Your kitchen just got souped up
No doubt, the new Soup Maker launched by Philips is a nifty device, but is it a necessity
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It's rather unfortunate that the phrase "in the soup" denotes being in trouble. For there can be nothing like a good bowl of soup to make you forget your troubles. Admittedly, in a country like India, eating soup is not a normal rite of dinner. For one, the sweltering weather makes a hot soup an unrelished dish in summers. And two, Indians would rather have dal or gravy to flush down their food periodically through the meal than finish the soup before ingesting the solids. So it is peculiar that Philips should have introduced a machine that ends the drudgery of making soup: creating the broth, blending the whole into a creamy concoction and then reheating it before serving.
That's not to say the Soup Maker HR2201 isn't a nifty device. The appliance makes child's play of soup-making even if the instructions tell you to ensure that children do not use it. They shouldn't because they could, like I did, scorch their hands on the hot jug. Since the Soup Maker looks and feels like a regular blender you are likely to be lulled into touching the heated steel body. The 900 watts heating element does an admirable job of quickly cooking the soup ingredients, after which the inbuilt blender whips them into a creamy consistency. When I made carrot-tomato soup, all I had to do was to put the chopped vegetables and the other necessities into the jug, pour water, jog the setting to "smooth" and go catch the highlights of the ICC World Cup. Around twenty minutes later, there was the soup. All that remained was to add a dollop of fresh cream. I didn't have the soup immediately, but the device kept the soup warm; for 40 minutes you need have no worry on that account.
The blending is an automatic function in the "smooth"setting. If you want soup with pasta or chicken or vegetables swimming around, then you can use the "chunky" setting. To make red lentil soup with carrots, tomatoes, celery and curd, again all I had to do was put these into the machine and leave it to do its work unattended. This time, there was no blending and there was soup with the solid ingredients all cooked but intact. The three other setting are for "compote" for stewing fruit, "smoothie" for a cool glass of liquefied goodness, and "manual" for your personal choice of soup texture.
Reading through the accompanying soup recipes, I thought them bland and suited more for the Western dinner tables, so I modified them for my palate and was pretty pleased with the results. Also, when I made the lentil soup, I realised that the machine could be pressed into service easily enough to cook dal. Just add turmeric, and fennel and cumin if you please, and you can ladle out steaming dal some minutes later. Tadka, of course, is beyond the scope the Philips.
It is a very convenient thing to have in the kitchen, no doubt. But is it essential? On that, I would have second thoughts. At Rs 9,990, and for regular use in India mostly in the winter months, it seems an indulgence.
That's not to say the Soup Maker HR2201 isn't a nifty device. The appliance makes child's play of soup-making even if the instructions tell you to ensure that children do not use it. They shouldn't because they could, like I did, scorch their hands on the hot jug. Since the Soup Maker looks and feels like a regular blender you are likely to be lulled into touching the heated steel body. The 900 watts heating element does an admirable job of quickly cooking the soup ingredients, after which the inbuilt blender whips them into a creamy consistency. When I made carrot-tomato soup, all I had to do was to put the chopped vegetables and the other necessities into the jug, pour water, jog the setting to "smooth" and go catch the highlights of the ICC World Cup. Around twenty minutes later, there was the soup. All that remained was to add a dollop of fresh cream. I didn't have the soup immediately, but the device kept the soup warm; for 40 minutes you need have no worry on that account.
The blending is an automatic function in the "smooth"setting. If you want soup with pasta or chicken or vegetables swimming around, then you can use the "chunky" setting. To make red lentil soup with carrots, tomatoes, celery and curd, again all I had to do was put these into the machine and leave it to do its work unattended. This time, there was no blending and there was soup with the solid ingredients all cooked but intact. The three other setting are for "compote" for stewing fruit, "smoothie" for a cool glass of liquefied goodness, and "manual" for your personal choice of soup texture.
Reading through the accompanying soup recipes, I thought them bland and suited more for the Western dinner tables, so I modified them for my palate and was pretty pleased with the results. Also, when I made the lentil soup, I realised that the machine could be pressed into service easily enough to cook dal. Just add turmeric, and fennel and cumin if you please, and you can ladle out steaming dal some minutes later. Tadka, of course, is beyond the scope the Philips.
It is a very convenient thing to have in the kitchen, no doubt. But is it essential? On that, I would have second thoughts. At Rs 9,990, and for regular use in India mostly in the winter months, it seems an indulgence.
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First Published: Feb 28 2015 | 12:13 AM IST