you can use the recipe above with any type of heavy cream, and it will be OK, just not as rich.

If you want to keep the fat percentage the same as I use, substitute these amounts for ones given above:

For 36% cream: use 108g milk, 232g 1st cream, and 600g second cream.
For 33% cream: use 64g milk and 276g 1st cream, and 600g second cream.

Method (Instructions):

Whisk your dry ingredients together (sugar, malt powder, cocoa powder, salt, and espresso powder) in a bowl to make clump less when you mix them into the liquid ingredients.

Measure these liquid ingredients directly into your pot (milk, 1st cream, egg yolks, and corn syrup). Measure your 2nd cream (600g) into a separate container and reserve. Also measure out your bittersweet chocolate* and vanilla extract. You’ll be using all three of these at the end of recipe.

Now whisk together your dry ingredients with the wet ingredients you measured into your pot while it is still cold. Then, on medium heat, cook while continuously whisking until the cocoa powder has melted (above 100°F / 38°C). At that point, switch to a silicon spatula and continue to cook on medium heat, continuously stirring and scraping the sides and bottom of the pot, until it reaches just above 180°F / 82°C. Once it does, turn off the heat and give it a few more stirs, again scraping the sides and bottom.

Now remove from the heat and drop in your chocolate. If you cut it into small pieces it will melt more quickly and easily. Stir until it has completely melted (3-5 minutes), then add in the reserved 600g cream and the vanilla extract and stir until smooth.

Optional: Straining Your Custard

At this point, you can strain your mixture through a fine-mesh strainer or use an immersion blender to blend out any small bits of egg that have coagulated. There will always be some no matter how good of a job you did because the chalazae from the eggs (the part of the white that holds the yolk in the center) will always make little lumps. If you didn’t stir enough or heated the custard too quickly, you may end up with little bits of overcooked egg as well, so it’s always a good idea to strain it.

In this video I don’t bother straining it or using an immersion blender because I’m going to process it in a blade-driven ice cream machine, so any lumps will be pulverized in that process. But if you did overcook any of the egg, it’s a good idea to get it out anyway for the best flavor.

Options for Ice Cream Machines

Ninja Creami: If you want to use the Ninja Creami shown in the video, it’s best to chill your ice cream in the fridge for 4-8 hours, give it a stir, then freeze it at least overnight, but preferrably for 24 hours.

Purchase the Ninja Creami: https://amzn.to/43JVI77

Churning Machines with Gel Cylinder: Chill for 4-8 hours, then process in your machine

Churning Machines with Built-In Compressor: Optionally chill for 4-8 hours, but you can also just pour the warm custard directly into the machine and process it immediately.

Purchase the Breville: https://amzn.to/44i1qgD

Note: these are affiliate links, so our non-profit may receive a small amount of money when you purchase, but it won’t affect the price you pay.

Additional Science Notes

Ice cream is a complex, multi-phase system that can be classified in several ways. It is:

A partially solid foam (air bubbles dispersed in a frozen matrix that includes both solid ice and liquid water).
An emulsion (fat droplets dispersed in water, which are stabilized by lecithin from the egg yolks).
A colloid (a fine dispersion of multiple phases, including fat, ice, and air).
A suspension (solid ice crystals and proteins suspended in a liquid phase).
A gel-like system (due to heat-coagulated egg proteins, which thicken the base and bind water, while lecithin acts as an emulsifier to stabilize fat dispersion).
A phase-change material (see below).

Sugar lowers the temperature of fusion (freezing temperature) of water. The more sugar that’s in ice cream, the softer it will be. As water freezes, it pushes out impurities so it can form pure crystals. The remaining liquid water becomes more concentrated in sugar, further lowering its freezing point.

Because of this, there is always liquid water in ice cream.

If you’d like to learn more about food science, please consider taking our ACF Food Science Specialized Certificate course, which can be found here.