We are looking for a new recipe every day, Hungarian, Chinese, whatever, we can just cook something!

Introductory

I have to start this story quite far away, months ago. It was then that I started thinking about ordering a Xiaomi rice cooker. My acquaintances who use this have not been able to praise how easy it is to cook rice with it divinely, how many types of rice the program knows, and how thousands of types of rice recipes the machine knows.

A little over a month ago, I made a decision to surprise myself with a rice cooker! I love rice cakes, I also really like Chinese cuisine, I also like to cook, so I knew who I was going to use. In one of my favorite Chinese stores, I searched for Xiaomi rice cookers, who even threw out some varieties. It was from the small 1,7 liters, which costs about 17 thousand forints to almost 90 thousand forints. I chose a 5-liter one, saying this amount of rice would be enough for an army, plus I found a coupon sale for it. The price thus remained below 60 thousand forints, ie it was located in the middle field.

About a week and a half later, the courier came and brought a big box. It was hard, so I already knew my rice cooker came. I unwrapped it, washed it out, exposed it to the kitchen to run it in the evening. In the meantime, I started looking at the detailed description, the recipes, and I had to realize that I hadn’t bought good stuff. I got a little nervous, because almost 60 thousand forints is not enough money. I was also a little angry at the store as to why they sell the machine as Rice Cooker, once it isn’t.

We usually eat the juice of our inattention, our mistakes, however, as the article below shows, I couldn’t have done better with the fact that I managed to buy a smart kettle instead of a smart rice cooker. I got a machine that could make a million horrible delicious food, and not just rice, but almost anything.

So, in this case, my mistake is very well baked, so I will thank heaven for it in retrospect.

This article will be a little different from the tests so far, because now I’m only going to briefly introduce the machine and we’re going to cook instead of tech blabla. Sure, we don’t want to turn the We Tried Blog into a gastro blog, but this is once a little carried over into the world of wonderful flavors.

XIAOMI Mijia YLG01CM Smart Cooker - Exterior and Interior

The XIAOMI Mijia YLG01CM, to finally call the child by its name, resembles a slightly larger frit. Not too big, not too heavy, so they saved well with space. Its color, as it appears in the pictures, is white, the kind of slightly glossy, high-quality plastic that we have been used to with other products from Xiaom. Sure, it’s probably not a thermoplastic, but rather a hardening material, but the bottom line is that it looks good.

Metal can only be found inside the machine, at the heating part, the cauldron is made of metal, and of course the part around it and the inner part of the roof that fits the cauldron. There are all sorts of bumps on this part of the roof, as well as holes for draining the steam, but I’ll write about exactly what they do in the next paragraph.

At the top of the machine are four buttons, an OLED display and a large roll-up lock button. Since all the inscriptions are made for the Chinese market in Chinese, but as you will see later, it would only be confusing if we wanted to use them by pushing. But we’re going to set everything up on our phone, so no worries are a problem.

The roof release button is on the front, metallic, but it’s also plastic. What may be even more interesting about the exterior is that behind the opening roof there is an extendable and disassembled part, under which a group of pressure control components lurks, and there is also an emergency stop switch, which is a safety device in case of abnormal overpressure.

Let's go back to the inside for a moment. The cauldron itself appears to be cast iron, but it is not, but an aluminum alloy coated with five different materials. It is between these layers that it helps to distribute heat evenly, one that increases abrasion resistance and one that is responsible for keeping food from sticking. It feels a bit like ceramic coated dishes on the inside, and the protection against sticking is just as good as in them. I didn’t have to scream for now, whatever food was made in it, it was enough to wipe it off with a little sponge with a little detergent.

XIAOMI Mijia YLG01CM Smart Cooker - How does it work?

I think there are few people who don’t know how a cooker works. The principle of operation is simple. In the inner part, due to the increased pressure, the boiling point rises higher, so food can be prepared at a higher temperature, much faster. We all know that the boiling point of water is 100 Celsius, but less so that the boiling point also depends on what altitude we are at sea level. Because indeed, the higher, the lower the air pressure and the lower the boiling point. That is, say, you can cook an egg on the top of Mount Everest.

Old, traditional boilers are simple structures. The man threw in the ingredients of the food, the lid was closed, then he could go to the gas to prepare the food. The pressure in the kettle was controlled by a heavy “cap” placed on a valve placed on the roof. This, due to its weight, could only be lifted by the increased internal pressure. When the pressure rose inside, when the pressure dropped the “cap” sat back in place, in other words the internal pressure always remained constant.

Xiaomi’s smart kettle also works on this principle, but as usual, Xiaomi has packed a lot of extra features into the machine. Let’s start there, for example, by using the phone app to “see” where we are exactly, what is our altitude, and what is the altitude-based air pressure where we live. He adjusts the pressure in the pot to do this, so it’s not just so blind. It accurately measures the temperature in the cooking space, a sensor at the top and a at the bottom, and also accurately measures the pressure that develops. You can say precise to infinity. To put a little drier data in mind, the smart kettle can create a pressure of 1,7 atmospheres during cooking, so cooking is done at 100 degrees instead of 114 degrees.

Cooking isn’t made easier by these skills yet, but it’s projected that something really good stuff has been made here. Relief comes in a whole different way, through the telephone program. You will see this later, where the cooking follows.

Before we get started, I need to draw your attention to an important thing. The telephone program cannot speak Hungarian, only English. Fortunately, the selection of the cooking program is aided by small diagrams, and translating one-word descriptions does not take much time, and after the fourth or fifth cooking, translation will no longer be necessary, it is so obvious and easy to use. Except for one thing.

That’s one thing about built-in recipes. Not the ones I’m going to tell you about below, but the real recipes we can get from the program. I’m talking about thousands of Chinese food recipes now that are unfortunately only available here in Chinese. I’m sure I’ll translate a lot with the help of Google, because these recipes / dishes work by sprinkling the ingredients you put into the pot, pressing a start button, and eating when you’re done. And I love Chinese food so much that I try it!

Let’s get back to the part of the program we’ll use every day now! The point is that a wizard on your phone will guide you through the steps to always select the right program for cooking. First we can choose what kind of meat we work with, it can be poultry, pork, beef, or there is a separate section for the leg as well, being the much more tendonous part. In addition to meat, you can also choose rice (you can also cook rice with this!), Soybeans, and seeded, cereal-based dishes. Once we are done with this, we can select on the next page what kind of food we want to cook. There’s frying here, making soup, making stew and steaming the meats. For rice, you can choose normal or fast cooking, or you can prepare a special Chinese breakfast, where the nutritious sweets sprinkled with sugar are made from rice noodles in small forms. In the third step we choose how much we want to fry, cook the food, here are three choices. When you are done with all this, you only need to confirm the program with one button. Then we get a summary of the cooking process, here we can reach into the cooking time, for example, and finally we start the process with the push of a button. Sure, you have to put everything in the trunk beforehand, turn on the lock button, but I think that’s evident.

That's it. From now on, all we have to do is serve it when our phone rings that the food is ready. Simple enough isn't it? While cooking, if we are curious about what is happening, we also see this on the phone display. For example, if the pressure is increasing then it is, meanwhile we can see the current pressure in the pot, if the cooking is in line then it is, and if the food is ready then it is. The important thing is that when the pan reaches the end of cooking, it automatically switches to keep mode, i.e. until we start serving, the food is waiting for us at the temperature that is most ideal for us to consume. This is a very good head cooker, maybe I already said I love it.

So far, I hope everyone likes it, because on paper these pumpkins are good. Of course the practice eats, I mean it makes the master, the rehearsal of the pudding and the eating, so while cooking it will be revealed whether the programs work well.

There is another very pleasant feature of this clever cooker that we must not forget, even that we can touch the food on the go. On the roof, by pressing the first button on the left, you can order a cooking break, in which case the pot will drain the steam, and we can add more ingredients or even just mix what’s in it.

Well, that's it, cooking can begin!

XIAOMI Mijia YLG01CM smart cooker - cook just smart!

For the test, I singled out three types of food. These included traditional Chinese food, of course rice, a good little Hungarian broth, and finally a little fried chicken wings with mashed potatoes. I even planned a little candy, but due to lack of time, I only do it after the article, on the weekends. Luckily, there are a lot of cookies and other sweets that can be brutally made in smart cookware, so the biggest problem will be choosing what to eat.

Let's get back to the finished food! The Chinese came first, after all, it’s a Chinese cooking pot, so we stayed at the roots. I looked out a Sichuan chicken recipe from the Nosalty side. I can’t say it was completely traditional because it contained a little honey as well as pineapple, but the taste ultimately confirmed the creator because we didn’t get the usual taste found in Chinese breweries, but a thousand times better.

You can also bake in the pot, although I would rather call this cooking without water. So I resorted to a little trick. I started baking, but I didn’t close the lid, I just turned the lock on the lid to stop the beep warning of openness. The chopped chicken meat was then fried in the open dish, in a tiny oil, until nicely bleached. I then turned off the baking program, put all the ingredients in the pot, stirred, sealed, and the actual program could come. Since I worked with little juice, essentially only my own juice from the included foods, I chose baking here as well, not the soup mode, and as it turned out I did very well.

When the sound of the end of cooking was heard, all I had to do was jelly eat the juice left over with a tiny cornmeal, and I was done.

I think then was the moment when I apologized for the swearing I let go when it turned out I had accidentally (out of inattention) not bought a rice cooker. I like to cook Chinese food then especially. There is a frank cast iron wok for this purpose at home, in which I supposedly make very delicious ones, but nothing was prepared for what I got at the first tasting. I could never bring such flavors together in the wok. The texture and taste of the chicken rubbed the heavens, and there was not a hint of exaggeration in that. The flavors came together to such an extent that I could not realize so far. What was even more interesting was that the vegetables didn’t cook either, and the pineapple remained specifically crunchy, but certainly not as it did in its raw age. I’m really not exaggerating, my tears dripping from the first bite, though no matter how much I love to eat, I don’t cry for food.

When I overcame the first shock myself, I shoveled the chicken into a pan, took out the cauldron, and washed it in about two minutes to make the rice. We also get a measuring cup for the kettle, which can be roughly a decis. I added 4 and a half glasses of water to the three glasses of rice, then set up the program on the phone. Cooking rice in the traditional way, for normal time.

Well, maybe I don’t need to say that you can’t make bad rice in a Chinese smart cooker. I used jasmine rice, which was wonderful. Slightly sticky, but nowhere near mass-like, the rice grains parted nicely but didn’t crackle, so it was the way it was written in the ledger!

The second test was broth. I was a little scared of him because I hadn’t cooked in a pot under 10 liters so far, so I also had to handle the amount of meat and vegetables carefully to keep some juice with him. Since only poultry got into the soup now (there used to be beef anyway), I didn’t have a hard time choosing the program. There may have been a selection of chicken, then I pushed for the soup option and traditional preparation. Of course, before that, I packed everything nicely, poured water on it, and sprinkled on top of my secret ingredient, a pinch of nutmeg, which I think would be the best broth.

The program ran and we got a strong soup. Traditionally, making broth takes me roughly one morning. I confess that it will be good if after the first source on low flame for hours in the main beautiful silence. Some people take off the foam because it will make the soup cleaner, others leave it on because it will taste better. I used to take off the first, bigger foam, but of course it didn't work at the kettle, just as I couldn't pull out the cooking time for 5-6 hours. Regardless, my soup became pretty translucent when I filtered it with some small garlic left in the filter, nothing else. And again, the taste spoke only for itself. It was juicy, yellow (it had no saffron or saffron szeklice in it), it became a soup, its light was not broken at all, it was not cloudy either, but it was really strong.

For a third test, I wanted to make a little fried chicken wings. I had strong doubts about the quality of the frying, as it is, after all, a pot, and they are used to everything but frying meat. My fear was not unfounded.

Of course, I also stayed here for the chicken and the frying. Although, as I wrote above, we can reach into the baking time, I wanted to try to see if the pre-programmed time was enough to prepare this dish. So now I poke for the longest baking time.

The end result is not quite what we expect for a fried chicken wing. There was no problem with the flavors and texture of the meat, in fact, it was downright delicious, but the crunchy chicken skin was replaced by a slightly gelatinous chicken skin. You could say that was the way fried chicken wings were Chinese style.

The mashed potatoes made next to the wings, on the other hand, became perfect. I added a little more oil to the fat left after the wings, then added the fries. At the end of cooking, I broke it all up a bit and twisted it with the fat. It became divine. In some places the potato cloves blushed a bit, were overcooked properly, and the whole thing was juicy enough.

XIAOMI Mijia YLG01CM smart cooker - love it or is it true love?

If you’ve gotten this far in reading, you obviously know the answer. Not only do I love it, I absolutely love it, Xiaomi’s smart kettle has added a whole new dimension to cooking. If you think it’s just because the flavors in the food made in it are great, you’ve been wrong, although obviously that’s a very important aspect as well. What I perhaps appreciate even more is that there is no dirt with it.

You see, cooking has been terribly simplified. I can make a thousand kinds of better food in a single dish, while the fat does not splash, the kitchen does not get dirty. Washing the cauldron is really a two-minute stunt, plus a maximum of the spoons added to the smart kettle should be washed and everything is ready. So not only does the cooking speed up, but so does the work that follows. I’m not even talking about the fact that while cooking is going on, I can do anything else, like write news or articles, I don’t have to stand there by the pot, but I don’t even need to mix one on it sometimes. I just love it all, the way it is, from beginning to end.

I know very well, many people will say that this experience is expensive for almost 60 thousand forints, but to me, who loves to cook, loves really good flavors, now, after a few cooking, it doesn't seem like much at all, in fact, I think that everything the thing was worth a penny spent on it. After a long time, I have time to cook again, I can try new flavors, and that’s not an obstacle if the family doesn’t like what I do, because at most I throw together two servings for myself. It doesn’t last long, a Chinese food, for example, doesn’t take more than 20 minutes, including cutting chicken, peeling vegetables, or washing dishes. Of course, preparing the food itself takes longer than that, but my smart time is spent alone by my smart cooker, all I have to do is wait for the signal, when the catch is done, I can go eat.

I rarely get so enthusiastic about something, and rarely does a test last as long as it lasted with Xiaomi’s smart kettle. Or to be quite accurate, the test didn’t end with writing this article, rather the java starts now. There are plenty of recipes waiting for me to make, and so that I use a smart kettle, I will even have time for it!

If you liked the XIAOMI Mijia YLG01CM smart kettle, be sure to use the AFfbG10 coupon code, with which you can buy it for HUF 63 instead of HUF 663. Remember, choose the free EU Priority Line mode of delivery, which will arrive your package without customs and VAT.

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XIAOMI Mijia YLG01CM Smart Cookware - Coupon Code: AFfbG10