The Best All-in-One Machines

The newest model from Thermomix, the TM6 looks and performs identically to the TM5 but has a larger display with more recipes built in and additional settings for slow cooking, fermentation, boiling water, sous vide cooking, and making caramel. While it excelled at all our initial cooking tests, making tender risotto and pasta, evenly diced mirepoix, a silky smoothie, and effortless bread dough, its additional settings were largely inadequate. Both the kettle and sous vide settings fell short of our chosen temperature, so water never quite boiled and sous vide eggs were underdone. Its ever-spinning nonremovable blade also completely pureed slow-cooked beef stew. However, its sugar-stage setting made perfect caramel. If you are short on kitchen space, are looking for guided cooking, or want to be able to hold temperatures for sauces or candy making, this all-in-one machine is the best choice.

While this machine didn’t offer the same hands-on digital interface and guided cooking as the Thermomix, it had a few unique features we really liked. First, its blades were easy to put in and take out (similar to a food processor), so it was a cinch to swap out attachments without disassembling the whole machine or to remove the blade when we needed more surface area for browning. Second, you could heat the workbowl without the blade rotating, which meant this machine produced the best browning of the bunch. However, its numerous programs and attachments were hard to keep track of, and we constantly had to refer to the user manual. This was especially bothersome when we cooked our own recipes. It also couldn’t blend; smoothies still had huge chunks of kale and pineapple even after many minutes of blending, and hollandaise ended up looking more like scrambled eggs than an emulsified sauce. 

Cuisinart’s answer to the Thermomix all-in-one machine is terrific, both as a food processor (plus dicer) and as a multipurpose mixing and cooking machine. We enjoyed excellent results whether we cooked our own recipes or followed several of the 200-plus step-by-step recipes Cuisinart built in for everything from grains to vegetables to main dishes to desserts. Its only flaw was that it wasn't able to puree the kale, juice, and pineapple into a creamy, thick smoothie, leaving it thin and chunky, even when we tried a few different approaches. In all other ways we found it very easy to use; simple to assemble and handle, with intuitive controls; and easy to clean, whether by hand or in the dishwasher (all parts except the motorized base are dishwasher-safe). We also appreciated that its workbowl is made of sturdy stainless steel. We didn’t really want to part with this handy machine when testing was done. 

This is the older model from Thermomix, with a smaller screen and a more limited selection of built-in recipes (though you can download more through Bluetooth). Functionally it performed identically to the TM6, making well-cooked risotto, decent pasta e ceci, a well-blended smoothie, and evenly diced mirepoix. Still, we had the same usability issues that we saw with the TM6: It operates only when the lid is on, making it hard to judge the size of mirepoix or follow visual recipe cues. You also can’t heat it without stirring, so browning isn’t as good and chicken was mangled when we made chicken risotto.