| Cheers, everyone! It’s Matthew Kronsberg here for Pursuits, and this summer I’ve decided that, rather than complain about the heat, I’d do something about it. No, I’m not going to migrate northward for a “coolcation” or hang ten in a massive wave pool. Instead this is going to be my summer of slush—it should be yours too. For the past few weeks, as New York turned into an open-air pizza oven, I’ve kept cool with a refreshing round robin of homemade frosé, soft serve and frosty margaritas. I’ve been testing a pair of countertop contraptions: the new $575 GreenPan Frost, a soft serve ice cream and frozen drink maker, and the $350 Ninja Slushi, which makes only frozen drinks. But it wasn’t all colorful beverages and paper umbrellas—I’ve also faced a daily duel with sphenopalatine ganglioneuralgia, better known as brain freeze. I tell you this not as a bid for your pity, but only to note that even the cushiest assignments have their hazards. Probably the hardest part of my testing was deciding where to begin. That wasn’t the case for Tom Bannister, the founder of Tom’s Perfect 10 Granola, who received a Slushi as a Father’s Day gift from his wife, Eva Chen, Instagram’s director of fashion partnerships. Bannister says his wife got it for him because he’s always loved piña coladas—“one of the first granolas I made was a piña colada granola.” (I might just sign up for Perfect 10’s flavor-of-the-month subscription in the hope that it comes back.) Bannister broke in his machine with frozen lemonade for their kids, plus two batches of piña coladas for himself and Chen.  The Ninja Slushi. Source: Ninja The Slushi first caught Chen’s eye last summer. You can probably guess where. “She saw it on Instagram,” her husband says, “and because it was billed as ‘sold out and impossible to get,’ of course it made her want one even more.” That social media madness when it first came out was real. Since its release last July, the Slushi has garnered more than 1 billion global media impressions, helping the frozen drink maker reach $297 million in sales for the company’s food preparation category, SharkNinja Inc. Chief Executive Officer Mark Adam Barrocas told investors this spring. Earning so much attention is only a positive thing if the product lives up to its promises. Fortunately I found that, in all important aspects, both the Slushi and the Frost did.  The GreenPan Frost in pistachio. Source: GreenPan Both of the machines I tested demand substantial countertop real estate. The Slushi is about 16 inches deep, 6.5 inches wide and 17 inches tall—a bit bigger all around than a stand mixer. The Frost is roughly an inch deeper and 2 inches wider. Even if they take up visual space, their sonic footprint is minimal—just the hum of the cooling unit, the whir of the auger and the buzz of anticipation. They’re the kinds of gadgets that make you want to entertain. The Frost can take as much as 48 ounces of liquid to make up to 64 oz of drinks or ice cream. It offers settings for slushie, soft ice cream, spiked slushie, sorbet and milkshake, with seven “firmness” settings. The Slushi’s tank is a bit larger: It can hold as much as 64 oz of liquid, for 88 oz of slushy drinks. (There’s also a Costco edition of the Slushi that’s, unsurprisingly, even larger, making up to 96 oz at a go.) Ninja’s machine offers slush, spiked slush, frappé, milkshake, frozen juice, as well as 10 temperature options, which are nominally the same thing as the Frost’s “firmness” settings. (Both machines also have a cleaning mode.) For times when it’s just you or the family, the Slushi can operate with as little as 16 oz of liquid, while the Frost needs 24 oz. I found that the operating time from start to finish varied depending on ingredients, quantity and which mode the machine was in. A small batch of Arnold Palmers were slushy in about 15 minutes. A tank full of boozy drinks could take almost an hour to achieve their ideal texture. Watching my concoctions swirl and churn was hypnotic, and the feeling of pulling the handle and dispensing a frosty daiquiri or towering bowl of soft serve in my own home was primal, almost illicit. Anyone who’s ever dreamed of hopping the counter at the DQ or commandeering the margarita machine in a busy bar knows exactly what I mean. If you’re choosing between them, it comes down to a question of versatility or volume. If you want to also make ice cream, the GreenPan Frost is the way to go. If you envision yourself only making frozen lemonade for hordes of kids, or piña coladas for a party, the Slushi (or especially its Costco variant) would be the smart move. Oh, and the price difference isn’t quite as big as it seems—the GreenPan Frost is currently on sale for $400. What to Make and How to Make ItOne reason people love these machines is their ease of use. Pour in lemonade or juice, push a button and wait. (Cleanup, I should note, is similarly simple for both.) The internet is full of recipes for the Slushi, any of which should work for the Frost, as long as you’re mindful of its slightly lower capacity. When you get into creating your own concoctions, there are a few rules to keep in mind. The first is that whatever you make should have at least 4% sugar content; this is key to achieving that slushy texture. Add alcohol, and the amount of sugar you need goes up. While both machines say they work with boozy drinks that have from 2.8% to 16% alcohol, I found that the higher you go, the longer it takes to get a good texture. Because the Frost seems to run a bit colder than the Slushi, it handles the demands of higher-alcohol drinks a bit better.  The best way to cool off in summer? Find a friend with a beach house or pool and secure yourself an invite for the weekend. But don’t show up empty-handed. We’ve rounded up 20 of the best hostess gifts for summer 2025. Source: Companies Landing your creations in the alcohol and sugar sweet spots can require a fair bit of (shudder) math. Fortunately frozen drink enthusiasts have created tools to help with those calculations. YouTuber Derek Cole has produced Slushi-centric instructional videos, as well as a spreadsheet that calculates alcohol and sugar content based on the ingredients and quantities you enter. Cole tells me that “tools like ChatGPT are also great to adapt recipes. It’s one of those things I would not recommend to everyone, since it’s often wrong, but if you understand how to prompt it and review the math, it’s the simplest way to convert something to the correct ABV and Brix.” (Brix is the system by which sugar content is measured.) The Right Way to FroséI knew that some kind of slushy wine would be in my testing regime, so I reached out to Justin Sievers, managing partner of New York City’s Bar Primi. “Don’t be afraid to use big flavors,” he says. “The flavors of ingredients will be muted when they’re frozen, so make sure the rosé you’re using has enough body and fruitiness to punch through. Back when I invented frosé in 2016, I used strawberries as the flavor addition.”  Frosé at Bar Primi in New York City. Source: Bar Primi When I asked whether, given muted flavors and the inclusion of fruit, this might be a job for a box of Franzia, Josh Nadel, the beverage director for NoHo Hospitality and Bar Primi, diplomatically tried to steer me in a better direction: “We like rosato from central or southern Italy, which often has a bit more fruit and assertive flavor, versus the more delicate, pale Provençal style.” There’s no need to get too fancy with it, however, he assured me. “Anything over $25 for the most part loses the forest for the trees.” | 
