Magimix Cook Expert review: a multi-cooker like no other

At over £1,000, the Magimix Cook Expert is a brilliant multi-cooking machine that will get daily use in your kitchen, but it comes at a high price. It comes with a food processor attachment and a cooker attachment, with a programmable base that can stir food as it cooks or even chop and blend freshly cooked soups, all in one pot.

I've been putting the Magimix Cook Expert to the test for a few months ahead of writing this Magimix Cook Expert review and there's not much this machine can't do. As with many of the best multi-cookers, the Cook Expert lives on an endless loop of sitting on my kitchen counters and going straight back into the dishwasher. Because it can do everything from steaming to proving bread, you'll never run out of new things to do with this multi-cooker, but it's also a machine that takes some getting used to.

Magimix Cook Expert

Specs

• Power: 1700W
• Capacity: 3.5 L metal bowl, 3.6 L food processor bowl
• Pre-sets: 13 automatic programmes + 1 expert manual programme
• Weight: 11.14 kg
• Size: 38 x 33.5 x 39 cm
• Included: Universal blade, Steamer basket & tray, Whisk, Heat-resistant spatula, three-layer food processor, 2 slicing discs, 2 grading discs

Unboxing

The Magimix Cook Expert comes with a lot of kit included. The base is hefty and sturdy, and comes in three colours: black, red, and silver. You get a metal cooking bowl with blades at the base, a food processor attachment with three different sized food processor bowls, and a container with four discs for slicing and grating. The cooking bowl has a steaming insert too, which comes in very handy for steaming vegetables or even making buns. Other extras include some weighing scales, and a spatula that's designed to help you scrape ingredients out from around the blades at the bottom of the cooking bowl.

• See the best slow cookers

With the Magimix Cook Expert you can scroll across different cooking modes, from heating modes to blending modes, as well as an option for bread and mixing, and a manual mode to adjust heat, blade speed, and timings. Undeniably, this is a multi-cooker that will take some seriously getting used to, and once it was on my kitchen counters I wasn't sure how best to get started. There is a Magimix cook expert cookbook that helps with picking up new recipes and inspiration, and I also joined a Magimix Cook Expert Facebook group where people posted their recipes and the different dishes they cooked in their Cook Experts, which helped when I wanted more options and wasn't sure where to begin.

Making soup

The first thing I tried in the Magimix Cook Expert was soup. I was in the process of reviewing the best soup makers at the time, so I was keen to see how well it would compare. I followed a recipe from the Magimix book for tomato soup, adding some whole tomatoes, peppers, some onion and garlic, as well as some stock. Food prep was minimal, and I just had to twist on the lid to get the cooking process started. The blades at the bottom of the bowl in the Magimix Cook Expert are sharp, but you need to amp up the blending mode to get a proper blitz going. If you wanted to do a chunkier soup, you could absolutely turn the cook expert down.

The soup mode was very easy to get going. I cooked my soup in just 30 minutes by bringing it to a simmering point and then blending continuously for a few minutes. One thing I like about the Magimix Cook Expert compared to a soup maker is that you can adjust your cooking modes far more. You can turn the blending speed down or the temperature up, or if you're cooking ingredients like potato that need a longer time to cook before blending, you can easily extend the cooking time too.

The blending was quite noisy, but my finished soup was unbelievably smooth and took absolutely no maintenance or oversight. I stirred in a little cream and some black pepper when the soup was fully complete, and it was then just a case of unscrewing the cooking bowl and pouring out my soup. One issue I had was the lack of a pouring spout, which meant I found it easier to ladle the soup out than pour it into my bowl, but you can also set a keep-warm mode to keep your soup warm if you're not ready to eat it quite yet.

Making porridge

I spotted someone's Magimix Cook Expert porridge recipe on the Facebook group and it looked interesting, so I gave it a go. I just added half a cup of oats, half a cup of water, and a generous splash of milk to my cook expert before setting the cooking on the manual mode.

I put the heat up to 90 degrees and turned the stirring speed to 2A, which is intermittent low-pace stirring, before setting the timer at 10 minutes and pressing 'Auto' (which is the start button).

Porridge is a great way to start the day, but it's the kind of breakfast that needs constant supervision if you want to get it just right. I don't like it too gloopy or thick, and I find that if you go straight in with warm or hot water when cooking your oats it can lead to a gritty texture. I was worried that the Magimix Cook Expert would blend the oats and lead to more of a paste than porridge consistency, but clearly it was very good at stirring without chopping the oats, because I was left with whole oats and a creamy consistency after the 10 minutes.

The finished consistency was perfect for me, but I was concerned about pouring my oats out into a bowl because there is no spout. Because there wasn't much porridge I was able to pour the majority of it out into my bowl, and then I had to go in with the spatula to remove the remnants from underneath the blades. It's great that the Magimix Cook Expert comes with a specialist spatula that's shaped perfectly to reach into the grooves at the bottom of the cooking pot, but this is still quite fiddly.

I topped my porridge with some cinnamon apple which I'd cooked earlier and was left with a perfect winter breakfast with next-to-no supervision. I then switched the Magimix Cook Expert onto clean mode to prevent the remaining oats from sticking.

Making bread

I followed a recipe from the Magimix cookbook to make sundried tomato and olive bread rolls in the Cook Expert. Of all the things I tried in it, I was particularly skeptical of this, because I usually use one of the best stand mixers to knead my bread and develop gluten which will help the bread to rise and have a soft consistency.

The Magimix Cook Expert can combine your dough ingredients, but it won't knead them. Instead it will use the blades to slice through the bread, which won't help in developing gluten fibres. Still, I was keen to see how it did, so I followed the recipe instructions and let my dough combine before leaving it to prove.

Many people use their Cook Experts to heat their bread dough as it proves, but because of the blades at the bottom it will mean that your bread won't prove in a classic bowl and may be tricky to remove from the blades.

After a minute of mixing, I was left with a stretchy dough. I felt like it needed a lot more kneading, which warms the yeast and encourages it to develop. I left the bread to prove before adding my olives and sundried tomatoes for a second prove, and then broke up my dough into bread rolls. The Cook Expert won't replace my bread maker any time soon, but it's useful for combining baking ingredients.

Because it was a seasonal bake I took some thread and tied it around my rolls to make pumpkin shapes, and left it to prove for a third time before baking. The bake was delicious, but I did find the consistency quite close when compared to bread I've made in the past with a stand mixer. In future, I think I'd knead my bread outside of the machine and then turn the cook expert into a medium heat for an hour to prove it inside the cooking pot.

Cooking mash in the Magimix Cook Expert

I'm a lover of mashed potato, but when you review the best air fryers and are constantly making homemade potato wedges, sometimes it's nice to switch out ingredients. Instead of a mashed potato I used the Magimix Cook Expert to make a mashed cauliflower, which has very similar cooking instructions to potato mash. I first steamed my cauliflower florets by adding some water to the base of the cook expert and inserting the steaming basket and screwing the lid on. After half an hour my cauliflower was very soft and perfect for mashing.

After adding it to the cooking bowl (after draining it) I used the manual setting to heat my mash while blending it on mode 12. I did this for 3 minutes, adding some butter, parmesan, and seasoning to my cauliflower.

The result was very creamy and smoothly blended, and I had no concerns about ingredients going un-blended. The shape of the pot is excellent at directing ingredients down to the blades to integrate all of the ingredients. Mashed cauliflower: who knew?

Using the food processor

Steamed cabbage is one of my favourite sides when making a Sunday roast, so I added the finest shredding disc to the top of the medium food processing bowl and finely sliced my cabbage using the Magimix Cook Expert food processor.

The Magimix Cook Expert food processor has three bowls: large, medium, and small. The disc slots on top of the large bowls, and there is a blade that also slots into this larger bowl as well as an attachment for whipping cream or egg whites. The smaller bowl has blades too, but you'll find that you need different attachments to use each of the bowls, so it's not necessarily the case that you can use any size bowl for any task.

I was very happy with the fine consistency of my cabbage after I'd shredded it, and the result was mostly even. I added it to the steaming basket on my cook expert to go straight from the food processor to the cooking bowl. After steaming for 20 minutes, I was left with delicious cabbage all made in one smart machine.

Cleaning the Magimix Cook Expert

The Magimix Cook Expert is very easy to clean in the dishwasher. The food processor and cooking bowl attachments can all go in the dishwasher, which is such as relief when you're cooking constantly in the same machine.

Cleaning by hand is a little more fiddly because you need to use a scrubbing brush to reach under the blades. Thankfully, there is also a self-clean mode that can shift ingredients before they have the chance to stick to your cooking bowl. Just add some washing up liquid and warm water and start the mode to clean it. Then, pour out the water when it's done.

Should you buy the Magimix Cook Expert?

The Magimix Cook Expert is very expensive, so it's certainly an investment. It also takes a lot of adjusting to, but once you've picked up the key modes and the meaning of the different settings, there's not much you can't make in it. Aside from the recipes I showed in this review, I also used the Cook Expert to make cake, pasta sauce, and chop the ingredients for a stuffing. I used it almost every day, and it's evident that this is a machine that's built to last a lifetime. Cleaning is easy too, which is a big concern when you're using an appliance regularly.

As part of a new scheme from Magimix, you can get a  discount on the Cook Expert: 'The Magimix trade-in will help those very attached to their current processor (old or new) to spread the love and pay it forward to those they feel will be worthy of their machine. In return, Magimix will give money off the ultimate cooking food processor – the Cook Expert.' So, if you're a Magimix lover who is considering upgrading, I would definitely recommend taking advantage of the scheme at Magimix. 

About this review, and our reviewer

Millie Fender is small appliances editor at Ideal Home. She reviews everything from coffee machines to air fryers from her own kitchen, meaning these tests have been carried out in the same conditions that you’ll be using the machine.

The Magimix Cook Expert was loaned to Millie by Magimix, and Millie tested for months month before writing this review. This gave her the chance to test all of its functions as well as cleaning and check for any troubleshooting.