The test of electric cookers: which miracle pot dinner is more delicious?

Having satiated with all sorts of refinements of modern multinational cuisine: dishes cooked on grills, in deep-fryers, on wok pans, etc.d., More and more people think about the benefits of what they eat. Remembering how our ancestors ate, trying to understand how to preserve all the vitamins and minerals in the food. Yet few modern women are willing to spend all day in the kitchen by the stove, even for the sake of a healthy meal.

Such a difficult task as cooking delicious and healthy dishes with minimal human involvement, can solve modern “smart” kitchen appliances: casseroles, multicookers, slow cookers, samovarky and pressure cookers. It is such “wonder pots” and we decided to test.

The fastest

Pressure cookers are not new, but today’s devices are strikingly different from their ancestors: they plug into the wall outlet, have touch-screen menus and automatic cooking programs, can keep cooked food warm for long periods of time and are equipped with delayed start timers. Also, all pressure cookers have grates for steaming.

Thus, the modern electric pressure cooker is a rice cooker + steam cooker + pressure cooker proper. In it you can cook porridges, stew meat, cook soups and borscht, bake biscuits and casseroles.

Products in pressure cooker cooks without air access to steam or in their own juice, which allows you to not use fat or oil. Cooking temperature is 110-115° C, which preserves more vitamins and minerals and brings out the original taste of food. It produces less steam and less odor during cooking.

The main difference of pressure cookers from other devices: products are cooked under pressure. During the cooking process, the device itself regulates the pressure inside, in case it exceeds the norm, the excess pressure is automatically eliminated by a pressure relief valve. At this point, steam comes out of it.

At the end of cooking, you must reduce the pressure inside, otherwise you simply can not open the lid. In some devices it is necessary to turn a special valve, and some devices steam is released automatically at the end of the cooking process.

When the cycle is complete and the dish is ready, the program automatically turns on to keep food hot. So your child can come home after school and have a hot meal prepared by you in the pressure cooker in the morning.

Technique of different manufacturers time of automatic keeping warm can be different. For example, in the instructions of the pressure cooker Unit, the maximum time of use of the function – 24 hours, but the manufacturers of pressure cookers Cuscoo not recommend using it more than 12 hours, so that the dish does not lose its flavor.

By the way, when using pressure cookers, you spend 15% less time and up to 20% less electricity than when cooking the same dish on the stove.

“The American oven is made in England

The multicooker combines many features. You can cook porridges, including milk porridges, cook rice in a variety of ways, stew foods, bake, steam, rotate, dip, stir fry, etc.

The microprocessor calculates the required cooking time, controls the temperature and handles the cooking process from start to finish.

You can cook food using automatic programs, in which case you just need to select the desired one from the menu, or you can set the cooking time yourself. The time interval is very wide. So, in the program “stew” the dish can cook from 1 hour to 12 hours.

And in the program “steaming” fish fillets can be cooked in just 10 minutes, the minimum operating time of this program is 1 minute. And the temperature range is just as varied.

In braising mode the temperature is kept at around 100°C, and in baking mode the food is baked at 180°C. Since cooking in this mode is very gentle, there is no crusty crust on top of the casserole or pie.

The dishes are cooked in a non-stick coated container, which is inserted into the case with good insulation. The heating element is located directly under the container, the body itself during cooking does not get very hot.

The lid is hermetically sealed and the groats are cooked under pressure, so the appliance has a steam release valve. With these features, the multicooker is similar to a pressure cooker. With its ability to stew food at a low temperature for a long time, the appliance resembles a slow cooker.

All in one device

In the mid-eighties in the U.S. was developed aerogrill – a compact device for cooking “grill” at any time, anywhere there is electricity. Cooking must be done according to the principles of healthy eating.

The first model of aero grill was the model with a removable lid and function of cooking the main dishes, which had a mechanical control panel with one speed of convection. A bracket was soon invented, allowing housewives to lower and raise the lid of the air grill with the slightest movement of their hand.

It was then possible to control the speed of the air currents and thus have a chance to cook any kind of food, even the most delicate ones, and to control the juiciness of the product being cooked. In addition, we have added a program of self-cleaning and defrosting .

You can do everything in an air grill: boil, stew, roast, bake, and even smoke and dry. Cooking removes excess fat from the food, thus reducing calories and cholesterol levels. Aerogrill cooks with streams of clean hot air, preserving maximum vitamins and nutrients, and it has no harmful radiation.

The device is controlled by the control panel, which displays information about the time remaining to the end of the program, the cooking temperature and the rate of hot air. A thermostat keeps the temperature constant.

Low fan speed is used for drying greens, cooking omelets, meringues, baking, medium – for stewing, smoking, roasting, stewing, drying vegetables and fruits, high – for sterilization, frying, grilling, drying mushrooms, getting the crust on the meat products.

The most important part of any aero grill is the lid, which contains the microprocessor and the control panel, the heating element and the fan that supplies hot air to the food.

In the air grill you can cook without utensils at all, using only grates, stimmer, skewers, roaster for poultry. But if you want, you can also cook soups, crockpots, etc., in the aero grill.d. For these purposes, almost any small dishes are suitable the only exceptions are wooden and plastic .

In principle, the air grill is a compact electric oven that fits on a normal table.

What are the results?

Almost every appliance we’ve tested has had its admirer. Someone was inspired by the idea to buy a multicooker, some prefer pressure cookers, those who would like to place a slow cooker in the kitchen, were not ignored and air grill.

To paraphrase the classics: “All devices are good, but you must choose according to your taste!”Read the analysis, study the features, see what you like more and what you like less, and choose – the right technique for you.

r.S. On the threshold of summer we got the idea to write about kitchen equipment that can be used at dacha. But, having been tested, we understood – any of the described devices can be taken with you out of town, all of them will be in demand there, of course, in the presence of electricity in the house.

VERY CONVENIENT..

Here are excerpts from the manual B. v. Pokhlebkin to the tihovkova, they all fit into modern slow cookers as well:

“In a tihovkavar you can cook dishes of real American national cuisine, which are out of use due to the lack of a American oven with its falling temperature: nyanya, perepeche, salnik, as well as dishes of any national cuisine that require a long simmering.

These include, but are not limited to, Moldovan moussaka Georgian chanakhi Armenian ktchuch porridges Uzbek shawl Tajik pilaf bean dishes Azerbaijani balik-bozbash.

The tilting cooker also makes it possible to prepare English festive dishes such as plumpudding and haggis, which have an outstanding taste. A tihovkalnak may well be used to cook any dish, including standard, but in a non-standard situation.

For example, when you cook normal pasta or potatoes on the gas stove you may need to go and do something urgent for 15-20 minutes or even half an hour.

In order not to interrupt cooking, urgently shift or pour a quarter or half cooked pasta in the cooker, turn on high or low mode depending on the time for which you need the distraction and quietly go about your business.

By the end of your activity the dish will be cooked to perfection, will not burn, will not boil, and will be ready just in time. And so in all other cases”.

TIMERS ARE DIFFERENT AND NOT SO DIFFERENT

All the described appliances are equipped with timers which can be used to set the cooking time or to preset the start and end time of a certain program.

When plugged in device in some models Cuckoo timer can act as an electronic clock – to show the current time, it is enough just to set the necessary values.

In some programs you can set the cooking time using the timer. In the “multi-cooker” mode of the pressure cooker Cuckoo, cooking time varies from 10 to 90 minutes, the minimum unit of time change is 5 minutes, the default setting in the program is 20 minutes.

The pressure cooker Unit does not set the total cooking time for a particular food, but rather the cooking time under pressure. The maximum time you can set is 99 minutes, but you have to push the button 99 times for that, because one push corresponds to 1 minute. The dish will take a little longer to cook, since the pressure cooker will need time to heat up and build pressure.

Multicooker Panasonic suggests independently setting the cooking time for the programs “baking”, “stewing”, “steaming”, and in each of the programs the range is different: in the steamer – 1-60 minutes, stewing is from 1 to 12 hours, baking – 20-65 minutes.

In the slow cooker Kenwood timer allows you to set the cooking time in thirty-minute intervals up to a maximum of 10 hours, and for both “low” and “high” modes.

Samovar Vitamin Plus from Morphy Richards is also equipped with a timer that allows you to adjust the cooking time in the range from 4 to 12 hours, with the ability to adjust it to within 10 minutes.

The delayed start function is extremely convenient. That’s what allows you to sleep in the morning and come into the kitchen for a freshly cooked breakfast or provide the children a hot lunch.

Different manufacturers set slightly different time intervals in this case: for example, pressure cooker Cuckoo has the maximum timer setting time of 13 hours. But the producers recommend limiting ourselves to 7-8 hours, especially in the summertime: without a fridge food can go bad during this time.

You need to set the exact time by which the dish should be cooked, for example, if you start breakfast at 8 am, then at this time and the dish will be ready, but will turn on pressure cooker itself before that time.

In different modes varies the minimum time setting timer, for example, in the program “white rice” high pressure minimum is 41 minutes, and in the program “porridge” – only 19 minutes, in the same program “multicooker” to delay the start of cooking you can literally from 1 minute and on.

But in the pressure cooker Unit you can set the time to start cooking. For example, if you set the timer to 3 hours, in three hours the dish will be ready. The maximum time for which you can postpone the start of cooking is 9 hours.

Multicooker Panasonic allows you to use the delayed start function for three programs buckwheat, pilaf, porridge . You set the time you want your dish to be ready, and it will be ready the moment the timer finishes counting down. The timer can be set from 1 to 13 hours in increments of 30 minutes.

It’s not our task to compare the appliances with each other. We have taken appliances that differ in principle of operation, to better understand the features of each, to see their functionality and usability.

Of course, we also evaluated the taste of the obtained dishes. On purpose we did not prepare complex culinary masterpieces, but tried to choose simple and affordable recipes to see if it is convenient to use this technique every day.