Can this magical Twin Chef cooking machine deliver on taste as well as convenience?
Just a few weeks ago, we introduced you to the awesome stylings of the Twin Chef rice cooker, a nifty new kitchen gadget from Japan that lets you cook curry and rice simultaneously at the push of a button.
This potential space-and-time saver sounded too good to be true — after all, who wants to waste time and energy cooking two vital components of a Japanese curry in a separate stovetop pot and rice cooker? — so we knew we had to buy one and try it our for ourselves to test its mettle.
It didn’t take long for our Twin Chef to arrive, and when it did, our Japanese-language team were keen to bring their experienced curry palates to the table. In charge of cooking duties was our reporter Tashiro, who donned an apron and walked us through the process of using the appliance.
There are a lot of things you can cook at the same time in the Twin Chef, which actually comes with two additional steamer trays, allowing you to cook four different things at once. For today’s test, though, we’re using the appliance for its primary purpose, which is to cook curry rice by simply placing the curry ingredients in one pot and rice with water in another.
Then all you need to do is set the separate cooking modes and wait for it to ring out with a melody signalling it’s ready!
While waiting for it to cook, Tashiro quickly came to appreciate the convenience of the Twin Chef. If Tashiro were cooking curry in the usual way, he’d have to keep going back and forth from the stove to check on the curry to make sure it wasn’t burning. He’d also have to worry about whether or not the meat was cooked well enough for the curry to be ready.
In the 40 minutes it took to cook, Tashiro was able to get some work done in the office without having to give a second thought to the curry. This was a luxury he hadn’t experienced before, so he was all smiles when the cooker sang out to him and he lifted the lids to find…a perfect looking pot of rice and a perfect pot of curry!
He made a whopping 8 plates of curry rice in 40 minutes, and all he’d had to do was put two pots of ingredients into the machine and press a few buttons. Impressed with the ease of the cooking process, he was keen to find out how it all fared in the taste department, so he gathered our other Japanese-language reporters together for the ultimate taste test.
So how did it rate with our discerning curry tasters? Tashiro recorded their responses, along with his cooking demo, all in English so we can get a firsthand account of their reactions, which start from 1:44 in the video below!
Well that’s a big, fat, curry-stained thumbs-up from our Japanese team, who’ve all been eating curry rice since they were children. That’s certainly a glowing endorsement, and the biggest compliment to the Twin Chef was when our reporters asked for more!
Tashiro and the team were impressed not just by the taste but by the convenience of the new appliance, marvelling at how much time was saved by not having to put any major thought into the cooking process.
It’s an appliance they all now want to get their hands on, along with the automatic cup noodle maker and this new bento-sized rice cooker which promises to have everyone jealously coveting your lunch in the office.
The Twin Chef can be ordered through online retailer Shop Japan here for 19,800 yen (US$180).
Photos © SoraNews24
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