Product Review - The Tefal Cook4Me MultiCooker
One of the formative cookery memories of my early childhood is the chug-chug sound of the rocker pivoting on top of the steam valve of Grandma’s stovetop pressure cooker. I was never allowed to touch the aluminium beast, lest I scald myself on a random explosive outburst of steam, or fall victim to an unexpected rocketing metal projectile. Although I was never harmed by the cooker, it is a somewhat fitting epitaph that the old boiler was put to rest after the rocker embedded itself in the ceiling sometime around my 10th birthday.
Both Grandma and I had all but forgotten the pressure cooker by the 2000s; we had both assumed the devices had been relegated to the scrap-pile of history, what with the advent of Microwave ovens, slow cookers, Thermomixes and domestic Sous Vide. Oh my were we wrong. The pressure cooker is back, and it has a solid injection of 21st century technology that makes it a strong contender in the crowded electric benchtop cooker market. Meet the Tefal Cook4Me Multicooker, our new kitchen love affair.
With the Cook4Me, preparing a hearty, nutritious winter warmer in record time has never been easier. The electronic Multicooker has over 75 built in localised recipes (we have the Australian version, which is currently on sale at Harvey Norman) and with on-screen prompting on its colour LCD screen to take you through each step involved in preparing and cooking a selected dish, even novices can put together a meal that impresses.
The cooker has multiple modes, and isn’t simply for beginners. In addition to step by step recipe guidance, the cooker has semi-automated cooking modes for different types of ingredients, and can prompt quantities and suggest cooking times for different numbers of servings, as well as accommodating delayed start if you want to prepare a meal ahead of time.
For expert pressure cookers, or to follow recipes that are not built in, the Cook4Me allows you to set cooking times manually for browning, pressure cooking and “keep warm” modes. It displays cooking timers in big, clear on-screen fonts (both count-up and count-down as appropriate), pre-heat and automatic de-pressurisation status bar-graphs, as well as cute pie-charts for at-a-glance assessment of cooking status.
Our Australian model came with a steamer insert and a 1m removable power cable. It should be noted that like many electric pressure cookers, the full 6 litre volume is not usable for all recipes. As we learnt through experimentation, certain dishes, particularly stews and lentil-harbouring soups, needed to be filled a couple of centimetres below the “Maximum fill” line, if you want to avoid confusing error messages.
The Verdict
Pros - High-tech, effective, fast and fully automatic pressure cooker. Attractive design, good ergonomics on the inner pot design, great features for novice and experienced cooks alike.
Cons - Maximum fill-line inaccurate for some dishes. Would be great if available in a larger size option. We question the long-term durability of the plastic on the display screen and handles. Cleaning around the lid hinge/condensation drain area is a bit fiddly. A future design with a fully removable lid might be better.
Ursula Says - I’m impressed by this high tech gadget. Its at least as effective as the old stove-top pressure cooker, but far safer and easier to handle. The controls are a bit confusing, as the first computer I mastered was an iPad, and I want to touch the buttons that appear on the screen, but you need to use the dial and button combo. I’ll let Troy handle that.
Troy Says - I’m in love. This is one gadget that I do not even remotely have buyers remorse about. I’ve been hunting for excuses to use it, and am really happy with some of the recipes I have made in the Cook4Me. Expect to see more pressure cooker recipes on this blog throughout the Antipodean winter!