The Secret To Cooking Like A Professional At Home

With more of us enjoying cooking and entertaining at home, choosing the right appliances to achieve those desired restaurant quality results is key. We were delighted to sit down with our executive chef, Sven-Hanson Britt and Douglas McMaster of Zero Waste restaurant Silo, Brighton to discover their favourite appliances to use when cooking in their kitchens.

Sven-Hanson Britt says, “The exciting thing for me about using Miele is that restaurant quality food and techniques can be easily emulated, thanks to the precision and accuracy. The gourmet drawer is an amazing appliance.  It allows you to create a wide variety of dishes thanks to its temperature control of 65-85 degrees. It can slow cook dinner party classics such as a shoulder of lamb to perfection, which will melt in the mouth as well as gently cooking high protein or delicate dishes such as crème brulee so that it has a delicious, smooth and velvety texture.  It is also a great help when proving bread, holding dishes at the perfect serving temperature and gently drying produce such as tomatoes to create delicious sun-dried tomatoes.

I am a big fan of steam. A Miele steam combination oven is perfect for cooking delicate vegetables but the precise temperature range from 40°C to 100°C and use of dry, radiant heat as well as moisture provides the best finishes and allows you to be much more creative! Did you know that you can also cook eggs in a steam oven? Slow cooking eggs at 63°C will give you a really soft finish somewhere between a poached egg and a soft boiled egg. Egg whites start to set at about 57°C and then begin to get hard at 65°C, so cooking them at 63°C fully cooks the egg but gives you a really nice, runny yolk. It is also ideal for cooking a delicious roast chicken that is beautifully golden and succulent or whole fish at 80°C to keep it soft and flavoursome with no need to add any oil. Another great feature of these ovens is the way the steam is injected and extracted, through inlets on each shelf level preventing transference of flavours, allowing you to cook a dessert and main course at the same time. For a limited time only, receive a premium accessory package worth over £500 with the purchase of a new DGC Oven through Miele online.

I also love the Miele Sous Vide Vacuum Sealing Drawer, it is the ideal companion for the steam combination oven. It is fantastic when preparing tougher cuts of meat that were traditionally braised, stewed or boiled, vacuuming in flavour and tenderising the meat. Using the sealing method and cooking at lower temperatures in the steam combination oven means that joints that would previously cooked unevenly can now be perfectly uniform, meats have a meltingly soft and pink finish and the margin of error is reduced when cooking all types of fish, vegetables and fruit.

Finally, I really like the flexi-clip runner system on the ovens, they offer a new level of precision in baking and cooking. Having a shelf that slides in a fluid motion towards you is essential for the precise filling and removing of deep-filled custard tarts, removing delicate soufflés and steamed fish as well as the obvious safety improvements.”

Douglas McMaster, who has worked in restaurants in the UK and around the world since the age of 16 has a huge passion for produce and the environment. His restaurant, Silo in Brighton aims to be Zero Waste; offering innovative, full of flavour dishes without the food miles or over-processing. Douglas also shares Sven’s passion for steam cooking, using our steam combination ovens, induction hobs and food warming drawers in his restaurant, often cooking for over 200 guests in a day.

“I like minimalist looking food, I like those simple structures to represent the natural form of the produce or its terroir. I love explosive colour! What I need is consistency, and low temperature cooking offers this.  If you are cooking a piece of fish, you can set the temperature to 50°C and know that it will not overcook.  Miele Steam Ovens offer superior quality with precise temperature controls and therefore give me the consistency I need when cooking while using very little energy. I also could not be without the induction hobs – they are so precise and consistent. We never accidentally boil our stocks or over-reduce our sauces, creating much less waste.”