What is the Morphy Richards Sauté and Soup Maker?
Building on the success of its Soup Maker models, the Sauté and Soup by Morphy Richards is the next step, with the addition of a handy sauté function. This means it can not only cook and blend ingredients for soup, but also sear small amounts of meat, spices and vegetables at the start of cooking or toast croutons.
Its large jug means up to 1.6 litres of soup can be made at once – great for batch cooking. Beyond making soup, it’ll also blitz smoothies and milkshakes using its Serrator blades, designed to stay sharp for up to 12 times longer than standard ones.
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Morphy Richards Sauté and Soup Maker – Design
Not much has changed with the exterior design of the Sauté and Soup compared to the Soup Maker. It’s as simple as ever, comprising a stainless-steel jug with a non-stick coating inside and a lid with a motor housing and blades below. The lid is also home to two buttons – Mode and Select – that allow you to choose one of four programs – Smooth, Chunky, Juice and Blend. Its Sauté function has been located on the handle of the jug, making it easy to flick on and off without having a program activated.
While some soup makers allow heat and timing settings for cooking to be varied, the Sauté and Soup’s programs have been designed to be as straightforward as possible. The Smooth function runs for 21 minutes and the Chunky for 28 minutes, cycling through preset processes of heating, resting and blending, which is shown by the display. As long as it’s not blending, there’s the option to add extra ingredients by removing the lid, which pauses the program.
After it’s finished cooking, the blending mode can be used to adjust the texture of the soup with a quick blitz. The Juice programme, a non-heating function, runs for two minutes and can be used for fruit, yogurt and ice-cream smoothies (not using ice).
Morphy Richards Sauté and Soup Maker – What's it like to use?
While the accompanying manual is set out in an easy-read format and contains some tasty recipes to inspire, the Sauté and Soup is so straightforward that you’ll get the hang of it after your first use. There are no fiddly parts to assemble – it’s just a jug, lid and a 1.2m power cord that detaches.
To make a lamb and lentil soup, we started by sautéing with the lid off, browning minced lamb in a little oil. The sauté function is only designed to cook small amounts of raw meat, so this browned in just a few minutes. We then added the bulk of the diced vegetables, cooking them for a few minutes more. This produced a fair amount of steam, making it tricky to see how the ingredients were progressing, but also releasing plenty of aroma and flavour. Switching the sauté function off, we put in the rest of the ingredients and stock, placed the lid on the top and selected the Chunky programme.
Once the lid’s on, it’s hard to tell what’s going on, although the display that indicates when it’s cooking, blending and resting does give some guidance. Plus, while blender-style soup makers tend to give out a little steam as they cook, the Sauté and Soup’s lid fits firmly on top, with only the base getting warm to the touch and the stainless-steel exterior staying relatively cool. Once it’s finished cooking, the maker sounds a beep and your soup is ready. We gave it an extra blend and again, found it frustrating that you can’t see what’s going on inside and how much the contents have been blitzed. It took a few bursts and removing the lid each time before reaching the desired consistency.
The resulting soup was thoroughly cooked, although larger pieces of vegetables retained some bite, so it’s advisable to dice them quite finely beforehand. Cleaning up was effortless and took seconds – the non-stick coating inside the jug, coupled with a hard plastic lid, meant all the parts needed was a quick wipe and rinse.
Should I buy the Morphy Richards Sauté and Soup Maker?
Novice cooks will love the Sauté and Soup. Beyond chopping, it does all the hard work of soup making for you, taking the time and temperature guesswork out of the equation. The ability to conjure up smoothies is a thoughtful addition, but probably not what you’ll use it for the most.
Given its simple operation and ease of cleaning, this great-value soup maker is sure to be bubbling away on your worktop for most of the year.
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Verdict
Get ready to have nutritious, filling soup on tap for lunch, dinner and zapping hunger pangs. We only wish we could watch it at work.
