Jamie Oliver homecooker

PasturesNew

terra_ferma wrote: »

Just got one of these from John Lewis (£100 instead of £250 :j , now discontinued), to replace my old Intellichef (make 1, nothing to do with the current gadget with the same name), which I use daily.

Has anyone else got one? What do you cook with it?
Any tips or recipes (I'll be sharing mine as soon as I start using it)?

I had to Google this to see what it even is .... and now I am looking at the photo I'm now going to have to google it to find out what it does.

cooking-mama

I'm going into John Lewis tomorrow ( Glasgow store), will see if they have any...if not then hopefully they won't all have sold out online by then..online states more than 10 in stock,
Kids are 16 ( almost) and 21... Plus their 49 yr old dad...who gets home at 7 pm and who would quite happily live out the chippy when I'm at work, thankfully my girls are a bit more health conscious,but they don't get in from school/ uni until between 4 n 6..... So, ideally first in could have a dinner cooked??? ....in my imaginary perfect world, lol

terra_ferma

Didn't realise this thread was going to make people curious about this machine.
A lot of the information out there is marketing, the machine is not as perfect as they would like you to belive, but it can cook Risotto while you are busy doing something else.
As the machine is back in stock at JL, it's worth taking a look. Here's some links:

REVIEWS: http://www.mumsnet.com/reviews/household-appliances/ovens-cookers-and-hobs/16279-philips-jamie-oliver-homecooker
http://www.which.co.uk/home-and-garden/kitchen/reviews-ns/kitchen-appliance-first-look-reviews/jamie-oliver-for-philips-homecooker-and-cutting-tower/

RECIPES: http://www.philips.co.uk/e/homecooker/recipes.html

VIDEOS:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5KtgxDXfe8c
in German, but pretty self explanatory: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKo81Izhz6g

Personally I wouldn't buy the cutting tower, for similar money I'd buy this one:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Tefal-Fresh-Express-Max-Watt/dp/B00ABBR4R0/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1385057957&sr=8-2&keywords=tefal+fresh (if you get the used version you save quite a bit and you can still return it if you don't like it)

cooking-mama

So, John Lewis had 1/2 a one on display, lol....main cooking pot part,now that I've seen it,I'm still interested...however,it reminded me very much of my tefal actifry,I'm now wondering if it would serve the same purpose,I'm going to look out the actifry book,I've a vague memory of it including chilli,curry etc.....worth a try and could well save me £99, and put my actifry to better use....thanks again for posting Terra-ferma.x

terra_ferma

cooking-mama wrote: »

So, John Lewis had 1/2 a one on display, lol....main cooking pot part,now that I've seen it,I'm still interested...however,it reminded me very much of my tefal actifry,I'm now wondering if it would serve the same purpose,I'm going to look out the actifry book,I've a vague memory of it including chilli,curry etc.....worth a try and could well save me £99, and put my actifry to better use....thanks again for posting Terra-ferma.x

I don't have an actifry, however this machines doesn't fry (temp not high enough), but has 3 layers of steamers. It's good for anything from melting chocolate at very low temperatures, boiling an egg while cooking your veggies/fish in the steamer, or stir frying.

Yesterday I boiled potates while steaming veggies, in my old cooker I would have had to do them separately.

I'll take another look at what the stir fryer does, but you are probably right, how many electric pans does a cook need?

EDITED I had a look, I would say if you cook a lot of chips the stirfry is better, if you use the steamer more, then the Homecooker would be better.
It's also handy to cook pasta and rice, with a strainer type of accessory, so that you can just lift and drain.
Also if you cook more from scratch the HC seems more versatile, like a proper saucepan with a stirrer, but it's not non-stick.
But if you already have an actifry I wouldn't buy this one, sounds like you can do a lot of things with that too

terra_ferma

An update...
the paddle has stopped turning, so the machine will go back.
I never really got into it, so I hope they'll refund rather than replace.
I won't miss it (except that I loved multi-layer cooking/steaming so that I could cook potatoes/curry etc and steam at the same time).