I was cynical of the Monsieur Cuisine Smart cooker’s promise of “taking the hassle out of home cooking”. Think Mrs Doyle in Father Ted when confronted with the Tea Master, which promises to “take the misery out of making tea” to which, she famously responded “Maybe I like the misery”.
The original Thermomix design comprises a super powerful blender that also cooks and stirs. It will knead dough or mix batter, and comes with steamer baskets. Colleague Róisín Ingle recently reviewed a model by Vorwerk. Lidl’s Monsieur Cuisine Smart purports to be broadly similar, but there is at least one significant difference – a Thermomix is usually priced north of €1,000, whereas the middle aisle dupe comes in at a substantially cheaper, but still hefty, €500 price tag.
Boasting 600 pre-installed recipes, 23 kitchen “essentials” (although I have managed to make it this far without a sous vide somehow) and an accompanying app with video-guided cooking, shopping lists and weekly meal planning, I put the appliance to the test.
I decided to make a dinner, a lunch, a breakfast and two baked goods; one sweet and one savoury.
Dinner
The first recipe I tackled on the Monsieur Cuisine Smart was spaghetti Bolognese.
The setting up process was pretty straightforward – it really is just plug in and off you go. All in all, I felt this was all very doable – empowering even.
But I soon realised, that I don’t take direction well – and even less so from a robot. The Monsieur Cuisine Smart’s built in Bolognese recipe requires 40 steps – and that excludes cooking the pasta.
The first disappointment came with the veg prep. Yes, it weighs and finely minces vegetables for you, but you need to peel and roughly chop them first (Thermomix will do this for you) and by then, what’s the hassle in a little extra chopping?
Another substantial design oversight in the Monsieur Cuisine Smart is no beep reminder on completion of a task. I had envisaged the domestic bliss of a slow cooker – where I throw everything in and return to the pot at some undetermined time.
Not only was this not the case, but the absence of a beep reminder after each task concludes meant I was standing dutifully over the device as though it were a stovetop.
The last let-down of the Bolognese prep was how time consuming it was. The cooking process took two hours, which meant I sat down to dinner at 9pm, having apparently taken the “hassle” out of home cooking.
Breakfast
The following morning, with a renewed sense of determination, I decided I wasn’t going to let the machine boss me around – I was going to do the bossing. Cue a simple smoothie; bananas, strawberries, yoghurt, ice and orange juice.
The result was delicious, and the best part is the blender could go straight into the dishwasher.
Lunch
Emboldened by my breakfast experiment, I decided to make tomato and basil soup. The combined heating and blending feature was ideal. For those who are fond of a liquid lunch, the smart cooker works well.
Baking
Baking was the biggest culinary improvement brought about by my new computer kitchen. The kneading function was a fantastic relief from the usual mandated arm workout required for home-made bread and I made a perfect olive and rosemary focaccia.
The ability to weigh and whisk in one device was a welcome feature in comparison to the usual prep and cleaning required for a cake. For a scintillating banana bread, my chocolate chips were blitzed, my banana mashed and butter and sugar creamed without struggle.
Verdict
It is said that cooking is an art and baking is a science. The Monsieur Cuisine Smart takes a scientific view of meal preparation and that is where both its weaknesses and strengths lie.
Downsides
The first and most obvious drawback of the Monsieur Cuisine Smart is its expensive €500 price tag.
Secondly, I found some of the tasks to be a bit of a faff for dinner. As a home cook, the idea of weighing my onions is something I would never do (again).
I also thought some of the successive tasks were more of a pain than just using two pots. For example – if you wanted to make chicken curry and rice, you have to make your chicken curry, decant it, clean the Monsieur Cuisine Smart and then make rice using the rice cooking feature. You can’t prepare dishes concurrently.
Positives
Baking, however, is another matter entirely. Many stand mixers cost hundreds of euros and still don’t have the extra functions of the Monsieur Cuisine Smart.
Equally, if you have additional physical needs that might make chopping and cooking more challenging – the Silver Crest take on the Thermomix could be a welcome solution.
Young professionals, college students or people who are generally nervous cooks might also enjoy how instructive (ie, bossy) the smart cooker is. The device comes in at a tidy 35cm x 40cm x 24cm, making it a potentially wise buy for people in house shares.
But for me, the Monsieur Cuisine Smart sits alongside the air fryer: a promising gadget which takes up the limited space on my kitchen counter when, in fact, I actually like the misery of analogue cooking.
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