Not quite understandable to me – I’ve also always hated washing up when camping – but you obviously thought it through well. However, my good knives don’t go in there, nor does my lead crystal (which rather means I hardly use it anymore – I’m really too lazy for that).
The question about the teppanyaki plate: admittedly, we use it relatively seldom. We had imagined it a bit differently. Maybe it will come in handy yet. Often I find that I have to slowly get used to new devices and the new working methods and workflows that come with them. We’ll see. At the demonstration we simply thought it was great and wanted to have it. Also, we were told that with a steam cooker you wouldn’t need to cook so much with pots anymore. That made sense to us back then. Today, I wouldn’t see it that way anymore. Probably, as things stand now, we would choose two induction fields instead of one induction field and one teppanyaki field. Since you can certainly put pots on the teppanyaki plate and it gets hot enough to keep things warm and reheat them, it’s not that tragic now (at Christmas, with three types of cabbage, the gravy that still needed to be seasoned, etc. – that really got tight sometimes). When we use it properly, it’s already great! So for steaks, etc. Bratwursts are better in the pan (because somehow the wall of the pan holds the heat on the sausage – at any rate, a raw bratwurst cooks faster in the pan). But honestly: we have a gas grill outside and for steaks my husband often just goes outside (because the branding you get on the teppanyaki isn’t there). That doesn’t work so well when it’s very cold – admittedly, but those three or four times a year you could have made the steak in the pan anyway. At the demonstration, the chef made a truly excellent caramelized Kaiserschmarrn on the teppan – I was fascinated and sure you can use it in a versatile way. We haven’t tried it yet because we hardly eat any sweets *laughs*. But that naturally had the advantage that you can make a relatively large amount (namely over the entire plate) at once. Otherwise, you’d have needed three pans or three rounds to get the quantity. As I said: I’m sure I could use the teppanyaki more diversely than I do today, but if I had to configure my cooking fields again, I’d probably take two induction fields.
Now a question from me to the group: We specifically chose a steam cooker with water supply and drainage. In the kitchen studio, we were told that this is practical if you have the option, because then you DON’T constantly have to empty the water tank and it can’t happen that you go on vacation, forget to empty the water tank in the steam cooker, and after you come back it runs out – *brrr*. Back then we still had Gaggenau in mind but in the end decided on Miele. And with Miele it is so that it still has a water tank, which has to be emptied after each use. I find that stupid – what’s the point of the drainage??? Didn’t we pay attention properly? Or is it like that with Gaggenau but not with Miele? But why have a drainage at all if I still have to dispose of the water manually??? Not logical to me. I then called the Miele hotline because I somehow feared it had been installed wrongly with us. But the lady there couldn’t really give me profound information and just said that that’s just how it is and it’s correct. Well, sometimes I regret our decision against Gaggenau. I think with that brand you didn’t have any water tank at all, so nothing to empty. Well, through… But how often do you use the steam cooker? I honestly expected more, but simply because you have to clean, dry, and wipe it after every use, it somewhat spoils the usage for me. And I’m a bit disappointed. Full of enthusiasm I gave my beloved (and frequently used) pressure cooker to my mother-in-law because I now have a steam cooker! Well, no luck... I used to cook game always in the pressure cooker; it came out wonderfully tender and juicy. It takes ages in the steam cooker, becomes dry and I really didn’t expect that! So, I’m quite disillusioned and thinking about how to “steal” the pressure cooker back from my mother-in-law *g*, she hasn’t used it yet anyway. In the steam cooker I simply do vegetables that I have blanched beforehand in a pot or steamed with a steamer insert or I warm food (that works really well!). Although: honestly, the vegetables with the steaming insert were just as good and then the insert went in the dishwasher, the pot was quickly washed and done. Now I have to clean, dry, and wipe the steam cooker, empty and wipe the water tank *ugh*. So actually it’s more effort and only worth it if you’re cooking around 5kg of vegetables. Rare in a two-person household. Also, as an oven it is rather a disappointment compared to a “real” oven. I noticed that when baking cookies, where I enthusiastically used both ovens because then I could bake four trays: the cookies from the steam oven weren’t as nice as those from the normal oven (same setting). Long story short: I am rather disappointed by the steam cooker (at least the one we have) but I’m still clinging to the hope that I simply haven’t learned how to use it properly yet. So my question to you: how do you use it? Is there anything where you say: Thank God I have the steam cooker now – without it, something would be missing. What am I doing wrong (e.g., with dry, tough game)? I was so looking forward to this thing and now I’m rather frustrated.