In case you’re not familiar with the Ninja Creami, it works a bit differently from other home ice cream makers. With many home ice cream makers you have to freeze a relatively large, double-walled metal bowl, then put your ingredients in and process it. Of course, you still need your ingredients to be frozen with the Creami, but instead of having to freeze a big old bowl, which you will need to refreeze after you use it before you can make more ice cream, the Creami ingeniously has you freeze your ingredients right in the pint (or “larger pint”, depending on which model you get) containers in which you will blend and also store your frozen confections. This also means that you can have several in your freezer, pre-frozen and ready to go! Brilliant!

These are what you put in the freezer:

Ninja Creami Containers

Depending on which model you get, your pint containers will actually be, you know, a pint (16 ounces) or what Ninja precociously calls a “deluxe pint” of 24 ounces (trust marketers to try to redefine the pint).

Just Exactly Where are the Pourable Freeze Fill, Max Fill, and Pour In Lines?

There has been some confusion as to just where exactly are the ‘pourable freeze fill’, ‘max fill’, and ‘pour in’ lines. This is because there are no clearly marked, or even visible, lines. There are labels, such as “Freeze Fill”, but is the line at the label, or somewhere else? We talked directly with Ninja about this, and so we have the answer!

The reason that there is some confusion over where are the actual lines is because, unlike the labels, the lines themselves are not only barely visible, but in one case the line is basically just part of (and so disappears into) the design. They say that a picture is worth a thousand words, so here you go!

How Hot Should the Hot Water for Slushy and Frozen Drink Recipes be?

Another things we had cleared up (not) while we were talking to the Ninjas is how hot should the hot water be, or can the hot water be, when making those slushies and frozen drinks. The recipes simply call for “hot water”. How hot, we wondered? Boiling? Barely hot? According to the Ninja rep, the water should be “very hot, but not steaming and not boiling”. We guess that’s some help, even if not much. If you are using tap water then probably just as hot as your tap will provide; we use filtered water, however, so we’re going to let it come to a boil in our electric kettle (as that’s what the kettle automatically does) and then cool off a bit.

Anyways…

After you freeze your ingredients right in the container for 24 hours, you pop the container into a larger container (the thing with the handle that you see in the video), affix it to the Creami, and turn it on.

The Creami basically drills down into the fully frozen ingredients and first ‘shaves’ all of it into little bits, then mixes it into a smooth, creamy ice cream consistency. Yeah, it’s black magic, and we’re not questioning it because it works!

By far the largest (in fact perhaps only) “complaint” about the Creami is how loud it is. To us it doesn’t really seem so loud, but then we have a Vitamix, and a Ninja Foodi Smoothie blender, so loud is relative.

Judge for yourself:

 
 

Note that some of the above information is from our longer, more comprehensive Ninja Creami QuickStart Guide post.

For our ‘dump and freeze’ “Will it Creami?” experiments and recipes go to our Will it Creami? post.