Bulbs & Fittings Ideas

The Waring IC70 is a MACHINE! This baby can crush my ice cubes any day. I’ve found the resulting ice chunks to be perfect for crunching and munching on(I have a compusive ice chewing habit). It is very easy to use, just plug it in, turn on the switch and dump in the ice cubes. It was crushing away on my countertop mere moments after our hottie UPS guy rang the doorbell. Essentially, feed ice cubes into the chute on top and a nice, big plastic bin below receives the lovely crushed output. The stainless steel housing is attractive and understated, but this guy is a little on the large size. Still, I’m willing to give up the counterspace in order to appease my crushed ice needs. I crush roughly 14 ice cube trays worth of ice a day and there is never a hitch. I have had ice cubes get wedged in the chute when I dump a whole tray of ice in at once but this is easily fixed by rocking it gently back and forth.

I found this product far superior to the Deni which makes sno-cone style ice and seemed quite rickety compared to the Waring. Also, much less work than the hand-cranked Metrokane Ice Crusher. This Waring IC70 makes great crushed ice for bar drinks: perfect for my amaretto sours and mojitos- even margaritas on the rocks, also great for soft drinks. This does not produce the consistency of ice needed for sno-cones or blended-style drinks.

I was tempted to buy a less expensive hand ice crusher, but then read some of the disasterous reviews of those, and opted instead for this ice crusher based on most of the positive feedback. Knowing that it would not make “shaved ice” before I acquired it has kept my expectations realistic, and it performs exactly as I thought it would, actually better. A friend thought I paid hundreds of dollars for this since it looks very no-nonsense and professional. It crushes the ice into random chunks ranging from pea-sized to marble sized, even though I feed it pretty large cubes from a tray.

I have even frozen diet soda in a tray and fed it through to make flavorful “chewing ice” since I love to chew on ice. You can eat this “soda pop ice” in a cup with a spoon, and it is a lot less caloric than ice cream and satisfies the desire in the summer to eat something ice cold when it is hot outside. However, it is not to be confused with the products you can buy at the convenience store since the chunks of this unit’s ice are much larger than those that come out of the “soft serve” units commercially found at convenience stores.

So if you are looking for shaved ice or “soft serve” ice, this is not the one to look at. But if you are just looking to crunch up ice cubes or like to munch on ice, I think this may be the way to go. After seeing what it takes to crunch up the large ice cubes that I feed it, I’m really glad I did not go with a cheaper flimsier manual unit. I’m very happy with the results I have seen from this crusher.

This product is exactly what I had been wanting – a simple ice crusher that is easy to use. I had been using a blender before, and this is much simpler and also not as loud. It makes somewhat coursely crushed ice (not shaved) that is great for putting in cold drinks. The manual also talks about using it to create ice beds for serving food on (such as shellfish). I guess that would be possible, although I think it would take a long time to make that much crushed ice. It takes around 1 minute to make enough crushed ice to fill an 8-10 oz glass. Also, the machine will occasionally freeze up (no pun intended) if you put in too much ice at once, especially large cubes. If that happens, you have to pour hot water into the top to melt the ice that is stuck.