DéLonghi MultiCuisine – making life easier

This is a sponsored post.*

I am always wary of buying cooking appliances if I am going to have follow its cookbook every single time I use it. I like to adapt recipes, make up my own, as well as follow other people’s recipes. So I was keen to see how well I could adapt to the DéLonghi MultiCuisine. And adapt I did!

Before using it I spent about half an hour reading the instruction booklet and viewing some of the 350 recipes on their app, which is available on both iTunes and Google Play Store and DéLonghi’s website. This gave me a great idea about the capabilities of the DéLonghi MultiCuisine, so I felt comfortable using their basic cooking time information to make things of my own.

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First up I tried my Dukkah crusted salmon. It usually requires me to use two frying pans and to be in the kitchen the whole time while cooking. I fitted 1kg of salmon fillets into the DéLonghi MultiCuisine and just checked it towards the end of its cooking time as it was the first time using it. The salmon tasted great and it was much easier, quicker and less mess with the DéLonghi MultiCuisine. And I lost no salmon in the process as it came out so easily. The lid, paddle and bowl of theMultiCuisine are all removable and dishwasher safe, so it makes washing up easier too.

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The MultiCuisine is a low-oil fryer and a multicooker, which means it is faster than cooking in your oven and healthier than using a deep fryer. I love crunchy roast potatoes and as noted in my recipes when baking them in the oven I will parboil them first, to get them to their crunchiest, while still being soft in the middle. A process that usually takes me 1.5 hours.

Using the MultiCuisine I can now turn 1.5kgs of potatoes into delicious crunchy roast potatoes in under 45 minutes. It is the Surround Heating System Double (SHS Double) that theMultiCuisine has which makes it cook so quickly while still providing fabulous results.

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And this is done using minimum oil. If you have checked out the recipes online you may see reference to oil levels from 1 – 5. Even level 5 is a small amount of oil as measured by the measuring cup provided.

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There are many tasty recipes to try and they were easy to tweak to my eating preferences, like this potato tortilla which was delicious.

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Making a lovely change from traditional potatoes in one of our meat and veg meals.

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For weekday meals when there is lots going on after school, I found the MultiCuisine really made things easier. It has an automatic and removable mixing paddle to stir the food throughout the cooking process so I wasn’t tied to the kitchen to manually mix ingredients. This meant I could sit and listen to the six year old’s reading without interruption and help the older kids with homework if needed.

Using the chicken with almonds recipe, it took about 10 minutes to prep everything and then 30 minutes to cook.
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I teamed it with shredded zucchini and broccoli stems that I prepared as part of my weekly food prep on the weekend – simply pan frying it for a couple of minutes with a little garlic. This was a hit with the kids, so much so that there wasn’t any left for dad. I will have to make a larger amount next time.

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And while on the subject of weekly prep (you can see photos on the PWK facebook page here of the food I prepare on the weekend), the DéLonghi MultiCuisine has made a huge difference here too. Each week you will notice I make up a large amount of roasted sweet potato. How much I can prepare depends on what else I am cooking and if the oven is being used.

The MultiCuisine roasts my sweet potato in under 40 minutes (usually takes me an hour) and as it has the paddle to turn it, I don’t have to look at it while it is cooking and can make other items at the same time even if they need the oven, like the taco parcels the kids love.

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The MultiCuisine has a recipe selector dial with automatic programs you can use to make healthy and quick meals. The five pre-set programs are potatoes, pizza, cake, stew, grill and it has a further three special programs – pan function, air grill function and oven function.

The DéLonghi MultiCuisine is available at all leading electrical retailers (RRP $549). It is a cooking appliance that will be used multiple times a week in my house as it helps make healthy, tasty meals for the family in minimum time.

Have you tried the DéLonghi MultiCuisine? Would love to hear how it works for your family?

*This post is sponsored by DéLonghi and I was gifted a MultiCuisine to test with our family and keep, but as always the opinions in this post are my own. Each year I raise funds for a non profit close to my heart. This year due to time constraints, rather than holding a fundraiser, I have decided to donate 100% of my fee for this sponsored post to the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre. You can find out how you can help those seeking asylum in our community with time, money or goods here .