With the money I received from relatives for my birthday I decided to purchase a multicooker. My main reason for buying one is that I love to cook slow cooked meals over winter and my current slow cooker does not have a timer. It is also a little overzealous so I could not leave it on all day whilst at work as it would overcook the food.
The other thing that appealed to me about a multicooker was the inclusion of a pressure cook function. I have never used one before and was fascinated at the possibilities and practicalities for a full time working mum of football-playing-eat-like-a-horse teenage boys.
So I did a bit of research and read heaps of reviews and decided on the New Wave 5 in 1 Multicooker which I ordered from Kitchenware Direct. It cost about $140 delivered (in 3 days) and just so you know, this post is not sponsored. I mainly want to let you know that so far I am extremely happy with my choice. These are the 5 functions that my multicooker performs:
1. Searing
You can brown your meat in the dish before slow or pressure cooking. Very handy for adding cooked onions and garlic to your dish - extra flavour without the added washing up.
2. Slow Cooking
These are a couple of dishes I have made using the slow cook function.
I came home to this pork and pineapple curry tonight which was such a treat. I marinated the pork overnight and put it in the cooker with the vegetables at 8am this morning before I left for work. I had the timer set to come on at 10am for six hours. The cooker then automatically switches to 'warm' function so it was absolutely perfect when I got home. I only had to boil some rice, but a lot of people put that in too.
You can see how clear and easy the functions are selected. The red time is the preset time and the green time is how long you want it to cook for. There is no low or high setting like most slow cookers and I find the timing to be in between. Most dishes you would cook on low for eight hours or high for four hours, and I find six hours is perfect in this cooker.
This is not a great photo but it shows a mild sausage curry I made for the boys. I boiled the sausages first to remove fat and skins, then put the pasta in with the curry and sausages. I then put it on slow cook for three hours. Perfect!
3. Pressure Cooking
I am so impressed with the pressure cook function and have used this the most. Anything that I would normally fry I am now cooking in my multicooker, and it is so much easier to clean. I did steak the other night cooked in gravy which took 8 minutes and was perfectly moist and tender.Getting the timing right is the key to pressure cooking and I use the recipes provided and a fantastic Multicooker Facebook group if I am unsure. It is suggested to use the high pressure for meats and low pressure for vegetables
This bolognese sauce took 15 minutes on high pressure. Next time I will add the spaghetti at the same time.
The yummy beef casserole took 30 minutes on high pressure. I browned the meat (chuck steak) using the searing function in the photo above.
4. Soup
This is one of my beautiful home grown pumpkins.
Chopped up with some onion, garlic, chicken stock and bacon.
Two hours later, perfect pumpkin soup. I have also made this on the low pressure function which halved the cooking time.
5. Steaming
How perfect are these steamed vegetables? You just put some water in the bottom of the cooker and place the steam basket on the rack...and ten minutes later you have perfect vegies.
The cooker is quite big (6 litre capacity), and the insert is made of a very easy to clean non stick metal. You can buy stainless steel inserts separately if you want to. The steam basket and rack are shown below, together with the spoon which also came with the package.
So, if you have been contemplating getting a multi cooker I can thoroughly recommend the practicality and functionality of the New Wave 5 in 1. They also have a 6 in 1 cooker that has deep frying but I thought that would just get rather messy...and I don't deep fry anything anyway.
