The Best Ice Cream Makers

The three settings aren't just labels on a dial. Gelato mode runs the paddle slower, so less air works into the base, and you get that dense, intense spoonful that separates real gelato from a supermarket tub. Sorbet mode is the one that surprises people — fruit bases are where home machines usually turn out icy, and published reviews single this setting out as the reason the ICE-70CRM handles them cleanly.

Two quarts is enough that you don't have to run it twice. That's roughly eight to ten servings, which covers four to six people with seconds. The 1.5-quart machines crowding the budget shelf run dry fast if you've got kids or company. Cuisinart puts a batch at 20 minutes or less once the bowl is frozen, and there's an ingredient spout with a built-in measuring cup in the lid, so chocolate chips or a caramel swirl go in mid-churn without stopping anything.

The countdown timer takes the guessing out of it. Freezer-bowl machines punish inattention in both directions. Churn too long and the base warms up and turns grainy. Pull it too early and you've made a milkshake. The LCD counts down and shuts the motor off by itself, so you can walk away and finish dinner. Owners keep coming back to how repeatable the results are batch to batch, and that consistency is really what the timer buys you.

Cleanup takes about two minutes. The bowl, lid and paddle come apart in seconds and go in the dishwasher, and the parts are BPA-free. There's no brine to drain, no bucket to lug to the sink, no salt to rinse out of metal. That matters more than it sounds. The machines people quietly abandon are usually the ones that turn a 20-minute dessert into a 20-minute mop-up.

Flaws but not dealbreakers

You have to think a full day ahead. The bowl needs 12 to 24 hours in the freezer before it'll freeze anything at all, so deciding at 4 p.m. that you want ice cream tonight doesn't work. Most owners land on the same fix: leave the bowl in the freezer permanently and accept that you've given up a shelf. If your freezer is already stuffed, that's a real cost.

One bowl means one batch. Want vanilla and then chocolate on the same afternoon? You can't, unless you buy a second bowl and keep it frozen alongside the first. Once a bowl has done its job it's warm, and it's out of commission until tomorrow.

The screen washes out in bright light. The LCD is easy enough to read in a normal kitchen, but put the machine in a sunny window or take it outside and the countdown gets hard to see. It's a small annoyance, not a dealbreaker.

The ICE-70CRM carries a limited three-year warranty.

The mixer's motor is the whole reason this works so well. It holds one speed for the entire churn, and steady speed means smaller ice crystals and less air whipped into the base. What comes out is denser and richer, closer in character to gelato than to the fluffy stuff sold by the half gallon. Reviewers who line it up against standalone budget machines consistently put its texture near the top of the pile.

You're not really buying an appliance. There's no new motor, no new plug, no new footprint. The bowl locks in where your mixing bowl normally sits, the attachment slides into the power hub, and you're churning in about two minutes. When you're done, the whole thing goes back in a cabinet. If your counter is already full, that's worth a lot.

The parts are built like the rest of the mixer. The bowl is heavy, the redesigned handles make it easier to seat, and the dasher is shaped to spread, scrape and fold at the same time so the base freezes evenly instead of caking on the wall. Owners who've had one for years tend to describe it as the accessory they never think about, which is about the best thing you can say about a kitchen part.

Two quarts in under half an hour. KitchenAid puts a batch at less than 30 minutes once your base is ready, and two quarts is plenty for a household of three or four. You get the same batch size as our top pick without adding a second machine to the kitchen.

Flaws but not dealbreakers

It's useless without the right mixer. It fits most tilt-head models, but not the Artisan Mini KSM3316 or KSM3317. It fits most bowl-lift models, but not the K5SS, KSM50, KSM500 or KSM450, and it won't work with the Professional line KSM90 or KG25H. Check the model number stamped on your mixer before you order. Buying the wrong one is the most common frustration owners describe.

The bowl needs a long head start. Plan on about 15 hours in the freezer, and more if your freezer runs warm or is packed. Same problem as any freezer-bowl machine — you're committing a day in advance, and the bowl is bulky enough that finding it a permanent home takes some rearranging.

Your mixer is tied up the whole time. It has to sit still, plugged in and running for 20 to 30 minutes, so it's not doing anything else and it's not going back in the cabinet until the batch is done. If you were planning to churn ice cream and knead bread the same afternoon, pick one.

Four quarts changes what dessert can be. That's 12 to 16 real servings from a single run — a birthday party, a reunion, a church social. A two-quart countertop machine would need three back-to-back batches and three frozen bowls to match it, which nobody is doing on a Saturday afternoon. If you're feeding a crowd, capacity beats every other feature on the list.

There's no bowl to freeze the night before. Salt lowers the freezing point of ice, and the resulting brine gets cold enough to freeze the canister from the outside in. So the cold comes from the bucket, not from your freezer. As long as you've got a bag of ice and a box of rock salt, you can decide to make ice cream the same day — which none of the freezer-bowl machines here can claim.

It runs itself. No cranking, no babysitting the dial. You pour the base and your mix-ins into the canister, cover it, assemble the machine, pack the bucket, and hit one switch. The motor churns for 20 to 40 minutes and stops when the ice cream is ready. Chopped fruit, nuts, chocolate chips and candy pieces all go in at the start, so there's nothing to time.

The bucket and canister hold up outdoors. The wooden bucket takes a summer of patio use without complaint, and the stainless canister doesn't hang onto flavors, so last month's mint doesn't haunt this month's peach. At about five pounds it's easy to carry out to the yard and just as easy to hose down when you're finished.

Flaws but not dealbreakers

Every batch costs you supplies. Figure four to six pounds of crushed ice and a cup or so of rock salt per run, and you'll need to top off the bucket partway through as the ice melts. That means a store trip before every party, and it means you can't churn on a whim unless you keep both on hand.

The cleanup is genuinely messier. You're draining salty water, rinsing the bucket and lid with fresh water and drying everything before it goes away, or the metal starts to corrode. And you have to keep the brine out of the canister itself — check the lid gasket every time, because salt water in the base ruins the batch.

The texture is a little coarser. Cooling from the outside of a bucket is less even than a fully frozen bowl, so the crystals come out slightly bigger and the result reads more old-fashioned than silky. Plenty of people prefer exactly that, especially straight from the canister at soft-serve temperature. If you're chasing gelato smoothness, this isn't the machine.