Please recommend a gelato maker

Posted on September 9, 2013 by Oleg Volk

I am looking for a way to make high-quality Italian style gelato at home. Would one of the roughly $300 machines sold on Amazon work for the purpose?

This entry was posted in advice requested, food and tagged , . Bookmark the permalink.

7 Responses to Please recommend a gelato maker

  1. Ross says:
    September 9, 2013 at 5:11 pm

    I have this one – The Cuisinart ICE-100, which is $300 from Amazon. http://www.amazon.com/Cuisinart-ICE-100-Compressor-Cream-Gelato/dp/B006UKLUFS/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1378764473&sr=8-1&keywords=ice+cream+gelato+maker

    I got it for free, probably wouldn’t have paid $300 for an ice cream maker if it wasn’t. It does work VERY well for the limited use I’ve given it. It has a gelato-specific mixing paddle. The price comes from having its own condensing unit so you don’t have to freeze the bucket or mess with any salts or anything.

    If you have something you’d like me to try with it I could give it a whirl and see how it turns out.

  2. Samuel Suggs says:
    September 10, 2013 at 12:09 am

    You make some weird ass requests but we love you anyway. I thought this one was hilarious once I recognized the word gelato.

  3. Tama Paine says:
    September 11, 2013 at 4:06 am

    I can vouch for the expensive Cuisinart machine though our version of it is about four years old now–larger, built a little differently.

    http://www.amazon.com/Cuisinart-ICE-50BC-Supreme-Cream-Maker/dp/B0007XOHN6

    We found it for $35 at Big Lots!, so it paid for itself pretty fast. You want one with a compressor, so you can chill down a wide range of mixtures, from crystally sorbets to eggy frozen custards and everything in between. My favorite is simply sweet cream, no sugar added, for a low carb/healthy fat treat, or anything with coconut cream. We like to experiment and are happy to eat all sorts of experiments, so if you have a favorite gelato you want to reproduce, be warned that you might need some testing and tweaking no matter which machine you choose.

  4. ol' Huff says:
    September 11, 2013 at 9:34 pm

    ….drool….. I’m sorry, what were you asking? I saw gelato and got distracted.

  5. Lyle says:
    September 12, 2013 at 11:46 pm

    I have the six quart version of this one and I’m reasonably happy with it, though I get the impression that it’s not the sort of thing you have in mind;
    https://www.lehmans.com/p-2815-lehmans-best-ice-cream-freezers.aspx

    Pluses; uses no electricity so it’s highly mobile, so long as you have ice and salt. Decent exercise. Large capacity.
    Minuses; a bit messy. Not for indoor use. It requires work. Takes a few tries to get the hang of it.

  6. YM says:
    September 15, 2013 at 2:42 am

    *IF* you have a chest freezer (we own/operate a small farm, so we have 8 large chest freezers), you might try one of these things:

    http://www.amazon.com/Nostalgia-Electrics-ICMP400BLUE-4-Quart-Electric/dp/B003FA830G/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1379230396&sr=8-3

    The manufacturer’s instructions tell you to use a (traditional) ice/salt mixture, but I’m lazy and that was going to be too much work. So I did a little reading about how ice cream (or gelato) is made and basically it’s a matter of freezing the ingredients while stirring them slowly to prevent the formation of crystals. Ice+salt is just convenient because it’s portable. So I purchased the ice cream maker linked above ($25 with free shipping!), mixed together the ingredients, stuck it in one of the chest freezers and turned it on. 4 hours later, we had gelato! The 4 hours part may be a deal breaker for you, but for someone lazy and cheap like me, it’s a worthwhile trade-off.

    Before getting the ice cream maker I linked to above, I used one of these:
    http://www.amazon.com/Cuisinart-ICE-21-Frozen-Yogurt-Ice-Sorbet/dp/B003KYSLMW/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1379230933&sr=8-2&keywords=ice+cream+maker

    The first one is much better due to 1) not having to freeze the buckets in advance, 2) much larger capacity.

    Anyway, hope that helps!

  7. BLAMMO says:
    September 15, 2013 at 11:29 am

    Planning on bulking up for the holidays? 😀

Comments are closed.