Breville Flavour Maker BSC560 Questions & Answers (page 2 of 2)

I have a family of four and normally make larger serves of things - say 600-700g meat plus lots of veg. That would normally do us for two dinners or so. My meals normally fill it up 1/2-2/3 of the way. If you are making smaller dishes then you might find it fills up less than halfway, but even then I have always been happy with the quality of the food cooked.
It's great for roasts/pulled pork etc.
So in other words, yes it will be a bit big for most meals, but it shouldn't effect the quality of the food etc. And then it will be plenty big enough for larger meals.
I believe there is a smaller one available (5.5L?), but I thought it would be too small for us.
Good luck with your decision!

Yesterday I cooked a beef bolognese in the BSC500. I used 2.5 kg of mince plus four carrots, four sticks of celery, four onions and four large mushrooms plus sauces etc. The cooking insert was full. It was enough to feed 18 people. Only three sat down for a meal last night but I have enough left for 5 more meals for three people. The other 5x3 meals are in the freezer to be used on days I don't want to cook. I have used the BSC500 to cook a large leg of lamb on a couple of occassions and it does it well.

Well Jacquie if you can afford the price, the Breville Flavour Maker is well worth buying. I live by myself but use small one to two litre plastic containers to freeze anything left over. I think that it would be excellent to cook lamb shanks in because of its size. Also although the Flavour Maker has a 7 litre capacity if you were for instance to cook four to six lamb shanks with veg and potatoes in the slow cooker so that it only held 3 to 4 litres all up as long as your followed instructions and made sure that there was enough liquid in it by doing a quick check ever hour it would be possible to slow cook your recipe for eight to ten hours which would really release the flavours of lamb shanks.

What are you cooking? What setting do you want to use? Do you have instructions book?
F

From my personal experience - the power they use is negligible. They don't seem to chew the power like say a fan heater or pool pump. I haven't found any change in electricity bill due to using this crock pot, or any others, for long periods of time (or any periods of time at all for that matter). They don't run any dearer in my experience and the old ones and the new ones seem to be fairly economical on power. Also - they save you a lot of money in take away food as when you get home and are too tired to cook the bulk of the meal is already done for you and is usually not too painful to clean either. However, you may have had an issue in the past so please use your personal experience to suit your individual needs.

Remember: As long as you don't have an induction stove top (you cannot sear on induction with this pan) you will be able to remove the pan out of the crock pot cradle and then sear on your regular stove top. There is no sear setting on this crockpot, nor keep warm etc. The settings are only: On/off and 1,2,3 (or low, medium, high)- that's it. I don't think there's an auto turn off either (I could be wrong so don't quote me on this one) - and if this is the case this is a bit dangerous in my opinion. For myself, next, I would try and get a large style crock pot that has a sear setting, (so you don't have to change out pan), has a keep warm setting, and several other settings on it i.e. rice cook, curry cook etc and perhaps a glass lid. I am not fond of the stainless lid; gets smeary and I would like to "see" the food inside without having to take off lid. It is very basic for the price and I would recommend you do your research first for one that suits your needs. I still use mine but it is a bit annoying to me, even if I had of had non induction, to have to take the pan out and sear it elsewhere i.e. stove top (and then put it back in). I don't mind taking the pan out to clean obviously, but with amount of money being spent on the item it should have the sear setting built in (not go find another heat source thats compatible and use that).

Please Note: I have a Kambrook pressure cooker, steam, slower cooker, and crockpot in one also. It is the small style but it has sear built in and I use it all the time. It has digital buttons which are a bit confusing (not really digital), but I worked it out after a while and it has lots of settings. It is preferable to the BSC560 and I am going to see if I can get the same model/style but in the bigger, oval, longer size. I hate pressure cookers and won't use but this one is like using a pressure cooker thats not really a pressure cooker. If I can use it anyone can. You never have to use it as a pressure cooker if you don't want to but you have all the other settings which are really great. You have lots of options with this one and the model is Kambrook Pressure Express digital (smaller, round size but).

Take care
Felicity

Only Breville can answer that one. I find it odd that they don't already have one that does do induction. It is quite antiquated really.
F

I love it as it copes with any size but I wish it was more durable if the entire thing was stainless steel it would be better as the coating does not hold up very well. Would I buy it again probably not for this reason as now you can buy larger ones that the inserts are better

Well you do have to be able to know how to adjust amounts accordingly every time you test out a recipe. Obviously if you don't have enough in the pot as it's so large, it's going to run hot. I find the minimum amount of protein you can put in without worrying about overcooking is 1.5kg as its maximum capacity is about 3kg protein meals and you have to for the most part follow that rule of having your cooker 3/4 full. The other option some ppl do is put smaller oven safe containers in the slow cooker with an a few cms of water at the bottom (a bain marie type method) but I've never really enjoyed that, especially if you're wanting to sear the food. The 7L is large and is most useful for bulk cooking. As I said, you can use for smaller amounts but you will have to be able to figure out how to adjust recipes to suit it as most slow cooker recipes are going to be for either a 3 litre or something close to a 5L at the biggest in my experience. The 5.5L may be a more practical size for families that don't need such large amounts of food (you could probably put 1kg or less of protein and it would perform well and maximum capacity would be about 2kg protein). Having said that I think the 7L size is still good to have for roasts, soups, stock, entertaining etc. You might be better off buying the 5.5L and if you can't get a 7L too, borrow one off a friend as and when you need it for entertaining?

Very helpful. Thanks so much. Pamela

Personally I have had no pitting to date in my slow cooker, therefore I have no feedback on customer service. I love my Flavour Maker and plan on purchasing another one. Perhaps the wrong utensils are being used in them, I use silicone utensils in mine

I do use silicone utensils and I used mine everyday. And it pitted on sides not the bottom where most would occur at a guess

Yes, you can absolutely sear the meat in another pan, then add into the Slow Cooker. Or (depending on the recipe) you may not need to sear at all - it just adds some extra flavour.

I have an element stove top so I don't have this problem but i mainly use my pan for stove cooking.. when i use it for slow cooking i never sear my meat and my meals taste fine!

I have smartstone bench tops. Do not use anything on them. They are not very sturdy. We have had our entire kitchen bench crack through the drainage grooves and then smartstone try and tell us it was our fault. We did not place anything on them i.e. crock pot or hot items. QBCC made them replace as product fault obvious.
I have used crockpots and natural stone and granite for over twenty years and never had an issue. The only time the natural stone cracked was when someone stood on it to change an overhead light bulb.
So - two messages; don't buy smartstone, ceasarstone, quartz stone or any of the "man made" stones. They are inferior. If you check their warranty it doesn't exist. Man made stones are not fit for product use i.e. once you cut sink hole, add joints, use caulking, put it in a kitchen etc, there is no warranty and the list goes on. Don't like marble for the maintenance but granite always works well.
Yes - you can use your crock pot on natural stone/granite. No - on man made stones i.e. smartstone, caesar stone (despite the fact that it is supposed to be 1000 times stronger than natural stone - its not).

Not that I am aware of but you could contact Breville and ask

mine has a glass lid, which did break at one time, during cooking, but I simply contacted Breville, and they sent me a new one, at no charge, which speaks highly of their after sales service

The cooker should have had an instruction book inside the box

Not suitable for induction