Tefal Cuisine Companion

Tefal has been announcing for some months that this all in one thermal cooking machine, the Cuisine Companion was to be released.

I was lucky enough to attend a demonstration at Harvey Norman who will be selling these exclusively.  Demonstrations are still ongoing I believe, so if you are interested, it is well worth attending one.

As you may have noticed, I do own a Bellini INtelli a kitchen a,aster, the Target version of a thermal cooker, the poor cousin to the Thermomix.  Although I have been happy with my a bellini (after having it replaced twice), but it seems to do most of what I need.

But I did fall in love with the Tefal Cuisine Companion...not that I own one yet.  It will do mostly what a Thermomix will do, except for no build in scales, nor has reverse blade function. I believe Thermix still have reverse patents in force. 

However the Tefal can have blades changed mid cooking without leaving a hole in the bottom of the machine, this necessitating emoting all food out, as in the Bellini.  There are four blades, which fit over a removable shaft in the middle of the stainless steel jug.  You can even use the machine without any blade inserted.  Love that idea and when scraping food out, you simply remove the blade and can get most traces of food out without much waste and struggling scraping around the blade.  The jug is about 4 litres, but can be filled to 2.5 litres, which is bigger than any on the market. Top temp is 130 degrees, at 5 degree increments. So it does have a lot of great features.

The Tefal Cuisine Companion is very, very quiet. While cooking risotto, if it wasn't for steam coming out the lid, you wouldn't even know it was turned in.  It has a slow cooking function and other pre-programmed buttons. It does not have a recipe chip or SD card for recipes like the Supercooker by Bellini.  

Loved that it has two years REPLACEMENT warranty.  That nearly sealed the deal for me...except it costs $1,699! So only about $400 cheaper than the Thermomix.  I always wanted a Thermomix and while they are a brilliant machine, after all the recent issues, I have changed my mind.

At the cooking demo we made an amazing summer risotto, loved it, best risotto I have ever eaten. So creamy and tasty.  Cooked perfectly with little fuss at all.

The recipe book has the pages split horizontally in three accross the page, so the 300 or so recipes can be turned into 1,000,000 different menus.  Now, I bet nobody has counted that, but with a bit of maths calculation, would be easy enough to work out.  But the book did look good and easy to use. 

There is a Tefal club online with some recipes and you can load your own. However this club needs a lot of improvements to make it user friendly. I did send in a number of suggestions and received a thank you for them, but no mention if any would be implemented. Bearing in mind there is no search function to even find a recipe, so you need to search through the nine pages of recipes to find anything.  Also a facebook Tefal Cuisine Companion needs to be set up and I did suggest that also.  I am quite tempted to set up a Tefal group myself, as the Bellini Addicts group has been so helpful to thermal cooking machine owners.  But...I donw own a machine, so guess I wouldn't be very helpful yet.

Kitchen Aid is bringing their version out through Myer late March, so the market is being flooded by thermal cookers, with maybe Thermomix having some real competition at last, giving consumers plenty of choice.

But for now I am dreaming of owning a Tefal Cuisine Companion....