Vita-Chef: A review

When a package arrived on my doorstep from Vitachef, I was pretty impressed. Dubbed the Healthy Lifestyle Cooking System, this beast performs the functions of an electric skillet, steamer, slow cooker, roaster, and indoor smoker.

The world probably doesn't need another slow cooker. I was much more interested in the other functions.

It's a skillet

An electric skillet is meant to replace a skillet, with a wide surface and relatively shallow sides that makes it easy to flip your food over. Yup, this puppy does that perfectly well in the bottom pan. The pan heats quickly and you can get a good sear on meats. Or turn the heat down for more gently cooking. It does its job really well. If you can do it in a skilled or frying pan, you can do it in this pan, including poaching, stir frying, and shallow frying.

As far as steaming, you'd place the steamer insert (the one with the long handle) on top of that bottom pan, add water, then add the food you want to steam. If you're steaming a lot of food or tall/bulky food, like crab legs, you can add the ring to the top of the steamer insert to expand the amount of space you have.

Smoking

For smoking, you'd use the same setup as for steaming, but without water, and with dry wood chips in the bottom pan.

The instruction manual didn't have any information on smoking, but I found instructions on the manufacturer's website. Unlike my stove top smoker, this uses dry wood chips, which means the prep time is a lot shorter since you don't need to soak the chips for the usual 20 minutes.

I was a little bit skeptical about using dry wood, cranking the heat to 400 degrees, and cooking fish for 20 minutes. I was a little afraid that I'd end up with fire, billows of thick smoke, and dry, overcooked fish. What I got was gentle smoke - yes, is smelled a little smoky in the house, but it didn't get foggy or hazy. It wasn't unpleasant at all, and no smokier than my stovetop smoker.

I cooked some tilapia, and after 20 minutes the two thin filets were nicely cooked, still moist, and they had a gently smoky flavor. The wood seemed barely burned. Hmmm. Interesting.

I've yet to try smoking anything for a longer period of time, but I don't see any reason why it wouldn't work. So, yes, it does work well as a smoker.

Slow Cooking

Slow cookers have higher sides, so you can toss in a roast or other bulky items. This has a ring that you can place on top so you can cook taller foods. So it works as a slow cooker for braising. If you wanted to fill it with liquid (for example, for making a large batch of soup), you wouldn't be able to do that. But it still holds quite a bit of liquid in that bottom pan, so you could make a decent amount of soup or sauce.

Since I use my slow cooker quite often for making stock, I don't think this could completely replace the slow cooker. But it comes close. And it performs additional functions, which is cool.

You can roast or bake in this, and it has a glass lid with a vent hole that fits all the pieces. The thermostat   goes from 200 to 400 degrees with a "warm" setting below 200, so you've got a wide range of temperatures.

All the cooking parts are dishwasher safe, but it's easy enough to wash by hand. It's all non-stick coated, so nothing sticks. My dishwasher doesn't easily accommodate pieces like this, so it's good that it cleans up so well.

The final verdict

I have to say that this has done everything it has claimed to do, but like any such appliance, its ultimate usefulness is going to depend on where you keep it. Store it in a place that's inconvenient to get to, and you probably won't pull it out very often. Keep it on your counter, and you'll probably use it regularly. Maybe even every day.

And if it's the only thing you've got to cook with - like in a dorm room - you'd get a LOT of use out of it. I wish I would have had this thing when my stove decided to suicide. There's not much I couldn't manage to cook in this.

I received this product from the manufacturer for the purpose of a review.

Dinner Tonight: Smoked Turkey Breast

Last November, when turkeys were on sale in the days after Thanksgiving, I bought a bird and stashed it in the freezer. Last week, I decided it was time to thaw the bird and free some freezer space.

When it was thawed, I cut it into pieces: two wings, two legs, two thighs, and two breast halves. Neck, back, and giblets went into the crockpot to make stock while the cut sections went into a brine with some apple cider, salt, peppercorns and a few poultry-friendly spices for an overnight spa treatment.

Next day, the turkey pieces came out of the brine and I rinsed it, patted it dry, and grabbed a thigh and breast to grind up for another recipe. The rest went back to the fridge for a little drying session.

Smoking came the next day. I smoked the remaining breast half and wings with applewood and I smoked the two legs and the remaining thigh with oak. All of this was done in my handy little stovetop smoker. It looks sort of like a little Weber grill, but it's made by NordicWare.

Yeah, it's not the same as smoking outdoors in a real smoker, but it's still good. And I can use on days when it's too cold and miserable for me to want to poke my toes outdoors.

The key to using the stovetop smoker to its best advantage is to get the temperature adjusted so that it's high enough so that smoke is created, but it's low enough so the wood keeps smoldering for a long time and so the meat cooks very slowly and has time to take on the smoky flavor.

The breast and wing sections were in the smoker low and slow for a couple hours before the breast temp reached 160 degrees.

But we're not done yet. The smoked meat was cooled, then refrigerated. The legs, wings and thigh have been set aside for future use, but the breast was destined for tonight's dinner. I glazed it with some apricot goo I had left over from another recipe, and popped it in the oven to warm up to serving temp. It was already fully cooked from the smoking, so I just wanted the glaze to get happy and the turkey to reach a serving temp.

The meat was moist, tender, and smoky and the apricot glaze added a nice sweet-tart accent. Makes me almost sad that there isn't another turkey in the freezer. Silly me, I forgot to take photos of it right out of the oven, but here it is just as I was packing it up for tomorrow.