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.

Smoked Rye Buns

Lately I've seen (in a glancing sort of way) a few comments about baking bread in a smoker. The idea intrigued me. I've baked bread in my gas grill, so why not bake it in my electric smoker?

One big difference is temperature. My smoker maxes out at 275 degrees, which is considerably lower than my usual bread-baking temperature. I've made bread sticks at low baking temps when I wanted them to dry out without getting very brown, and I've compromised on temperature when I've had something else in the oven that needed a lower temperature.

But the low temperature bake plus the addition of smoke sounded like a worthy experiment.

I decided that rye would work well with smoke, and I added buttermilk for a little bit of tang.

But what shape? I figured that a traditional loaf would have the smoke flavor on the crust, but I didn't think it would work its way very far into the bread. On the other hand, buns would have the smoke flavor in every bite. So I went with buns.

These would be great for any type of barbecue sandwich, with the added smokiness enhancing the sandwich in a way that a plain bun just couldn't do. Also great for a non-smoked sandwich where smoke would be an asset. Maybe not for the peanut butter and banana sandwich, unless you're likely to add bacon to that combination.

Smoked Rye Buns

1 cup water
2 1/4 teaspoons instant yeast
1/2 cup buttermilk
1 cup rye flour
2 cups bread flour
1/2 cup potato flakes
1 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoon caraway seeds

Combine everything (except the olive oil and caraway seeds) in the bowl of your stand mixer, stir to combine, cover with plastic wrap, and let it rest for 20 minutes.

When the rest time is up, knead the dough with the stand mixer fitted with the dough hook until it is smooth and elastic. Add the olive oil and caraway seeds and continue kneading until they are fully incorporated.

Cover the dough and let it rest until it has doubled in size, about an hour.

When the dough has doubled, flour your work surface and turn out the dough. Knead it briefly, then divide it into 12 equal pieces. Form each piece into a ball and place them on a baking sheet that will fit into your smoker (a quarter-sheet pan fits in mine.)

If you want individual rolls, you can use two pans - I went for pull-apart rolls and placed all 12 on my half-sheet pan.

Cover the rolls with plastic wrap and set aside until nearly doubled in size - about 25 minutes.

Meanwhile, prepare your smoker and soak your wood chips (I used maple, but use what you like) according to the manufacturer's directions. Set the temperature for 275 degrees.

When the dough has just about doubled, uncover it and bake it in your smoker (don't forget those wood chips!) until the dough is lightly golden and cooked through, about 45 minutes.

Remove the buns from the smoker, and remove them from the pan to cool on a rack.

Smoker plus chicken equals dinner

Not too long ago, I won a really sweet Masterbuilt digital electric smoker from the Creative Culinary blog.

To say that I was excited is an understatement. I'd done some smoking before in a stovetop smoker, but having a larger smoker increased my options.

Larger cuts of meat, more items at once, whole turkeys or whole large fish - they were all possible.

I wanted to dive right into smoking, but first I needed to buy a chicken and then I needed to find a recipes. No problem. Well, no problem buying a chicken.

But finding recipes was another story. I had three different books with significant information about smoking, but instead of finding slight differences in time, temperature, or technique, the three were completely different.

While I rifled through the books looking for some agreement, I brined the bird. That part was easy. Then I let it air-dry in the refrigerator. That was easy, too.

Then I looked at the recipes again. It wasn't just that they were completely different, but in some cases one would say "do this" and another one would say "don't ever do that." So which one was correct?I mean, it's possible for there to be several ways to accomplish something, but these books were practically yelling at each other about who was right.

When it came time to put the bird in the smoker, I just winged it. With electric control of the temperature inside the unit and a temperature probe that I could insert in the chicken, I figured I could just cook it low and slow and let it absorb the smoke and take its time getting up to an edible temperature.

I've got to say that it was a heck of a lot easier than babysitting a stovetop smoker. And the remote digital device actually worked inside the house, so I could see the temperatures without having to go outside and check. Pretty slick.

I mean, I couldn't go all over the house with the remote and have it read, but at least I didn't have to get up close with the smoker every time I wanted to see how things were progressing.

The chicken came out of the smoker a beautiful mahogany brown. Pretty as a picture, but I was more anxious to taste than to take photos.The next day, I heated up the untouched half in the oven. I think I might actually have liked it better that way, but I can't exactly put my finger on why.

I didn't use any kind of glaze or sauce - just the flavor of the smoke. I used maple wood, because I happened to have some. I'll be buying some different wood chips later, I'm sure.

Needless to say, I liked the smoked chicken, but it's just a first try.I have a lot more to experiment with. And there are a lot more things I can smoke.

Meanwhile, here's a nice brine for you.

Chicken Brine

40 ounces water
4 tablespoons Morton's kosher salt
1 tablespoon sugar
1 teaspoon dried sage
5 dried juniper berries
5 dried allspice berries
1 teaspoon black peppercorns.

Put all the ingredients in a large pot and heat just to a boil, stirring to dissolve the salt and sugar. Let the brine cool to room temperature, then refrigerate.

Place the chicken in the brine and weight it down so it stays submerged. Leave the chicken in the brine at least overnight. 24 hours is fine. This brine isn't overly salty, so you can leave the chicken in longer and it won't become over-salted.

When you're ready to cook the chicken, rinse it and pat dry. If you will be smoking rather than roasting or grilling, let the chicken dry, uncovered, in the refrigerator for another 24 hours.

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.