The Sage Risotto Plus Multi Cooker, Brushed Stainless Steel, BRC600UK

Product Information

Add the rice and turn up the heat – the rice will now begin to lightly fry, so keep stirring it. After 1 minute it will look slightly translucent. Add the vermouth or wine and keep stirring — it will smell fantastic. Any harsh alcohol flavours will evaporate and leave the rice with a tasty essence. The consistency I look for in a risotto is a soft, flowing mixture – like lava – with the individual grains of rice holding their shape and retaining a little bit of bite. The end of the cooking process is when you can stir in vegetables, seafood or mushrooms, which are usually cooked separately so they don’t overcook in the rice.

Heat the olive oil in a large pan over a medium heat. Gently fry the shallot until softened, but not browned. Add the rice, stir to coat in the oil and cook for 3 minutes. Add the wine to the pan and cook until absorbed completely. If you’re cooking rice or steaming, however, the cooker will switch over to keep warm mode once it’s cooked. (This common rice cooker feature might seem like magic, but it’s quite simple: a temperature sensor detects the fact that your food is getting hotter because all the cooking water has been absorbed.) The instructions are pretty basic it doesn’t, for instance, say how many portions the minimum amount of three cups equals. We found going by 60-90g of uncooked rice per person that three cups (450g) was more than enough for four to five. It cooks all kinds of rice, including wild rice. Although that should be cooked as a mix with basmati, as on its own it requires too much water. If you’re cooking for just one or two, then the former might be more useful. Countertop machines are generally made to cook at least two portions, with some bigger models producing up to 10 portions. What features should I look for? Stirring while cooking is important for those two dishes, and this is where a bread maker’s jam program comes in handy. Just remember to set a timer – a jam program tends to be at least 1hr 30mins; you’re likely to need less time to make pudding or risotto.You can also use it to steam, cook porridge, bake cakes and slow cook, too. The first thing we noticed on getting it out of the box is how attractive it is, with a rose-gold exterior, neat, curved shape and white, easy-to-navigate, pressure-sensitive touch LED display. While the risotto cooks, add to the pan a sprinkle of rosemary and the zest of half a waxed lemon. In a separate bowl, add egg yolk, cream, parmesan, and fresh lemon juice to create a "primrose emulsion". Stir this mixture into the pan until perfectly combined, turning the pale rice colour into a blonde shade. It's so simple, but tastes delicious. We also noticed that the quality was better when we cooked bigger portions. Therefore we wouldn’t necessarily recommend this one for producing smaller amounts. An attractive steel outer casing means that it looks good on the worktop. The glass lid is a nice touch so you can see at a glance what’s going on inside.

The least amount of dry weight rice you can cook in this machine is 2 cups, which is about 4-6 portions, making it a great choice for family dinners. If there are just two of you, then you can freeze the remaining rice once it’s cooled. Add all the ingredients into the breadpan and cook for an hour at the Jam setting. Since my bread maker’s shortest jam program time was 1hr 30mins, I set a separate timer for an hour to keep an eye on the sauce. Even the simplest of microwave rice cookers will cook grains such as quinoa and sometimes pasta as well as rice. In electric models, look out for extra cooking settings. These may include ones for specialist rice, including risotto, brown and wild, porridge, pasta, yoghurt and even cake! Rice cookers that are essentially multi-cookers will have all this. Plus 'slow' and 'fast' cook functions. Not really, no. Microwave cookers and some less feature-led models will give you well-cooked rice in about the same time as pan cooking. Some fancier models might even take a little longer. This is because they have separate stages to deliver the rice at the optimum texture. The beauty of these machines is not necessarily the speed of the cooking. It's more the fact that you can walk away, safe in the knowledge that the machine is doing the hard work for you. Can I put a rice cooker in the dishwasher? Perfect for cooking meals for the whole family, or a big batch of something for the freezer, the Risotto Plus multi and slow cooker from Sage is a slow cooker, rice cooker and steamer all in one compact machine.

Confirmation

Sage are expert at designing kitchen appliances with cleverly integrated functions to take the stress out of cooking. Their range of smart appliances, which includes kettles, toasters, and blenders, through to their ice cream maker and microwaves, has been exactingly considered to give you perfect results every time, all at the push of a button. Whether its prepping, boiling, whisking, whipping, grilling, cooking and baking, thanks to Sage, cooking has never been so easy.

The resulting rice is fluffy and fairly well separated. We used basmati and short-grain and both came out well, although both did form a very thin crust – as do some of the more expensive heat-from-below rice cookers – but it was easy to break up and stir into the rest of the rice. For steaming, we added more water than necessary to the bowl below the steamer then manually turned it off once the food was cooked. However, over time we could easily have worked out the right amount of water needed to get the perfect result. That would mean that once the water had boiled away the cooker would switch to the keep warm function as for rice. I used my breadmaker to bake Mary Berry’s banana loaf. While the cake turned out well, it’s worth keeping in mind that bread-maker cakes tend to have a slightly harder crust, particularly towards the bottom.With 6 pre-set functions for steaming, searing and slow cooking, the Sage the Risotto Plus multi and slow cooker is the ultimate smart one-pot cooker which will save you both time and precious cupboard space. Risotto rice has a short grain and is high in amylopectin starch. It's this starch, which is released by stirring, that produces the distinctive creamy texture. Long-grain rice varieties, like basmati , are lower in amylopectin, which gives them a fluffy and light texture. You can cook long-grain rice like a risotto, but it will never be the same. The Italian risotto par excellence is risotto alla milanese. To prepare it, finely chop the onion and sauté in a pan over medium heat with butter. Add ossobuco (ox bone marrow) if you’d like. Toast the rice on high heat for one minute, stirring continuously. Add white wine and let it evaporate. Pour in the hot broth a little at a time, stirring occasionally. Cook the rice for about 16-20 minutes, according to the chosen rice, adding two sachets of saffron halfway through cooking. Salt if necessary. Remove the pan from the heat, add cold butter and grated parmesan cheese. Stir until the risotto is soft and creamy. Let rest for a minute with the lid on and serve.

The meatloaf turned out fine and was entirely cooked through, although the top could have been crispier – something you can only achieve in the oven and with sufficient drainage to the meat. You can use your bread maker as a rice cooker: add rice and water to the bread pan on the “Bake” or “Cake” setting and cook for about an hour. But more excitingly, you can also prepare rice pudding or even a risotto with the Jam setting. Baking in a loaf tin, the fat has nowhere to go, so it simply sits on top of the meatloaf. Once out of the bread maker, I’d recommend that you pour out the fat – but be careful not to lose all of the glaze! It sounds obvious but don’t make the mistake of cooking risotto with the wrong rice: choosing the right variety is essential. Arborio rice is the most widely available risotto rice and it’s a great choice. If you fancy an upgrade, carnaroli and vialone nano are the premium options for risotto, but they can be quite hard to get hold of in the UK.One of the most delicious risotto recipes is sausage risotto. Make it sautéing a knob of butter with chopped shallot. Add the sausage in pieces (casings removed), and brown, stirring with a wooden spoon. Add the rice and toast it for a few minutes. Add red wine. Cook the rice, adding hot broth as it is absorbed. Once cooked, remove from heat and stir in more butter and parmesan cheese. The controls are simple: buttons at the bottom to select one of five modes: risotto, sauté/sear, rice/steam, slow cooker low, slow cooker high. There’s no countdown timer or delayed start. You can’t program the cooking time, only switch it on in the morning and off again when you get home. Sauté/Sear: for browning your meat and veg in the bowl, and softening your onions before slow cooking