Cuisinart Pressure Cooker CPC-600
 
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Cuisinart Pressure Cooker CPC-600
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Product Review of Cuisinart Pressure Cooker CPC-600 Benefits of Your CPC-600 Pressure Cooker Pressure Cooker Cookbooks |
Product Review of Cuisinart Pressure Cooker CPC-600
I’ve always wanted a pressure cooker, but we’ve all heard tales about some of them over-pressurizing and exploding, so I’ve been very leery. I even bought a stove top pressure cooker online, and then chickened out after I read the operating instructions – I was afraid I’d never quite be able to tell for sure when the cooker reached the correct pressure, I’d have a hard time keeping it at the proper pressure, or something would happen and I’d mess up with disastrous results. So I was amazed when my sister told me she had purchased an electric pressure cooker she just loved, that for most of her uses she could just program and walk away without worrying about it, and that she didn’t have to sit in the kitchen continuously monitoring it. So I asked for the exact same pressure cooker for Christmas, and I loved mine so much, that about a month later, my father bought another one for my parents to use.
I wish I had gotten one of these Cuisinart pressure cookers a long time ago: its easy to use, easy to clean, it cooks food so quickly, and no matter how long I have it cooking it doesn’t seem to add a lot of heat to the kitchen, its such a convenience, especially during the holiday meals when stovetop burners and the oven are at such a premium. It is a little more expensive than the regular stovetop pressure cookers out there (because there are a heating element and electronics built into it), but it is worth the extra cost because the machine does the tricky stuff for you: it brings the food up to pressure and keeps it at the right pressure all during the cooking process, once the electronic timer counts down, the machine will automatically start depressurizing for you, and once it depressurizes, keep the food warm until you’re ready to serve it. Or if you’re making quicker cooking meals like vegetables (or you just don’t want to wait), once the timer alarm goes off, use a pair of tongs to flip the pressure release over to “quick pressure release” and you’ll be able to access the pot in a couple of minutes. And if you make a mistake, it’ll let you know, too. One time I goofed and either didn’t set the pressure release in the proper setting or I bumped it out of place, so when the machine tried and couldn’t bring itself up to the proper pressure, it started beeping to warn me, I went over and checked the problem, used tongs to put the pressure valve back in proper position, and within a minute or two it had reached the proper pressure and started cooking again – I only lost a couple of minutes on the meal because of my mistake.
Let me start this product review with a couple of things the pressure won’t do, and things I wish it did differently. You cannot fry food in it. You should not use it to try to can food, because you can’t set a specific temperature or level of pressure, and the pot just isn’t big enough for large canning jars anyway. I’ve also seen some complaints amongst the Amazon reviews that you don’t get the same complex flavors that you would with a slow cooker – and while I haven’t experienced any problems on this score myself, the reality of cooking is that you can’t circumvent the flavor-enhancing benefits of slow cooking. If you want the flavor benefits of slow cooking, there are no substitutes, you’re going to buy a slow cooker, and you’re going to have to wait hours and hours for each meal. You also aren’t supposed to use split peas in the pressure cooker because of frothing issues, but if you want to make split pea soup, you can just use the simmer function on the machine (without the lid), rather than using the pressure cooker setting. We’ve all found the cooking pot large enough to make the largest volume of beans, rice, or stew we could want for the family, I’ve routinely cooked 5 – 6 lbs. of meat in it at one time, but if you are planning on cooking for a large crowd, you might have to do multiple batches. The only thing I wish it could do that it doesn’t is that in addition to using the pressure cooking function, I also like to make my soups in it (because then I don’t have to keep coming in and checking the heat and water levels of the pot on the stove) using the “simmer” function. Unfortunately, the timer doesn’t work for the “simmer” setting, but that’s a minor complaint, and easy enough to deal with. I just set a regular kitchen timer and take it with me into whatever room I’m in while the soup is simmering.
What the Cuisinart CPC-600 does do is nothing less than fantastic, as far as I’m concerned. Without soaking the beans at all, without any preplanning, you can go from dried beans to fully cooked in less than an hour. I was able to make a traditional bean with bacon soup recipe (that called for the beans to be soaked overnight and then cooked for three hours) start to finish, in less than an hour, including my prep time and time for the machine to pressurize and depressurize. (And I wasn’t limited to a special “pressure cooker” recipe, either, I used a regular recipe that I adapted on the fly for the pressure cooker.) Most beans take a half hour or less to cook, even less if you’ve presoaked them, and even chickpeas took less than an actual hour of pressure cooking. You can have dishes that usually require pre-planning like bean soup and chili or long cooking times like pot roast in a fraction of the time. The other day, on a whim, I made homemade vegetarian refried beans — cooked them, mashed them with a non-metallic masher right in the pot, added some spices, and had fresh refried beans, in less than an hour, with no pre-soaking required.
Another dish I love making with my pressure cooker is home made pot roast. It takes just 99 minutes to pressure cook a 3 ½ lb. pot roast (plus prep time), which means you can even make freshly made pot roast for a weeknight dinner, and still eat at a reasonable hour. The first time I tried this, I browned two 3 lb. pot roasts, put one in the pot, added beef broth, spices, and a tiny bit of red wine, cooked it, then cooked the second roast in the same broth, then when I was done, switched to the simmer setting and made the most delicious concentrated pot roast au jus I have ever had for my roasts. The meat was soft, tender, flaked apart at the touch, the connective tissue and fat had seemingly melted, it was moist and flavorful, and the machine kept the meat warm until I was ready to serve it. If you want to make a full traditional pot roast meal with potatoes and carrots, what I’d probably do (assuming you don’t have a pressure cooker recipe) is pressure cook the pot roast for 90 minutes, do a quick pressure release, add in chunks of potatoes and carrots, and pressure cook the whole meal together for the remaining 9 minutes, then let it do a natural pressure release and switch to the “warm” setting until you’re ready to serve.
You can also get creative and make back to back meals in the CPC-600 pressure cooker. I got a great deal on a large package of pork shoulder that was on sale, so I boned it, cut it up into very large chunks and cooked about 6 lbs. at a time with a can of broth in the pressure cooker (55 minutes of pressure cooking per batch). To do the same job on the stovetop, in about the same amount of cooking time, I would have had to not only bone the meat, but cut it all up into 1 inch chunks (trust me, cutting up 10 or 12 pounds of meat by hand into one inch chunks is time consuming, its a lot of work, even if you use a good knife and keep it sharpened, and I end up with sore hands at the end). Using the stovetop method, I would also have had to keep coming back into the kitchen every 15 minutes or so to make sure the temperature was right, check the water level and that all the meat was still under the liquid, and keep testing for doneness. With the pressure cooker, I just set it and left the room to do something else for an hour. The pressure cooked meat was tender, moist, delicious, and shredded easily. When the meat cooled down enough, I shredded it by hand so I could remove any remaining pieces of fat, and then most of it went into Ziploc bags in the freezer for future meals. I kept the delicious pork-infused cooking broth in the machine, added a few ingredients and some of the pork back, and made homemade posole (a Mexican soup made with pork and hominy) for dinner, with just a few extra minutes of work. You can also use the pressure cooker to make homemade stock, then after straining the stock, add some more ingredients, and you can make homemade soup or stew with some of your stock in the same pot.
And the pressure cooker isn’t just for meat and beans. Whereas it could take over an hour in the oven and almost as long to boil them, it takes only a few minutes of pressure cooking to cook potatoes, sweet potatoes and yams, and winter squashes like acorn squash. The traditional method for making mashed potatoes, for example, involves peeling potatoes (sometimes before, sometimes after cooking), cutting them up into uniform chunks and boiling them, at which point they often become waterlogged and start falling apart, and frankly, boiling potatoes doesn’t improve their flavor. Just the cooking time alone takes at least 45 minutes. I made my first batch of pressure cooker mashed potatoes the other night, it was the quickest cooking method I’ve ever tried, I had less prep work to do, and the results were great. I peeled a couple of pounds of potatoes, quartered them, added a half cup of water, and set the timer for 7 minutes. That’s right, that’s not a typo, seven minutes. When the timer went off, I moved the pressure valve to the quick release setting, put some milk and butter to warm in a pan on the stove, by the time the milk and butter mixture had heated up, I was able to remove the pressure cooker lid, add the hot milk and a little salt to the hot potatoes, and had the quickest homemade mashed potatoes I’ve ever had. And they were delicious, too.
For more details about how the Cuisinart pressure cooker works and what you can do with it, you should read the Instruction Manual for the Cuisinart CPC-600 Pressure Cooker and the Recipe Booklet for the Cuisinart CPC-600 Pressure Cooker. I recommend you read both the PDFs in advance, before you receive your machine, so you get the best possible idea of the many things you can use the pressure cooker for, so you can choose some recipes you want to try, and have all the ingredients on hand. Both the user manual and the recipe booklet are reasonably short, and the rules are pretty basic (i.e. don’t touch the pressure release with your hands, add a small amount of oil as well as water when cooking beans or rice, don’t overfill the pot, etc.).
There are a couple of contradictory pieces of information and omissions in the manual, for example in one place it says when cooking beans only fill the pot half full and in another place it says only fill it a third full, and it says to add 8 cups of water for a pound of beans, but I’ve found four is plenty, but in spite those errors, I found both manuals very useful. As for ease of use, I couldn’t imagine it could be much easier to use: fill up the pot, make sure the pressure release on the lid is in the correct position, put the lid on, select your power setting, set the minute timer, and then hit start. Any recipe that calls for natural pressure release, you can leave the room and the pressure cooker will do its thing automatically and switch to “warm” setting when it has de-pressurized. Any recipe calling for quick pressure release (those are all for the quicker recipes anyway), you probably should stay nearby, and when the timer alarm goes off, use a pair of tongs to switch the pressure release over for “quick” release, and then you’re done – the pressure cooker will do the rest.
Benefits of Your CPC-600 Pressure Cooker
- Add More Beans, Legumes and Grains to Your Diet. This would be a great gift for vegetarians/vegans, Mexican food lovers like myself, those like my father who love beans (or want to get more of them into their diet) or who are looking to improve both their diet and their food budget. Beans and other legumes are nutritious, full of protein, are very inexpensive, and a great way to stretch your food budget. Canned beans are reasonably priced (as long as you’re a careful shopper), but they contain massive amounts of salt and preservatives, and if you’ve ever bought a bunch of cans at once like I have, you’ll know it’s a real workout getting all those heavy cans into the house and they take up a lot of room in the kitchen cabinets. Dried beans are much easier to carry and store, its easier to make exactly how much you need, there’s a lot less packaging involved, and as reasonably priced as canned beans are, dried beans are even cheaper, a fraction of the cost of canned goods. I like to make either black beans or refried beans to go with my favorite Mexican dishes, to use cooked beans to stretch the meat filling for enchiladas, and to make either cooked beans or chickpeas to add to salads to add protein (without adding meat) and make them more filling. My sister likes to use her pressure cooker to make brown rice and wild rice in bulk (since they are far more nutritious than regular white rice), and it takes a lot less time than cooking with conventional methods. You can also make quinoa and wheat berries in the pressure cooker.
- Stretch Your Budget By Using More Economical Cuts of Meat and Cooking Them Faster. Steaks, rib roasts and pork chops are wonderful, but they can be quite hard on the food budget. Even plain old hamburger can be very expensive unless you catch it on sale. With food prices rising, families need all the help they can get to keep the grocery bill down. One way to stretch your dollar is to use “tougher” cuts of meat which traditionally require longer cooking periods or braising to cook, but which are priced far cheaper per pound. If you have an electric range top or an electric oven, some of those savings will be eaten up by your electric bill, but with this pressure cooker, you are heating a relatively small self contained unit, and you are heating it for a much shorter time. My mother has refused to make pot roast from scratch for years, so my father used to buy pre-cooked pot roast that you reheat – not only is it incredibly expensive per pound, and when you open the big package you find a tiny little pot roast, but they’re heavily salted, and full of preservatives. Now both my sister and I buy pot roasts whenever they go on sale, and we can easily prepare them to satisfy the craving of the men in the family for beef and potatoes. And every time we serve a 3 lb. pot roast purchased on sale at $2.47 a pound instead of a 3 lb. rib roast on sale for $4.97 a pound, even if we do nothing else for that meal, that’s a $7.50 savings on that one dish, over and above your savings from sale prices. If you were able to take advantage of those kinds of savings, and nothing else, just twice a month, it wouldn’t be long before your pressure cooker has paid for itself and you’d be banking the difference. If you are able to realize those kinds of savings twice a week, your savings would be even greater.
I’ve been finding recipes for all sorts of meals using pork shoulder, another very economical cut of meat – I can usually buy bone-in pork shoulder for anywhere between $2.29 and $2.69 a pound, but periodically Smart & Final will put it on sale for $1.69 a pound, and when that happens I buy the biggest package I can find. The last time I bought pork shoulder, I cooked it in 6 lb. batches, made part of it into soup, and froze the rest to be used for a variety of dishes (carnitas tacos, enchiladas in green sauce, posole soup, I season it with Italian seasonings and use it in spaghetti sauce, sometimes I’ll serve it with gravy, roast vegetables and cornbread stuffing, you could cube it and use it in Asian stir fry, you could shred it and cover it in BBQ sauce for sandwiches, there are just so many dishes you can use pork shoulder in). And of course, you can use both the pork in soups like split pea, bean with bacon, and add the pork shoulder bone during cooking to add even more flavor. If your family always enjoys lamb for Easter dinner, my local supermarket is currently charging $8.99 a lb. for leg of lamb, $11.99 a lb. for lamb loin chops, and $16.99 per pound for lamb rib roast, but lamb shoulder neck pieces are $3.99 a lb. and lamb shanks are $4.99 per pound, they both can be pressure cooked in less than 25 minutes, and the recipe booklet even includes a recipe for lamb shanks.
- Stretch Your Food Budget By Serving More Chili, Stews and Soups. Another way you (or your gift recipient) can save grocery money using this pressure cooker is by not only using less expensive cuts of meat, but by “rationing” that meat in meals, without your family knowing it. (Bear with me.) If your husband and kids are used to a certain number of pieces of chicken or pork chops at each meal, if the number or size of pieces of meat on their dinner plate diminish, they will notice. If, however, you hide portion control of meats by chopping it up into smaller pieces and adding in more beans and vegetables, not only will your family probably not even notice, each serving will be less expensive, and it will improve the healthiness of your family’s diet. Beans and other legumes in particular, because of their high protein content, will give your family that “full” feeling they are used to getting from meat. And with soups and stews, you can leave the vegetables your kids will eat, like potatoes and carrots, in big chunks, and sneak the ones they won’t (like zucchini or mushrooms) in very small pieces that they may not see. (The recipe booklet has six soup recipes, two chili recipes, and a classic beef stew recipe to get you started.)
- Great Gift for Parents with Newborn or Several Kids. When my nephew was born, my sister vowed to make all his food from scratch. She did it, but it was a lot of work, especially since he was a bit of a fussy eater. Like many babies, his favorite meal was sweet potato, and if she had had her pressure cooker then, it would have made preparing his sweet potato a lot faster (6 minutes in the pressure cooker versus at least an hour in the oven). And with an infant, or several small children in the house, there are constant interruptions. Quite a number of my sister’s meals were overcooked or even burned while she was dealing with her son, whereas with this particular pressure cooker, when the timer goes off, the machine automatically starts releasing pressure and switches to “warm” setting to keep your meal warm until you’re ready to turn attention back to your meal. This would be a great idea for families who need to keep more of an eye on their children and pay less attention to the family dinner while its cooking. Now that my nephew is a little older, my sister lets the pressure cooker cook dinner by itself while she sits at the kitchen table and helps him with his homework.
- Make Holiday Dishes in the Pressure Cooker When Oven and Stovetop Space is at a Premium. If you’ve ever tried to cook a holiday feast in a small kitchen, with limited oven and stovetop space, and lots of guests or courses, then you have a good idea how crowded a kitchen can get, how you’re trying to juggle your attention and cooking space between multiple dishes, and you need all the help you can get. Unfortunately, there’s often a limited amount of work that can be done in advance, but a pressure cooker can help. You can use your pressure cooker to make homemade stock for your soups or gravies the day before, while you do other prep work. Use the machine to make your holiday soups, potatoes for mashed potatoes, and yams or sweet potatoes, while keeping stovetop burners free for dishes that need to be sautéed or fried. There are even dessert recipes for pressure cookers. The pressure cooker can do its thing in a far corner of the kitchen, or even plugged in the dining room, out of your way, while you attend to other things, and unlike the oven and stovetop, it won’t add a lot of heat to your kitchen. If you have a lot of dishes you can prepare in the pressure cooker back to back, the cooker bowl is removable, and you can purchase additional pots (Cuisinart CPC-600 Pressure Cooker Pot
), so you can just have pots full of ingredients waiting “assembly line” style – when the pressure cooker finishes with one dish, you can just remove that pot, insert another, have the next dish started in no time, and you can turn to other cooking tasks. If you’re attending a potluck holiday meal at someone else’s house, you can make the dish ahead of time and bring it and the pressure cooker with you to reheat it.
The pressure cooker can also be really helpful during the summer holidays, Memorial Day, Independence Day, and Labor Day. While you are outside grilling your burgers and chicken parts on the grill, your pressure cooker can be unattended in the kitchen cooking your baked beans or making BBQ’d pork for pulled pork sandwiches, and it will keep your dish warm until you’re ready to serve. If you travel in an RV during the summer as my aunt and uncle do, but you want to save on some or all of your restaurant bills, the pressure cooker is small enough to take along with you to RV sites with electrical hookups, and it’s a quick and easy way to make meals without heating up your RV. The pressure cooker instructions say its not intended for outdoor use, but personally, if I was going camping, and had a camping site with electrical facilities, I’d much rather bring my pressure cooker and a fire extinguisher (for safety) with me, than the Coleman Propane Stoveand propane fuel my father used to take on family camping trips.
Pressure Cooker Cookbooks
If you don’t feel comfortable adapting your own recipes for a pressure cooker, or you want a little more experience using a pressure cooker before you do, there are LOTS of pressure cooker cookbooks available. And if you’re thinking of giving the Cuisinart CPC-600 as a gift, you can give the new owner pressure cooker cookbooks as gifts for years to come. (Please just note when shopping for cookbooks that a slow cooker is not the same thing as a pressure cooker.) If you’re shopping for a vegetarian or vegan, there are couple of vegetarian pressure cooker cookbooks (Great Vegetarian Cooking Under Pressure
, The Everything Vegetarian Pressure Cooker Cookbook (Everything (Cooking))
and Pressure Cooker Vegetarian Meals
) or you might want to select a vegetarian cookbook that includes a number of cooking techniques, including pressure cooking.
Cuisinart Griddler
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Cuisinart Griddler Model No. GR-4N
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Review of Cuisinart Griddler Model No. GR-4N What You Can Do With Your Cuisinart Griddler Optional Accessories for the Cuisinart Griddler Suggested Products & Cookbooks to Pair with the Griddler |
Review of Cuisinart Griddler Model No. GR-4N
My family just recently purchased this Griddler, so I can’t say I’ve tested it exhaustively, but I have used it repeatedly and can give you a good idea how it works. It is absolutely super easy to use – I pulled it out of the box, was able to remove and replace the plates, and operate it, without reading one word of the instructions, it was that easy, easier than operating a microwave. The first couple of times I used it, I made rib eye steaks, of varying thicknesses. I used no extra fat or cooking spray on the griddle, and nothing stuck. I also liked the fact that unlike a frying pan, there weren’t small particles of grease flying around in the air above the cooking surface, that any juices were either sealed into the meat or stayed in the drip pan, the meat cooked quickly, certainly more quickly than if I’d been cooking it in a regular frying pan, and the food was delicious. I haven’t yet been able to get quite the Maillard reaction (the browning of the surface of the meat) that I would get using my normal cooking technique, however, that may be due more to the fact I didn’t use any additional fat (butter) or to my impatience to start cooking and the fact that I hadn’t brought the meat up to room temperature before grilling than to anything attributable to the griddler. (This is best no matter how you cook the meat, but I would recommend that especially with thicker cuts of meat like extra thick steaks, that you remove the steaks or chops from the refrigerator and leave them out at room temperature for at least a half hour before cooking, and that you pat the surface of the meat dry with a paper towel immediately before cooking – bringing the meat up to room temperature before cooking helps ensure that the meat cooks evenly, and patting the surface moisture away aids in the browning process.)
You can also use the Griddler as a panini press, anything from a traditional grilled cheese sandwich, or I should say several, since there would be room on the griddle for at least two at a time, or panini sandwiches (something I appreciate as someone who has started making her own homemade focaccia on a routine basis). Another nice feature is that you can open the machine up, both halves lie flat on the counter, and you can use it as an actual griddle to make pancakes, bacon, grilled ham, scrambled eggs, French toast, or anything else you’d normally make on a griddle. Clean up could hardly have been simpler either: I just turn it off, unplug the machine (just in case), let the machine sit for a few minutes, and then I come back when it has cooled, pop the drip pan out, dump the contents, and put both the drip pan and the griddles into the dishwasher. We’ve washed the griddles repeatedly in the dishwasher, they’re dishwasher safe, and we’ve seen no adverse effects. Oh, and there are separate waffle iron plates you can buy to convert the griddler to make four waffles at a time. So for the price of a separate 2 waffle iron machine, you can buy the plates, make twice as many waffles at once, and eliminate an extra machine from your cabinet space.
If I were asked to come up with any criticisms or “cons” to the product, I’d say I wish it was more like a waffle iron and had a red light up button to let you know when it reaches the desired temperature and is ready to use. I could well be wrong because I haven’t tried this myself, but I’d also suggest being cautious about cooking fish in it, unless you are particularly skilled in cooking fish, because I’m concerned that it might not heat up high enough to keep the fish from sticking (Thomas Keller says high heat is the key) and conversely, that because fish cooks so quickly, you’re cooking both sides simultaneously, and with the lid shut you can’t examine it, it might be very easy to overcook your fish. But as I said, my concern on this point could be completely unfounded, and someone who cooks fish more often than I do might well have no problem.
As a gift, I think the Cuisinart Griddler would have a lot of appeal to a variety of people. It would be a good choice for anyone who wants to make panini, obviously, for the busy cook who is pressed for time and wants to get the meal on the table faster, for those who are interested in cooking techniques that will help them reduce fat in their diet, or who wants an indoor grill that’s easy to clean (and I’ve used several that aren’t). With the ability to open up the Griddler and for both halves to lie flat to double your available cooking surface, it would also be a good choice for anyone who has friends or relatives who come and stay with them, to increase their cooking capacity, so they can spend less time cooking and more time with visiting friends and family.
What You Can Do With Your Cuisinart Griddler
- Make Some Paninis! Italian breads such as ciabatta and focaccia are wonderful, Italian cheese is great, and Italian cured meats like prosciutto and salami are even better. Combine them into a warm sandwich with toasted bread, melting cheese, a little aioli and roast chicken and you’ll have a warm, delicious meal. If your local grocery store doesn’t offer ciabatta or focaccia, French bread would do in a pinch, or you could easily make your own focaccia bread with no kneading using America’s Test Kitchen Focaccia Recipe. I make double batches of that recipe several times a month, its easy, there’s no kneading, and it comes out crusty and delicious. And you can make it yourself for a fraction of what you’d pay at the grocery store or a bakery.
- Make Steaks, Burgers and Chops Quicker, Cleaner and With Less Fat. My father, like most men, loves burgers and steaks, and my mother absolutely hates cooking them because of all the tiny airborne grease particles that go flying around the kitchen, especially the stove top, the backsplash, the vent, the surrounding cabinets and walls, every time she does. I’ve tried using a Splatter Screen / Grease Catcher
, and aside from the fact that I accidentally touched my hand with the edge of one and burned myself, there’s two problems with splatter screens: you have to lift them to check or flip your meat, and when you do, a whole bunch of grease goes flying out of the pan. The most grease goes flying when you flip the meat, which is precisely when you don’t have the splatter guard on top of the pan. The second problem is when you lift it, you now only have one free hand, or you have to put tin foil on your counter to keep it from getting greasy if you want to use both hands.
I did not have this problem at all with the Cuisinart Griddler. I have repeatedly been able to cook steaks without any additional fat, even at the beginning, which is something I have never been able to do with a regular skillet. (So that’s a few less calories, right there.) I constantly checked the machine while the meat was cooking, and grease was not coming out of the openings. When I opened up the top of the machine, I couldn’t see grease go flying, when I flipped the meat (so I could get cross hatch grill marks on the steaks), there didn’t seem to be any grease coming up. And because the machine cooks both sides of the meat at the same time, the steaks were done in record time.
- Grill Your Vegetables (or Even Fruit) With Less Fat, More Evenly, and Quicker. You can do more than sandwiches, meat, and breakfast on the griddler. Griddle your vegetables, or even fruit, if you want a nice little bit of carmelization on your fruit to give it an added layer of flavor. You can quickly griddle pineapple slices, peach halves, or even a banana. If you are like my father and very fond of thick slices of onion on your burgers, you can griddle them much more quickly on this machine, you won’t have to flip them so there’s less likelihood of them falling apart, and you probably won’t need to add any fat, so they’re less likely to soften or wilt. If you’ve ever tried to cook whole carrots in a skillet, you know you have to make sure and rotate them all the way around, or you may end up with one side of the carrot undercooked. Because the Griddler cooks two sides at once, there’s a lot less chance of this problem happening, and you only have to rotate the carrots once to be sure that all sides have been exposed to the cooking surface. You can also quickly grill asparagus, zucchini, summer squash, chunks of eggplant and the like. I haven’t tried this yet, but I think you could also make great shish kabobs on the griddler: take chunks of your favorite meat and marinate them, add chunks of green, red or yellow peppers, chunks of Vidalia onion, and chunks of zucchini or eggplant if you want more veggies, alternate them on skewers, and you’ll have a full meal done in very little time.
Optional Accessories for the Cuisinart Griddler
There is also an optional Cuisinart Griddler Waffle Accessory available. The waffle plates snap in and out just like the griddle plates that are included, they are dishwasher safe, and you can make four waffles at a time with them. Add them to the gift for Christmas, or this gives you a gift for a future birthday, Mother’s Day or Father’s Day.
Suggested Products & Cookbooks to Pair with the Griddler
I wasn’t able to find a lot of cookbooks geared specifically towards indoor griddlers, I’ve included what I’ve found, and I’ll include more as I find them. There are lots of panini cookbooks, so I’ve included a number of them. I don’t have the Nancy Silverton cookbook below (she’s the owner of La Brea Bakery), but I have several of her other cookbooks, and they are always excellent. If you, or your gift recipient, is interested in baking your own bread for panini, I can recommend either Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day
or any of Peter Reinhart’s Breadmaking Cookbooks
(I own just about every cookbook he’s written, if not all, and they are all amazing, informative, great baking cookbooks.)
Martha Stewart Multi Pot
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Martha Stewart
8 and 12 Quart Multi Pots
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Product Review of Martha Stewart Multi Pot Ideas How to Use the Martha Stewart Multi Pot Choosing Between the 8 Quart and 12 Quart Models Cookbook Gifts to Pair with Martha Stewart Multi Pot |
Product Review of Martha Stewart Multi Pot
Several years ago, I bought a previous version of this multi pot (it’s a 14 qt. multi pot with two steamer inserts instead of one, and no pasta insert), even though I was a little concerned about how it would heat up with the glass lid. My concern turned out to be completely unfounded, and it instantly became my favorite stockpot, and getting the pasta insert instead of a second steamer insert is an even better idea, so they’ve improved on it.
It’s a very well constructed, well thought out product that works well. The handles are large and well secured, and I can easily fit my hands, in oven mitts, inside them. All of the components fit very well together, even after years of use. The slightly domed glass lid has a little hole in the top to allow excess steam to escape, if necessary. It heats as well, if not better, than my other stock pots, and it retains the heat well. And its fairly easy to clean, both by hand and in the dishwasher, even when I’ve accidentally burned some of the split pea soup on the bottom of the pan. Its a nice weight without being too heavy, so its easy to handle. I saw one review that claimed the pot had rusted after one use, and I find this extremely hard to believe. I’ve had my multi pot for three years now, I frequently will leave the pot on the stove or in the sink full of water for extended periods, overnight, sometimes longer until I get back to it, and I’ve never had the slightest hint of rust or any such problem.
This multi pot would be a great gift choice for both serious cooks and those who only cook during the holidays, for people who are interested in making their own stocks, soups and stews, to braise meats, and for vegetable and fruit gardeners as well. I’m constantly thinking of new ways to use it.
Ideas How to Use the Martha Stewart Multi Pot
Here are some ideas how you, or your gift recipient, can use the multi pot to get the most out of it:
- Make the Best Mashed Potatoes You’ve Ever Had Quicker Than You Ever Have. I love mashed potatoes, and they’re an integral part of both Thanksgiving and Christmas in our household, so I’ve always strived to improve my results. Both boiling and oven baking the potatoes weren’t getting me the results I wanted. After I bought this multi pot, I had an inspiration, and sure enough, you can go ahead and use those starchy Russet potatoes, just steam them instead, and their starch becomes a benefit, not a liability. (I can cook 10 pounds of cubed potatoes in a single steamer insert for the 14 qt. multi pot, so I think you should be able to do at least 5 lbs. in the 8 qt. size and closer to 10 lbs. at once in the 12 qt. size.)
Set a pot of water to boil. Peel the potatoes, then cube them – the smaller the potato cubes, the quicker they’ll cook. I’ve routinely made mashed potatoes in less than a half hour, and I set my timer for 20 minutes to start checking the potatoes. Potatoes are ready when you can easily cut through them with a fork or spoon. The secret (aside from steaming) is to have all your ingredients HOT when you combine them. Your milk or cream and butter should be heated to just below the boiling point, either on the stove, or in the microwave. (If memory serves, I use about a quart of milk per 10 lbs. of potatoes.) Mash the potatoes immediately before introducing the hot milk and butter mixture, then pour the hot milk mixture into the potatoes. The starch in the steamed potatoes will be much less saturated with liquid because they’ve been steamed instead of boiled, and will absorb so much more hot milk than they would otherwise, and that’s what makes them so rich and creamy, how much milk or cream they can absorb. Be careful in mixing in the hot milk so you don’t slosh the hot liquid on yourself. The first amount of liquid added absorbs almost immediately into the potatoes, then I heat small additional amounts of milk and butter, adding slowly and carefully until I reach the desired consistency. I’ll then add salt to taste.
- Cook Multiple Dishes at Once for Dinner or During Easter, Thanksgiving and Christmas Holidays. I’m always looking for ways to save money, multi-task, and prepare multiple dishes at the same time, preferably with fewer dishes to clean. You could braise your pot roast in the pot, while you steam your potatoes for mashed potatoes (and/or other vegetable side dishes) in the steamer insert. Rather than using two burners on the stove, you can use the same amount of energy and money to make a second dish. I will simmer cubed pork shoulder in broth (that I then use for carnitas tacos, enchiladas, a whole variety of things) while I make a large batch of mashed potatoes, then I remove the pork from the broth, and use the lovely pork flavored broth to make bean or split pea soup while I steam carrots in the steamer insert. I’ll even add some of the pork and carrots back to the soup to make it even better.
For the holidays, especially Thanksgiving and Christmas, where we are cooking more dishes for a larger group of people at once, our family often finds we don’t have enough oven space and stovetop burners to make every dish. Use the steamer insert, and you’ve got additional cooking opportunities with the same number of burners. I’ve made the stock for gravy in the pot, while I steam the potatoes for mashed potatoes. Or boiled the yams while steaming potatoes, green beans, leafy greens or other vegetable side dishes. This Thanksgiving, I’m thinking about making either soup or chili while cooking that I can add leftover turkey to for meals on subsequent days. Plan your holiday and weekly menu out in advance to do as much cooking, with as few dirty dishes and energy expended, as possible, and instead of cooking the rest of the holiday week, you can spend more time with your loved ones.
- Other Uses for the Steamer Insert. The steamer insert can be used to steam other vegetables, meat and fish. You can also steam prepared foods like homemade dim sum, and mine is deep enough to steam cook homemade tamales. It can also be used to gently reheat any previously cooked food where you don’t want to add any additional fat (as you might have to with a skillet) and you want to gently reheat without losing water. I’m also a vegetable gardener, and either by accident or design, we often have many more vegetables or fruit than we can eat at once. I use the steamer insert to blanch leafy vegetables like spinach, swiss chard and bok choy, where you need to blanch them to freeze them, but don’t want to introduce a lot more water into the vegetables before freezing. If I blanch using the steamer insert, I save myself the extra step of wringing water out of the leafy greens before freezing.
- Pasta Insert Is So Much More Than a Pasta Insert. Any time you are working with boiling water, hot frying oil and the like, there is always the possibility of a slip and resultant injury. A gallon of water weighs 8 pounds, if you have more than one gallon in the pot, and you add in the weight of the food, the weight you have to carry adds up, and if you’re unfortunate enough to have sink all the way across the kitchen from the stove, that’s a lot of weight to carry quite a distance, especially for those who are petite or older. If you’re a bit clumsy like me, there are drops of water on the floor, you’ve got pets or small kids who might dart into the room unexpectedly, there are lots of potential causes of a mishap. There are lots of uses for your pasta insert.
- Cooking Pasta, Obviously. Whether you’re making pasta, cooking a pot of mussels, or boiling vegetables, rather than using a Kitchen Spider
and scooping out your food one scoop at a time, simply lift the pasta insert slowly out of the water, hold the bottom just above the surface of the water, hold for a minute or two to let drain, and remove your food immediately from the boiling water.
- Making Homemade Stock. I keep my pasta insert in the pot when I make homemade stock. My family is particularly fond of buying several of those wonderful Costco roast chickens at a time, we bone the chickens for a variety of different dishes, then we put the bones, the wings and back (with a little meat attached) in the pot with half water, half chicken stock, bouquet garni, and any vegetables, herbs and spices we want to remove afterward inside the pasta insert, and when the stock has simmered long enough, you can pull it all out at once and discard. I leave the stock on the stove to simmer and reduce to a strong concentrate afterward, then strain for small particulates and freeze for future use.
- Deep Frying Foods. The multi pot is a good choice for deep frying because it holds heat well, and I can tell you from personal experience, no matter how good your Tongs
are, there’s always the possibility of the food slipping, falling in the pan, and spattering you with hot oil. Keep the pasta insert in the pot while you fry, and you can remove your fried chicken pieces, a whole fried turkey breast or turkey leg, or all your French fries all at once. If you are making twice fried fries, you can pull your potatoes out of the oil, let them cool in the pasta insert, raise the oil temperature to the higher temperature, then once its reached the desired temperature, carefully slip the pasta insert back into the oil for the final fry.
- Blanching Home Grown Fruit and Vegetables for Freezing. Almost everyone who grows their own fruit and vegetables ends up at one time or another with more fruit or vegetables than they can eat. Fruit and vegetables contain one or more enzymes which allow them to continue the ripening process, even after they are frozen, they can lose their color, texture and taste will suffer. Blanching fruit and vegetables properly neutralizes this enzyme and preserves them better in the frozen state, which is why commercially frozen vegetables and fruit are also blanched. I will blanche root vegetables like carrots, zucchini, squash, beans and the like in boiling water, using the pasta insert to pluck everything out of the pot at once (so nothing is overcooked) and will use the steamer insert to blanch greens like spinach, bok choy, and other leaf vegetables where I want to keep as much water out of them as possible.
- Canning Your Homegrown Food, Jams and Jellies, Spaghetti Sauce. My sister loves to can her own garden produce, make and can her own sauce and jellies, and she uses the traditional Canning Jar Lifter
to remove the jars from the water. I recommend using the pasta insert instead. It has a convenient handle you can grasp while wearing oven mitts, its sturdy enough to safely lift the weight, and you can remove all the jars all at once with a lot less of a chance of dropping a jar back into the water, cracking it, and losing all your hard work (not to mention a canning jar).
- Cooking Pasta, Obviously. Whether you’re making pasta, cooking a pot of mussels, or boiling vegetables, rather than using a Kitchen Spider
Choosing Between the 8 Quart and 12 Quart Models
If you’re not used to the various sizes of cookware, it can be hard to select between the size options, particularly if you don’t have them in front of you. From my own experience, an eight quart stock pot is the smallest size I would personally use for most applications. I would say the smaller, 8 quart size is more appropriate for cooking for two or a smaller family unit, for casual cooks who are mostly interested in making soup or chili, who might braise a smaller piece of meat, but nothing particularly large. If your gift recipient is a serious dedicated cook, is interested in braising larger pieces of meat, has a vegetable garden, wants to learn canning and preserving, has a couple of kids, entertains, or might be the designated cook for a family holiday, I would recommend the larger size. If you’re still unsure, since at this time the price differential is only $15, I would recommend going ahead and buying the larger size. Better to have too much pot than too little.
Cookbooks Gifts to Pair With Martha Stewart Multi Pot
