Soup Makers

Does anyone have one, and which brand would you recommend? My magic bullet has just stopped working and I am thinking of replacing it with a soup maker as I believe they can be used as a blender as well. I normally make up a large lot of soup in the slow cooker, but there are times I would use it to make a small lot of soup just for the 2 of us.

I have a sheffield.can make chunky or puree soup and yes has a blender. bought it on here.Love it

stick mixer

far better and far more versatile

Teffal soup maker. Throw in ingredients, switch on, chunky or smooth, and walk away. The kids can make their own . so easy. No stick blenders, saucepans to clean . just the soup maker container.

Thank you virea and thewobble. Illusion, I have a stick mixer but as I said above, I need to replace my magic bullet and I like the sound of a blender that chops cooks and purees with no dishes as well as do all the things my magic bullet did, such as make smoothies and mayonnaise.

It's a bit pointless for me to recommend the model I bought last year since they don't appear to be marketing them now (perhaps a seasonal thing, I'll keep looking to see if they reappear) but what I can share with you is some tips to help your research along. There are some mass produced cheaper brands which are heavily represented on TM (Soup Maker Pro for example). My research and reading of threads re soup makers here on the recipe forum led me to believe that people who had purchased them were disappointed. The major issues appeared to be (going from memory) - leakage, failure to work not too long after purchase and I have something about melting components stuck in the back of my mind too but . as I said, been a while since I did the research. Other things to beware of - heft, weight, buy something that is solid, it's going to be full of boiling hot liquid. you really don't want it to decide to give up the ghost and crack or whatever right at that point! Stability also comes into play - is the base proportionate to the top? How likely might it be to easily knock over once full and cooking? These things vibrate during the puree cycle so stability is an important consideration. Soup Makers that are overly fussy (lots of bit and pieces that make it seem like you're getting more 'bang for your buck'). One of the benefits of these is that they are, essentially, self cleaning. The more bits and pieces one comes with the further you move away from the, highly desirable IMO, land of the nearly self sufficient kitchen appliance. And here's a bigee (pun not intended) - how much does it hold? This is not as straightforward as we'd like it to be because the amount of cold liquid you can safely work with will probably differ from the amount of hot liquid you are advised/allowed to have in it at any given time. So, for two people (with leftovers for the next days lunch) you ideally want a hot liquid capacity of around 1.5lt. Or this would do a family of four - two adults, two kids (teenagers not included because they are fall into an entirely different category which is best described as - 'I'm a bottomless pit and no matter how much food you deposit I'll be back rummaging through the fridge and cupboards in approximately 20 minutes anyway'). Teach them how to use it for themselves and then everyone can co-exist in a relatively peaceful environment. A little trick/tip if you want to make enough for more people is simply to make a thicker version of the soup you have in mind (ie: pumpkin, kumara for example) and then thin it to the desirable degree and reheat for serving. Or make it like that on purpose to save on freezer space if you intend to put some aside for future use.

I really like mine, it's great for us (two adults) when I suddenly get overcome with the 'need' for soup either just for me or for the two of us on weekends. While my Soup Maker is busy sauteing the onions etc then cooking everything up prior to a quick whiz I can make a batch of scones or similar to go with the soup. They're very quick too (at least mine is) which leads me to one last point - check the motor size (watts), this is not the time to accept wimpiness in a kitchen appliance, you want it to have enough grunt to deal with your lovely soup and puree to the degree you require without any mucking around and demanding a cup of tea and a lie down half way through. Ideally you want something that can also multitask for other uses as well, so something that will handle crushing ice too is worth considering. Although the model I own doesn't appear to be available any longer I can tell you that it is 1200w and has a heavy glass 'bowl' (top part) and that I purchased it ex Australia (so the freight was a bit extra) because I couldn't find a model I liked here without spending major (as in I think in excess of $300) dollars which I wasn't prepared to do. I'll also add that if it broke I'd replace it which sums up how much I like mine.

Thank you so much sampa, that's exactly the information I was hoping for. I have also been researching brands, which is why I decided against the cheap ones on TM. What make is your soup maker, even though your model is no longer available? I have not seen any as powerful as 1200 w.

I think there are some that are stainless steel which would overcome the breakage problem with glass bowl and maybe the melting referred to with plastic.

You are welcome katalin. :) Mine is an Avancer, they appear to have decided to replace the model I bought with a smaller, less 'blender like' stainless steel model as pictured here -

http://www.avancer.com.au/1.3l-soup-maker.html

Please don't take me placing the link here as any sort of endorsement, I haven't done any research on that model but figure that they think there is more of a market for it and they don't have a need to try and market two models of soup makers. And there's another good point. A Soup Maker by any other name (and they have a few) makes researching difficult. Try googling or doing product searches under soup blender and/or hot and cold blender for starters (poor things are having an identity crisis while the manufacturers try to decide which is the most market friendly term to refer to them as lol). I do like the stainless steel ones but went with a more traditional looking blender for a couple of reasons one of which is visibility. For the most part when we cook food we're used to being able to look down into the pot to check progress but when using a soup maker/blender (at least the ones that resemble their non heating cousins) we're getting closer to eye level with the food so opening the top to check progress may be both annoying and involve having to remove the blender from its base (or climb up on a stool, not a really great idea for obvious reasons!) to check on it. Glass allows us to see what's going on, I like that. Of course SS would offer other advantages - durability, an extremely safe/clean product to work with around food and, last but not least, good looks. It's a matter of deciding what suits you best and working from there.

Teffal has a metal container

Just some feedback as I started this thread. I ended up buying one off TM for $30 which has had little use , it is a Goldair one, 1.7 litres and I love it. Using it on a daily basis, haven't actually followed a recipe yet. Just using greens from the garden, some potato and stock powder produces a lovely thick soup. So I can thoroughly recommend them, but sounds like it is worth avoiding the cheap Chinese imports from what I have read.

have a goldair 2 works and produces just fine