My name is Martin Scholes. I like writing reviews on Ciao. I am married, we have a cockatiel and a c...
My name is Martin Scholes. I like writing reviews on Ciao. I am married, we have a cockatiel and a cat. And a growing African Grey. Who orders the cat around!
Member since:06.12.2003
Reviews:334
Members who trust:65
Well, it had to happen, I suppose. All good things must come to a end, as they say. Our faithful steamer gave up the ghost after nearly eight years of Stirling steaming service.
Time, we realised, to buy a new one. We decided to make our purchase of a new steamer at the BBC Good Food Show. After circling round and round the stands and displays several times ("too small, too big, doesn't look quite good enough, no WAY" are we paying that much!") we discovered the Tefal stand.
We both fell in love with the Tefal Steam Cuisine Steamer. My comment was: "My god, it looks like something out of Star Trek voyager!" For yes, indeed, the Tefal Steam Cuisine steam cooker does look incredibly funky and very, very modern. It also has, for the amount of food that it can cook, a relatively small footprint. And this is, in the tiny and pokey areas of houses, apartments and flats apparently laughingly described as 'kitchens' of considerable importance.
The steamer consists of a base unit (complete with controls) and three tiers above it. It comes complete with 3 steam baskets (though you can use two if required) a removable base which has an integrated egg holder, a rice bowl, a juice collector and a water inlet.
It also has a feature called a "removable turbo ring scale remover." My wife says: "This is a great idea. It really helps by getting rid of the limescale and stops it building up on the element. This is absolutely brilliant as it helps protect the element and ensures that no energy is not wasted, nor cooking time increased by limescale build-up."
An advantage of the Tefal Steam Cuisine Steamer is that has an electronic timer and the version we have comes complete with a built-in Vitamin+ touchpad. This is something to do with vitamins. Apparently. And vitamins are important. Or so someone told me. No, seriously, this is a fantastic feature as it mean that you can use it to increase the cooking speed to "extra fast" and thus reduce the depletion of vitamins that can occur during the cooking process.
It also has other useful features. For example, with our old steamer should you have found that the water level had gone down, you had to very riskily and carefully remove the cooking basket and top up the tank with water. This could be a dangerous and painful process, as you could well imagine.
However, there's none of that nonsense with the Tefal Steam Cuisine Steamer! For it comes with special water inlets, a much safer idea. And one that is less likely to impinge on the cooking time of the food in the steamer.
Also, there is a special juice collector to collect the juices produced during cooking and there's a special condensation collector to safely collect the condensing vapours produced during the steam cooking process. It is easy to use, easy to clean and easy to maintain.
There's also a special removable handle so you can remove the baskets from the steamer. A very handy idea. It comes with some very comprehensive instructions and also a very good glossy Steam Cuisine Recipe Book.
We bought ours as a special offer at the Good food Show for a shade under £30.00. You can check with the Ciao price comparison service to find the current normal price for the Tefal Steam Cuisine Steamer.
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Nov 26th, 2005
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