How to choose an ice cream maker

Most people choose an ice cream maker by price and by the stars under it in an online shop. Something else matters far more: how often you will make ice cream, and whether you can plan a day ahead. A machine costing three hundred euros is pointless if there is nowhere on the worktop to put another box. And a thirty-euro bowl will annoy you on Sunday afternoon, when you realise it should have gone into the freezer on Saturday morning.

So we compare types of equipment, not brands and models — we do not test individual machines at home.

Three questions before you buy

1. How many batches do you want in one day? One, or three flavours for a party?
2. Can you plan a day ahead? Both a freezer bowl and a Ninja CREAMi need 24 hours in the freezer before you even start.
3. How much room do you have — on the worktop and in the freezer?

Taste and smoothness depend more on the recipe than on the price of the machine. Our recipes use a base that is cooked, cooled and aged in the fridge for around four hours — about five hours before you get anywhere near freezing it, whichever type you own.

The types at a glance

Compressor: for making ice cream often

A compressor machine makes its own cold like a small freezer, so there is nothing to pre-freeze. That is its only real advantage, but it is a decisive one: batches follow one after another. In an afternoon you can get through three flavours, as long as you have three bases ready.

You pay for it in weight and space — typically 10 to 16 kg that cannot go back in the cupboard after every use.

Freezer bowl: the cheapest way in

A double-walled bowl with a cooling liquid goes into the freezer for 12 to 24 hours, and then the machine churns the base in it for 20 to 40 minutes. It is the cheapest way to start, and if you already own a stand mixer, it also exists as an attachment for it.

The catch is that one frozen bowl means one batch. The second flavour has to wait until tomorrow — or you buy a second bowl. The bowl is also less forgiving: a warm base, an overfilled bowl or a weak freezer show up immediately as icy ice cream.

Ninja CREAMi: portions and several flavours

The CREAMi works the other way round. You freeze the base in a tub into a solid block, and a blade then shaves it into a cream. Freezing takes 24 hours; the processing itself takes 1 to 3 minutes.

For anyone who wants one portion tonight and a different one tomorrow, this is the most convenient answer. The price you pay is that an unbalanced recipe comes out crumbly and has to be re-spun.

No machine, blender, salt and ice

• No machine is a good test of whether you enjoy this at all. You stir the base every 30 minutes for two to three hours, or use a whipped-cream base with condensed milk that needs no stirring at all — try thcondensed milk no-churn ice cream.
• high-speed blender turns frozen fruit into a creamy dessert in minutes banana nice cream or a quick sorbet. It has to be eaten straight away, and classic cream ice cream is out of reach.
• Salt and ice is the oldest method and an event for children. One batch, though, swallows one or two bags of ice and half to almost a kilo of sal

How much ice cream you will actually make in an evening

This decides the most:

• compressor — as many batches as you have bases, one after another;
• freezer bowl — one batch per bowl per day;
• CREAMi — as many portions today as the tubs you froze yesterday;
• no machine — one batch and three hours during which you have to be at home;
• salt and ice — a batch in half an hour, but first you have to fetch the ice.

Ice cream from a machine also comes out soft: to be scoopable it still needs one to four hours of hardening in the freezer.

Freezer space and washing up

A freezer bowl is much bigger on the outside than its usable capacity, and it has to lie in the freezer for the whole day before you churn. CREAMi tubs are smaller, but the whole point is to keep several of them in there at once. A compressor machine takes up no freezer space at all — it takes up the worktop.

The washing up is much the same for every machine: the bowl, the paddle and the lid. CREAMi tubs, lids and the blade go in the dishwasher (top rack). Wash a freezer bowl as the manufacturer's instructions say, and dry it before freezing it again. The salt and ice method leaves you with several litres of salt water, which corrodes metal and has to be poured away somewhere.

So which one?

• You make ice cream now and then and want to try it: start with no machine, or with a freezer bowl.
• You make it every week and want several flavours at once: a compressor machine.
• You want one portion a day and like a tidy freezer: a CREAMi.
• You have a freezer full of fruit and want to buy nothing: a blender.
• You make ice cream with children, for the experience: salt and ice.