A great slushy is one of the wonders of modern times, but for too long you had to leave your house to get one. After a night of multiple frozen margaritas, I would often find myself Googling the price of an at-home frozen-drink dispenser, only to be daunted by the price point: The industrial models my beloved local Mexican dive has ring in at $1,500. And that’s before figuring out where in your kitchen you’d put a three-gallon slushy machine. And then, as if in answer to my tipsy online searches, the Ninja Slushi debuted this year. It’s an at-home frozen-drink dispenser that can make slushies, milkshakes, and frozen cocktails. Not to be hyperbolic, but it has made all my beverage dreams come true.
This summer, the Ninja Slushi hit TikTok with all the force of a viral dance craze. Turns out it wasn’t just me who had been longing for a way to bring Coke slushies to my couch without a visit to 7-Eleven. Although it has been sold out periodically, I managed to get my hands on a machine, and, my God, I was immediately hooked. Within an hour of the Slushi arriving at my house, it was dispensing a perfectly frozen limeade slushy. All I had to do was set it up (it takes up the same amount of space as a KitchenAid stand mixer), fill the tank with limeade, and turn on the machine.
The Slushi is ridiculously easy to operate. It has settings for slush, frozen juice, spiked slush, milkshakes, and frappé as well as a meter that allows you to control how frozen you want your frozen drink to be. You mix up a beverage — at minimum, 16 ounces; at maximum, 64 ounces — and pour it into the machine’s tank and press the corresponding button. The Slushi then starts the chilling cycle, and within half an hour or so, the drink turns into slush and stays that way for up to 12 hours. I’ve thrown all manner of drinks at it — mango juice, tomato juice and vodka, cold brew, a whole bottle of wine — and so far, it’s all worked.
The only real limitation of the Slushi is that in order to slush properly, your drink has to contain some amount of sugar or alcohol, though it has to be below 14 percent alcohol by volume to work. Beer, wine, juice, and regular soda will work; diet soda and martinis will not. The Slushi comes with many charts and explanations for this, which at first felt daunting. But actually, it turns out to be pretty simple. If there’s not enough sugar in the drink, the machine will stop and flash a warning. You’ll then add simple syrup, honey, agave, or maple syrup before hitting the button again. Ditto if there’s too much alcohol: The machine stops and flashes the “too much alcohol” signal and then you’ll just add water to dilute the mixture and it’ll run again. Weirdly, I once got the “too much alcohol” warning while making an alcohol-free orange-juice slushy — maybe it had too much sugar? — but I added half a cup of water and the Slushi happily went back to work.
If that all sounds like magic, well, it kind of is. You can make a complicated drink in the Slushi or just crack open a couple cans of soda and dump it in there. It’s also not a nightmare to clean. There’s a rinse setting to use in between drinks, which just involves filling the tank with hot water. But even taking the machine apart and washing it wasn’t that big of a deal, and all the parts of the Slushi except the motor and evaporator can go in the dishwasher.
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