HINTS & TIPS

Here is my great collection of hints and tips for maximising the use of your Thermomix.

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HINTS & TIPS

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• For a printable A4 size of Cups to Grams measurements:  Click Here
• For a printable A4 size of Thermomix Frequently Used Reference Tips Click Here
• Abbreviations for Thermomix:  Click Here

Butterfly:

To get the last bit of food off your butterfly, tap (gently!) it back and forth inside your bowl. Then place it back on top of the blade, turn on speed 4 to flick excess to side of bowl, then scrape last bits out with your spatula.  Remember that the butterfly should never be used above speed 4.

Cleaning TM bowl tips:  Click Here

Cleaning Thermomix bowl after melting chocolate:
Pour a glass of milk into TM bowl and mix 5 sec / speed 8.
Heat milk 5 mins / 80°C / speed 4.
Enjoy warm chocolate milk.  No wasted chocolate! 🙂

Order of cooking (and avoiding the need to wash the bowl):

To save on cleaning – have a think about what you are planning on making in your thermomix.  Try and do the dry things first, then the wet – it often then means you can skip a step of cleaning the bowl!  🙂

For example:

• The perfect time to make a soup is after making your vegetable stock concentrate – don’t bother cleaning the bowl and go straight into making soup.
• After making stock, if the weather is too hot for soup, make liquid stock by adding some water to your Thermomix bowl and blitzing for a few seconds.
• After making butter go straight into making a cake.
• After making a chocolate cake add milk and make custard.
• After melting chocolate make a hot chocolate drink
• After making butter, add a little oil and go straight into sautéing onions.
• After making butter go straight into making buttermilk scones.
• After making mayo make coleslaw.
• After making hummus make a salad.
• After making CADA make an Apple Smoothie.
• After making ThermoFun Curry Blend go straight on to making coconut milk (freeze for later to use next time you make a curry).

Creaming Butter & Sugar:

Pulverise sugar first 10-20 seconds / speed 9
Add butter and chop 5 seconds / speed 8
Insert butterfly and whip for up to 2 mins / speed 4.

Dips:

• Double the hommus dip – once processed, remove half from the bowl and add a small tin of baby beets, cumin and paprika and you have two beautiful dips without cleaning the bowl!
• Majority of dips can be frozen too!
• Herb and Garlic Dip:  so many more ideas to use it for other than just as a dip!

Jam Making:

1. There are many ways to sterilise jars – the easiest way I prefer is put some water in each jar and heat in microwave for a couple of minutes until boiling.  Then take out and pour the boiling water over the inside of the jar lids.
2. Ways to help thicken jam up:

• Cooking is a science, particularly with sugar.  You don’t need jam setters or thickeners.  You need heat and the natural pectin from lemon and/or apple and evaporation.   So cook it for longer on Varoma temperature with MC off and simmering basket on top to stop any spatters.
• Chia seeds – adds a huge boost of nutrients and helps set the jam.
• Agar agar is a natural seaweed setting agent.  A couple of teaspoons usually does the trick.
  
• To test if jam is set – place a small dish in the freezer, take out a tsp of jam and place it on the chilled dish.  Put back in the freezer for 2-3 min until it’s cold, you want to push your finger in the jam & it should pucker.  If this doesn’t happen cook the jam for a little longer.

    3.  Once jam is set – pour into jars while still hot and then turn jars upside down until cool. Turning the jars upside down creates a seal.

    4.  To clean bowl after making jam – pour in a glass of milk and mix  15 sec / speed 9.  Enjoy a fruit jam milkshake!  🙂

Measuring Cup (MC):

• As I was cleaning up after cooking dinner I was “rushing around” and noticed I had placed my MC on the veg scrap pile and got to thinking how easy it would be to “lose” it!  So please make sure before you throw anything out that you have all your Thermo parts accounted for!
• When I posted the tip about not throwing out the MC on our ThermoFun Facebook page, a lot of people responded with loosing their potato peeler!  I’ve also lost teaspoons!  However, the ones that really stood out were the ones about the rubber seal under the blades.  So another point to check when putting your bowl back on the base is to make sure your rubber seal hasn’t gone missing! To avoid this happening, I strongly recommend, never to take the rubber seal off the bottom of the blade as it can still be washed easily enough with it on.

Pureeing:

• Ensure that when pureeing your hot stock or soup to always start on the low speeds and slowly working your way up to higher speeds, this ensures that you get a consistent puree as well as preventing any hot food spatter.
• When doing puree of any hot foods, the turbo should not be used.
• When pureeing hot foods it is advisable not to hold down the measuring cup as this creates a vacuum and could cause damage to your Thermomix in the form of breaking the seal and also cause hot food to spray out of the top of the machine and could cause burns.
• When taking the lid off your Varoma or the lid off the bowl when cooking hot food, always open slowly away from yourself to ensure that you don’t receive any steam burns.

Reducing Liquid Tips:

• Replace the MC at the start of the dish with the Steaming Basket.  Place the steaming basket on top of the lid, this allows for evaporation and helps stop spattering. 

• If you think the recipe calls for a lot of liquid then use 20% less, keep an eye on your dish and top up if you need to.

• Grab a big enough bowl pop your steaming basket or Varoma over the bowl and drain the liquid away. Don’t discard the liquid, reapplying to each serving as needed, keep in the fridge for next time or even turn into a gravy or sauce for another meal.

• Add some flour, corn flour, arrowroot, or tapioca starch to a small amount of water to form a paste and put in your bowl – 5 mins on 90° should help thicken up the liquid.

Rice Cooking:

• A great way to add some flavour to your rice is to add lime, lemon grass, stock or chilli to the water – or sprinkle some cumin seeds on top of the rice just prior to cooking it.

Shredding Chicken:

• When cooking chicken in your simmering basket – Add a tablespoon of TM stock concentrate to your steaming water for extra flavour.
• After cooking and shredding chicken in the TM, place the chicken in thin layers on plates and cover with cling wrap, or you can put it in large rectangle containers and snap freeze for 30 minutes.  Then transfer the chicken into a large freezer container.  This stops the chicken from sticking together and allows you to take out the exact quantity you need as required.  It’s very handy when you want to make one chicken sandwich at a time!

Sat it aside & forgot to put it back in ?!

• If a recipe in a book says to “set aside”, I always highlight or underline it and make it more noticeable, so the next time I make it I don’t forget to actually “set aside”!  Once you have “set aside” the particular ingredients I leave it very close to my Thermomix speed dial, so as I don’t forget to put the ingredients back in!

Sautéing Onion 

• When sautéing onion no matter what the recipe says, I find it is best to be on Varoma temperature for 5 minutes and always leave the measuring cup (MC) off.

Spatula – Keep it looking Brand New!

• It is a good idea to get into the habit of removing your ingredients from the bowl with the spatula by moving your spatula in a clockwise direction.  This direction means the spatula is coming in contact with the blunt side of the blade and this will avoid any nicks in your spatula.

Vegetable Stock:

• Add some extra nutrients and flavour to your Vegetable Stock Concentrate with some dulse flakes (around 5g is plenty). What are Dulse Flakes? Dulse flake is made from dulse seaweed which contains, Vitamins A, B1, B2, B3, B6, B12, C, and E, and minerals like potassium, calcium, magnesium, phosphorous, chromium, iodine and zinc and trace elements. Great addition to our daily diets.  Where do you get Dulse Flakes?  From your local health food shop or online.

Didn’t have the base connected to bowl when you poured in liquid?  In Case of Emergency 

Other tips:

• TM31 model:  pressing the ‘minus’ and ‘plus’ timer buttons at the same time clears the timer AND pushing the power button next to the 37 button, clears the temperature you have set or been cooking on.

Bread proving tips:  Click Here

Budget – Tips for keeping within it:  Click Here

Caster sugar and icing sugar tips: Click Here

CADA ideas:  Click Here

Can I Make It – how to make the basics:  Click Here

Condensed Milk – recipes needing it:  Click Here

Cream Cheese – recipes needing it:  Click Here

Cooking fettuccine: Click Here

Cooking small pasta in ThermoServer:  Click Here

Cups to grams measurements:  Click Here

Dieting tips (rules!):  Click Here

Fudge recipes on ThermoFun:  Click Here

Frequently used reference tips:  Click Here

Gift ideas:  Click Here

Herb and spice substitutes: Click Here

Herbs – Tips on freezing them: Click Here

Herbs –  Tips on growing them:  Click Here

How to convert old recipes for your Thermomix: Click Here

Kitchen Renovation Ideas for TM owners:  Click Here

Large Families with a TM:  Click Here

Main Meal Ideas:  Click Here

Mayonnaise tips: Click Here

Monthly meal plans:  Click Here

Pantry suggested essentials:  Click Here

Parmesan Cheese uses for:  Click Here

Passata – recipes needing it:  Click Here

Raw Sugar to Icing Sugar:  Click Here

Risotto Variation Ideas:  Click Here

Simmering basket hints and tips: Click Here

Smoothie Ideas:  Click Here

Spice Blends on ThermoFun:  Click Here

Tempering chocolate: Click Here

ThermoServer uses: Click Here

Too many tomatoes?  Click Here

Varoma recipes on ThermoFun:  Click Here

Whipping egg whites: Click Here

Will I use my Thermomix?  Click Here

For even more tips: Click Here 

Tips from old Thermomix owners to new Thermomix owners:  Click Here

 

For many more hints, tips, ideas and support why not join the ThermoFun MembersClub!

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Where do you sign up? Head to our Club Membership section and join today!

For more great tips and recipes on using your thermomix join our free monthly newsletter here:  ThermoFun Newsletter Subscription.

Click Here for more great recipes in a number of e-cookbooks – containing recipes to suit everyone.