After my initial enthusiastic experiments I have used it about twice. It does make good soup but no better than I can make in other ways. I especially agree with Mamta about the dangers of getting the jug off the base. I also had a problem frying the onions in the first stage.
The recipe booklet offers a good spread of recipes – jam, chutney, risotto, smoothie, nut milk, curries and soups. This is ideal for mastering the equipment. You can strip the process back to basics if you like but we feel the usefulness of this product has the potential to grow and grow as you cuisinart pots and pans set become more familiar with it. There’s a high setting for bringing liquids up to the boil and a simmer setting which is a lower temperature and ideal for simmering soups. If you want to stir, you need to press the slow stir button. Will I be giving up my traditional method of cooking soups?
The first thing I made was a simple lentil soup. The blender lid houses a measuring cup, cuisinart griddler elite too. Starting with hot stock gives it a better chance to add more flavour and taste.
It can sauté, cook, simmer, stir & blend & with a non-stick cooking plate. Many of the latest designs offer settings that let you choose the consistency of your soup, be it chunky and textured or silky and smooth. Also, look for a manual blending mode that allows you to tailor the finish to your taste should you want to create something in between the two.
Durability Really it’s hard to rate this because it hasn’t gotten any more use out of me since it is so bad. The Cuisinart SSB1U Soup Maker will brown and sweat vegetables, boil liquids and simmer soups, allowing you to prepare perfect soups and sauces all in one unit, saving time and washing up. Making a soup is as simple as browning the vegetables in the blender, adding the stock and whizzing it up. Once you are done, you can store the goblet in the fridge, and it can even ‘self clean’ – just heat it up with some soapy water and switch on the blender for a few moments. It’s perfect for cold drinks too, with ice crushing blades, you can use it all year round. The Soup Maker plus is a ‘one-stop-shop’ for a whole host of comforting recipes.
My husband saw a similar gadget demonstrated at Costco. He thought it was the coolest thing EVER. “You can make soup right in the blender!” I wondered why you would want to do that. I mean, It is a very easy process for me to make soup in a pot on the stove. Dump some cans of stuff together and simmer.
The first is sauté for browning base ingredients such as onion and garlic. These need to be finely chopped as larger chunks can get lodged in the blade if no liquid is added. There’s a lot more to this product than adding the ingredients, selecting a programme and walking away, which could be considered a plus or a minus depending on your approach to cooking. If you make a lot of soup, investing in a good soup machine will save you time and effort. Read our review of this Cuisinart model to see how it performed in our tests.