d-i-y soups?

Ok, I've seen a Salter one (better known for their scales?) and it also had good reviews.

With a 'machine' it's more likely to be my job. ;-)

My Mrs was free (she even paid for the (marriage) certificate herself)? ;-)

Cheers, T i m

There are two sorts, one more or less a high speed blender which either has a built in heater or relies upon blade friction to generate heat (and vast noise) the other more like a large kettle with a top mounted small chopping blade. I've tried the latter but didn't like them much. The range from smallest to largest quantity you can make in any machine is small. Although it isn't required many soups are much better if the ingredients are sauteed first. I found using a slow cooker plus an immersion blender (stick blender, wand blender) to be much more useful. The ingredients can be cooked briefly in a normal frying pan then put in the slow cooker for the day before being chopped into the required chunkyness with the stick blender.

Soup makers also only really make soup whereas the slow cooker can be used for many other things as can the stick blender.

Whilst the noise would be an issue as such, (I'm unlikely to be making soup when anyone is asleep) I would prefer something quieter if possible (because of my Tinnitus).

I think the one I tried to repair that was given to my Mum had a top mounted blade but it looked like it may have been overfilled at some point as the top motor bearing had rusted solid (when it should even have been able to get wet. Or it had been cleaned with too much water and the water had run up inside the unit etc).

Ok. May I ask why?

Ok, but enough for 2-3 portions potentially?

Understood. Luckily, we aren't 'foodies' so this is really only as a form of nutritious sustenance. ;-)

Whilst I can see how that could be 'a way', we don't have a slow cooker, don't really have the time and could rarely predict what we might want to eat that far ahead. ;-(

That sounds more like a hobby than just health eating Peter. ;-)

Understood.

Yes, I'm sure they can ... or I could use our electric pressure cooker and stick blender (we may even have the blender somewhere) but the pressure cooker is a bit bulky and ours needs some tending (ours possibly has a glitch where it skips the pressure cooking time once up to pressure IF you have been using it to brown / saute for a reasonable period pre pressure cooking. Power cycling and just letting off some of the pressure normally allows it to complete the program ok). Plus you then have two things to clean and put away again.

I think the solution (for us) *is* a soup maker, the question is really are there any that punch above their weight or to specifically avoid?

Cheers, T i m

yes, aldi, wouldn't buy another one of theirs

NT

I've never yet met a canned soup that wasn't at the garbage end of the scale.

Storage has never been a problem with it.

They can make curries too, put the veg in that you want chopped or pureed, add tinned toms & chick peas & anything else when it's done its cycle. Ditto some other dishes.

And the same technique lets you make more soup than they will hold. With tomato soup, omit the tomato passata and you can double the volume once done.

NT

The blender/liquidiser type are very noisy (or at least all I have heard are). Those that heat the soup through friction particularly so as they go at full welly for quarter of an hour (some also vibrate so much you have to keep hold of the damn things for the whole time!)

Steam also tends to kill them and if they are put away with any trace of water from washing in them the water vapour tends to get past the seal and cause the pressed metal bits to corrode.

They were expensive and didn't do a particularly good job. If you simply plonked the ingredients in they heated them up enough not to kill you and chopped them but the result was quite bland. They didn't really cook for long enough and only reach about 90-95 deg. To make them attractive they advertise silly (short) cooking times like 30 minutes but fundamentally they don't do anything you can't do in a saucepan with a stick blender. You wouldn't make most soups in a saucepan in 30 minutes as they wouldn't develop much taste and the texture would be a bit coarse. Cooked in a soup maker they are no different.

You would need to check - most seem to be designed for 4 portions and are fairly fussy about putting the amounts they want in. You can get smaller ones for just 1 or two people but I don't know if a "4 person" one would be happy to make enough for two.

It's not a matter of trying to emulate Heston Blumental but trying to make something which isn't as horrible as Complan. With a large saucepan you can braise the meat and vegetables, add stock and cook for 30 mins - you have now done most of what a soup maker does but done it somewhat better, quicker and with less washing up. Put a stick blender in and you have done everything a soup maker does. Let it simmer for an hour or let it cook for some hours in a slow cooker and you have done much better than a soup maker.

Soup from scratch using raw ingredients isn't fast food, you need time to break down the meat structure and vegetable stalks and let flavours develop. A saucepan or a soup maker will take the same time to achieve the same results (actually a saucepan will be quicker as soup cookers are not very powerful and don't boil the contents. There is nothing magic in a soup maker and unlike a pressure cooker nothing to speed up the cooking process compared with a saucepan. Your existing electric pressure cooker could be used to achieve better results (if you find your blender :-).

Do as above in a large saucepan and you get better taste for less money :-). When set to its "Chunky" setting the soup maker is simply an electric saucepan, it heats the soup but doesn't chop it.

A slow cooker is the least attention needing device you can get. Plug in, turn on and ignore. Ceramic cooking vessel goes into dishwasher. Soup would be ready in a couple of hours but if left for 10 would be fine.

Soup makers are very fussy about washing and being dried - more work than a soup maker. Most importantly - you can't put a soup maker in a dishwasher!

They are all very simple devices, you don't need any of the digital gizmos some build into the lid and none are designed to last very long. The manufacturers guess (largely correctly) that most get relegated to the back of a cupboard long before they get a chance to wear out. The first one was designed by Morphy Richards and seem to still be popular.

I have one of the standard "kettle with a stirrer" types, and I find it very good (although I'm currently in a phase of not using it).

As you say, it won't cook meat, but you can stick cooked chicken or bacon or sliced peperoni in it (for example).

They are sized for about four helpings, for the two of us I tend to cook a full batch and pop half in the fridge for the next day.

One of the nice things about them is that you can stick vegetables that are past their best, or leftover vegetables in them. Virtually every mixture comes out as brown sludge, but they are great if you like to experiment with flavours. Easy way of getting up your vegetable "count".

IIRC the standard cooking cycle is about 20 minutes. I suppose it gets to about 70 C. You can use it without the liquidiser, but I normally use it.

Soup isn't going to fill you up, even with a couple of slices of toast. OK for an evening snack. My main meal of the day is lunch.

I wouldn't be without my slow cooker or my stick blender. Nevertheless, chucking a few vegetables and a stock cube in the kettle type can produce nice soup with little more effort than opening a tin, and in 20 minutes. And using up whatever you have to hand.

You need to try a proper northern soup, not the watery stuff southerners call soup.

I've never tried a dedicated soup maker, but I'd expect there to be reliability issues for the "all-in-one" device compared with using a stick blender & either a slower-cooker or a big pot. (We used to have a slow-cooker but gave it away in favour of using one of the heavy pots we have anyway, either on the hob for the whole process or started on the hob & transferred into the oven. YMMV.)

Someone else mentioned bread makers --- we have one of those & I find it useful because I can throw everything in & set the timer so it finishes when we get up in the morning.

A slice of Nora Batty's concrete and coriander?

Owain

In the end I went for the Morphy Richards 'Saute and Soup' maker and I'd say so far (3 goes) I'm pretty impressed.

Our one will (to a point) because of the 'saute' bit. You first chuck in say some chopped onions and some chicken pieces and it will brown / sear / part cook them pretty quickly, just in the kettle part in 'saute' mode.

Check.

That's the plan. ;-)

I would say ours gets a bit hotter and you can clearly hear it start to boil (at the element at least) nearly instantly after hitting go.

The saute option is also pretty cool for re heating a leftover portion but as I found out the other day, it tends to react like molten lava in the way a smooth soup bubble up and pops. ;-)

We (I) have done a chunky mushroom and veg soup / casserole, a mushroom and veg smooth soup and a sweet potato and tomato smooth (onion , ginger , garlic etc) soup and all seem to have been received very well (well, seconds were had and we have thrown nothing away as yet). ;-)

For the mushroom soup you can be sauteing some onions as you are peeling the mushroom and we have found a bag of Sainsbury's pre chopped and bagged veg an easy way of doing that bit (with no waste and often reduced price ).

Once I know what works and we all like best I'll probably buy the veg loose.

So, thanks to all you provided some feedback ... it all helped (even the more off-piste replies). ;-)

Cheers, T i m

p.s. We should also be getting £15 'new member' cashback as we bought it from Argos (Fast click and collect, top of the road) and via 'Top Cashback'.