I’ve just moved house and there’s never been a better time for an appliance that fills almost all of my cooking needs
I recently moved house and realised that while packing up all of my belongings takes a while, unpacking them seems to take even longer. I suspect my pots, pans and plates will be in the very last box I open since they’re yet to rear their heads.
Luckily for me and my missing kitchen utensils, I managed to get a Morphy Richards 6.5L 10-in-1 Multifunction Cooker (£129.99) and it’s been something of a game changer. There are ten functions, as the name suggests and although I’ve not used all of them yet I can quickly see this becoming a favourite appliance.
The functions are: white rice, brown rice, sear, fry, roast, steam, sauté, high power slow cooker, low power slow cooker and the keep warm function. It’s really easy to use, you simply hit the menu button until it gets to the function you want and hit start. There’s even a delay start button allowing you to pop all of your ingredients in before work and have a hot meal ready when you get home.
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I’ve tried out the roast setting to a lot of success with frozen foods and look forward to roasting a chicken on a bed of potatoes in there, you get to choose how long it cooks when you’re roasting.
The meal that really wowed me was rice cooker Hainanese chicken, which I’d been recommended to make by one of my friends. The recipe itself was so simple, I washed my rice and put it in the cooker with equal parts water and added seasonings. I then placed four chicken legs on top of this and put the lid on.
I assumed I’d have to put a time on, like I had with the roast function, but that wasn’t the case. I selected the white rice function and as soon as I hit start it was easily cooking my food without needing the time measurement. I went back to reading and before long it was beeping to let me know my food was ready.
I’d promised my cousin dinner that night after work and was a little nervous I’d messed up the timings, as the food was ready about an hour before she got to me. Luckily, the white rice setting automatically changes to the keep warm function without any intervention so the food was the perfect temperature.
I will say it’s really big, this is ideal for families but I’m normally only cooking for two or three people – unless you’re happy to eat leftovers this can be overwhelming. Overall though I’m really happy, it’s better than any slow cooker I’ve used in the past. It also saves me buying a rice cooker and slow cooker as well as a myriad of pans.
There’s something nice about only having to clean up one pot, the metal dish you put your food into pulls out effortlessly and can be cleaned like any other dish – roll on the one pan roast dinners. I also like that it’s small enough to stash away in a cupboard but stylish enough I don’t mind it on my counter.
If you don’t need as many features and have less people to feed then the Crockpot Digital Slow Cooker fits 3.5L of food and is said to work for up to 4 people. It’s currently £35 on Amazon. Lakeland are also selling a slow cooker of the same size with a delay start feature but it’s £59.99.
