Whipping Egg Whites take 2

I thought I’d try beating egg whites again. Without heat, but with a pinch of cream of tartar.

They whipped to what looked like soft peaks quite ok. But then they deflated when I put the sugar in. 😦

So I had to bring out the Kenwood Mixmaster and stiffen the egg whites. I made plenty of little meringues, but the conclusion of these experiments is that the Thermomix is NOT cut out for making meringues.

Whipping Egg Whites

Mum wants to see how well the Thermomix beats egg whites. It doesn’t. Not in our opinion anyway.

The recipe book says to beat 4 – 10 egg whites at 50C for 3-5 minutes at speed 4.

I’m dubious about the heat. Mum reckons it’s good to help it whip up.

We put the 4 egg whites and a bit of cream of tartar in and beat. Mum starts to add caster sugar when she thinks it’s stiff enough to hold it.

We stop the Thermomix at about 4 minutes – it’s still very runny. White and opaque but still very runny. We transfer it to the Kenwood Mixmaster to stiffen it. We know that the Thermomix isn’t going to cut it.

I will try it again with just egg whites and no heat.

[update]
I found some interesting information about egg white whipping:

Whipping Egg Whites for Macaroons and Meringues – Helpful Tips and Techniques

and
http://www.akiskitchen.ca/techniques/eggs_how_to_whipup/whipping_egg_whites_1.html

Carrot and Rockmelon Juice

Mum wants to try something in the Thermomix.
What can we do?
Carrot and orange juice! Like it says in the recipe book. But she doesn’t want citrus even though I have mandarines. We’ve recently cut and frozen some rockmelon. We reckon that will work.

The recipe:

1 large carrot
1 tray ice cubes
2-3 navel oranges, peeled, quartered
200g-500g cold water

At speed 8, for 30 seconds, blend carrot, ice and oranges.
Add water then mix for 2 minutes at speed 8.

Our variation:

2 medium carrots
about an ice cube tray’s worth of frozen rockmelon
about 500g water

mix everything for about 1 minute on speed 8

It worked, and resulted in about 700ml of juice. It tasted of way too much carrot, not surprisingly. It would have been better if we’d followed the method correctly.

Risotto failure

We decided, now that we have the Thermomix, that we’ll make risotto. Mum loves risotto, but doesn’t like having to stand there and mix. Yeah, yeah, it’s meant to be the “love” that goes into it, but honestly, who has the time to do that? There’s so many other things to do!

So, we figured we’d add chicken to the recipe… I think that was part of the mistake that lead to failure.

Half a medium onion
50g olive oil
470-500g arborio rice
100g white wine
2tbsp TM vegetable stock concentrate
200g fresh mushrooms sliced
1100g water

Chop onion on speed 7 for 5 seconds
Add oil and cook for 2 minutes on 100C at speed 1
Insert Butterfly. Add rice and wine and cook for 2 minutes at 100C on reverse and soft speed
Add stock, mushrooms and water and cook for 16-17 minutes at 100C on reverse and soft speed

Cook without butterfly using reverse and speed 1-2

The onion didn’t get chopped up as evenly as we would have expected – we pushed the big bits down again and tried to chop it up again, but ended up pureeing some of the smaller bits. We moved on.

I decided we’d try it without the butterfly. That was ok for step 3 because I put it at speed 1-2. After I added all the chicken and mushroom, however, I’d forgotten I didn’t have the butterfly in and did it at soft speed. It wasn’t until about 10 minutes in that I remembered it should have been at speed 1-2.

Result? Uncooked rice, chicken and mushrooms at the top, and smooshed rice at the bottom.

How did we attempt to fix it? I scooped it out into the Thermoserve, then put the butterfly in, then put the uncooked bits back into the bottom of the Thermomix bowl, with the moosh at the top. I set it to cook for another 10 minutes. It turned into “grandma rice”.

Oh well. We’ll just have to try it again, and this time, actually follow the recipe!