Tag Archives: pressure cooking

Cuisinart Soup Maker – Hot & Cold Blender – 2

John | 4 June, 2011 - 12:32 am

When I wrote my first post about the Cuisinart Soup Maker / Hot & Cold Blender, there is no doubt that I was thrilled by it.  All I had to do was put veg into the blender, add stock or stock powder, spices and herbs if desired, top up with stock or water to the 1400 ml mark, and set the blender timer to about 28 minutes, then start heating to bring the contents to the boil, which took about 8 minutes or so.  Once a vigorous boil had been reached, I would press the “Simmer” button, adjust the timer to 20 minutes if need be, and the blender would then very gently simmer the contents.  Several times during the process I would press the “Stir” button for a few seconds.  When the timer reached zero, the blender would then turn off.  Any time after that I could use the blender to blend the soup to as near as I could get to a puree.  Unfortunately, there would always be some lumps in the soup, be it potato, parsnip or mushroom stalks.  I tolerated the lumps because they were, after all, little pieces of good healthy cooked vegetables.  However, I was disappointed in the performance of the appliance as a blender, because I did my best to make sure there were no lumps by using pulse, and all the speeds the blender has to offer.

Almost four weeks ago, my honeymoon period with the Cuisinart Soup Maker / Hot & Cold Blender came to an abrupt end.  I was making a soup and had set to the timer to 28 minutes as usual.  When the timer got close to the 20 minute mark I stood in front of the blender to keep a very close watch on it to be ready for the moment it came to a vigorous boil, and press the Simmer button.  However, as you no doubt know, there is an old saying that a watched pot never boils.  And this proved to be the case.  The liquid just wouldn’t come to the boil while I watching it.  Then I got distracted for maybe 30 seconds, or a minute at most, and the next thing I knew the liquid was shooting out of the top of the blender and making a terrible mess on the counter-top.  It took about 15 minutes to clean up the mess which got into and under everything within reach on the bench.

To add insult to injury, the final soup had more lumps in it than usual, and I found that it gave me some tummy discomfort every time I had it.  In the end I threw the remainder out and haven’t made soup since.  To be fair, I should mention that I had been having tummy discomfort since the week before Easter, and I had to be very careful what I ate.   Simple food worked best.  My tummy discomfort after having the soup could have been from the wholemeal or multi-grain bread, toasted, that I’d eaten with the soup.  I soon afterwards switched to light and white breads such as Vienna loaf, and my tummy has been fine since.

Today I read somewhere that the old food pyramid showing how much we should eat of what, each day, is changing.  Grains are no longer held in such high regard, because for some people they cause sickness.  I don’t want to get into that, but it struck a chord with me because of my recent experiences.  My tummy troubles ended when I switched from Brumbies wholemeal and grains breads to their white breads such as Vienna loaf, French Stick, and Ciabatta.

Coming back to the Cuisinart Soup Maker / Hot & Cold Blender, I have to say that after the overflow four weeks ago when it came to the boil, and the lumps after blending the cooked soup with the blender as best I could, I’ve concluded there are better, quicker, cheaper and surer ways of cooking soup.   I’ll make a post on this when I find the time.  But in short, using the Cuisinart Pressure Cooker to cook the soup and the Kenwood TriBlade Hand Blender to blend it, is the answer.

Just put the ingredients into the pressure cooker, lock the lid on, set the timer for the cooking time – maybe 8 minutes (instead of 20 minutes) – and the cooker will take care of everything, and switch off when it’s done.  The cooker doesn’t start timing until it reaches the desired pressure, then it reduces the heat to maintain pressure throughout the cooking.  The Kenwood TriBlade blending attachments with plastic feet are ideal for the non-stick interior of the pressure cooker.  They can blend everything without any lumps.

Despite the above, I still think the Cuisinart Soup Maker (as called overseas) or Hot & Cold Blender (as called in Australia) is a fine product.  I was so pleased with it that this is what inspired me to buy the Cuisinart Pressure Cooker.  With the benefit of hindsight, I think the pressure plus Kenwood TriBlade blender set is the better combination to make soup.  The two products together are about the same price as the Cuisinart Hot & Cold Blender, and they are of course much more versatile.  I cook my corned beef in the pressure cooker, and it’s great for cooking rice in 3-4 minutes, or risotto in 7 minute (with no stirring).  But again, I’ll make a post on that when I get the time (and inspiration).

 

Posted in Blenders, Food, Gadgets, General | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

Inductions hobs 10

John | 1 June, 2010 - 12:02 am

This evening I cooked a 926gm piece of Virginia beef in my Kuhn Rikon frypan pressure cooker on top of the gas stove.  This is the first time since last October that I’ve cooked beef in the pressure cooker on my gas stove-top.  I’ve been using the Breville Ikon Induction Cooker during the past seven months when I’ve used the pressure cooker.  At other times I’ve used the microwave oven.

I made a number of observations.  The Breville portable induction hob brought the pressure cooker up to full pressure much quicker than the gas stove.  Perhaps less than half the time.   But I’m only talking about bringing 250 ml (1 cup) of water to the boil, so it’s only 3 minutes instead of 6 minutes sort of thing.  Not a huge deal.

Once the pressure cooker was up to the desired high pressure (15 psi), it was much easier to keep it close to that level with the gas stove, than with the Breville.  This is almost certainly due to the fact that the gas stove has very gradual adjustments to the burners, whereas the Breville can only be adjusted in 20C steps.  The gas stove burners can also go much lower in temperature than the Breville.

One thing I noted when bringing the pressure cooker to high pressure or bringing a saucepan to the boil to make soup on the gas stove, as compared to doing it on the Breville induction cooker is simply this:

On an induction cooker you can apply full power at any time, when desired, to the utensil.  But on a gas stove, the maximum burner power should be confined so that the flames do not extend beyond the base of the utensil.

So after all this time and experiment with gas and induction, what is my preferred way of cooking 600gm-1500 gm pieces of beef or corned beef?

The answer, without any doubt at all, is microwave.  I have a Panasonic microwave inverter oven, and it cooks the  beef or corned beef just as well, without any of the hassle.  I just put the beef in an oven bag with 250 ml of liquid (and herbs etc), and place it inside a Corningware casserole dish with glass lid.  Cooking times are much the same – but the microwave requires a 5 minutes at full power start, and then the cooking time is the same, but in the microwave at only 30% power.

With the microwave, there is no washing up afterwards.  The beef was in an oven bag with a rubber ring etc to close the end enough so that only steam escapes in the cooking process.  The casserole dish only has pure water in it.  A quick rinse and dry is all that is needed for the dish and lid.

The thumbnail and photo above for this post are of the Falcon gas stove range – an expensive range.  These beautiful stoves are descendant’s of the AGA that we had in our home at Mount Gambier in my youth.  The AGA was like no other – it had stove top hubs and ovens that were working 24/7 to use the modern phrase that was unheard of when we had an AGA.

In 2010, the AGA has a feeling of romance for me, of wonderful old times.  But in reality it was hard work (topping it up it daily with coke from our coke house) to keep it going.  If the fire went out, it took 12 hours to come up to heat again, and the heat depended on the day and whether there was wind.  It was a great relief for my Mother – the cook – when my parents visited an exhibition one night and as a result my Father switched to a wonderful gas stove with gas cylinders.

Posted in General, Induction cooking | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

Pressure Cooking with Induction Cooker

John | 11 January, 2010 - 11:41 pm

This post is not a review of a beer. The photo shows what was left of a small bottle of ale after I poured 250ml (1 cup) of Amber Ale into my Kuhn Rikon 2 litre pressure cooker frypan to cook an 818gm (1.8 pound) piece of low fat beef to well done, in only 30 minutes. It was cooked on the Breville BIC200 portable induction cooker.

I can’t believe I chose to cook a roast on a day when it was 43.6C in Melbourne (that’s 110.5F). But that is one of the big advantages of induction cooking. Only the cooking utensil and contents get hot, and only as hot as needed to cook the food. There is no inefficient heat loss escaping into the kitchen.

I like my meat well done, so I cook it for 18 minutes for every 500gm of meat (about 1 pound). In this case the calculation was 818 (the weight of the meat in grams) divided by 500 (grams) times 18 (minutes) which gave the result of 30 minutes (29.448).

I put the meat in the pressure cooker, with 250ml (1 cup) of the strong ale plus a little water, and put the lid on. On the BIC200, it took 3 to 4 minutes for the steam pressure to come up to the Low pressure line, at which point I turned the cooker back to it’s level 2. I knew from experience that the pressure level would slowly rise to the second (High) pressure line on the pressure cooker. Then I reduced the BIC200 level to 1, and gradually the pressure dropped, and when it reached the Low pressure mark I increased the BIC200 level to 2. What seems to happen after that first round of changing settings, is that from then on their are only two settings on the BIC200 that I use to control the pressure level in the pressure. Level 1 increases the pressure and OFF to reduce it once it gets to High. When the BIC200 is off, I wait until the pressure drops to the Low level then turn the BIC200 back on again, and immediately reduce the power level to 1 (it always comes on at level 6).

The above photo is a close-up of the Kuhn Rikon lid showing the 2 pressure levels. The higher red mark is the lower pressure (8psi) which appears first as the pressure rises. The lower red mark appears next once the pressure has increased to 15psi, the High cooking pressure level. In the photo, the High pressure level has been exceeded.

ook forward to the day when perhaps I’ll have an induction stovetop with a wider range of power settings so that I can maintain a constant setting lower than I can with the BIC200.

Posted in Gadgets, General, Induction cooking | Tagged , , | 4 Comments