mostly mix - legends about thermomix

For some weeks now, I belong to the strange and proud tribe of Thermomix Users.
Legends tell about its marvelous abilities to MIX and HEAT.

Being an engineer, you start thinking, that this must be ... bullshit, having in mind microwaves with Grill or Bake modes that can't really compete with a real oven, a real grill etc.

So, we had a Thermomix presentation with a representative, coming to your home and showing off, how you can create a good meal in a short time.
To make the story short, I wasn't convinced, that the Thermomix does anything particularly special.
It does mix, it does heat.
However, I was convinced, that our old food processor was a development mess.

The guys from Thermomix just did many things right:

• The mix container is made of stainless steel and loves our dish washer
• The only accessory is one knife and a little plastic mesh, you can put over the knife
• The knife is blunt ... by design
• It just hits the contents with more speed and sees them scatter
• It can't get blunter - so no worries about cutting anything bad as ice, parmesan, chocolate, grain or even coffee beans.
• The motor is quite big and strong and costs the most money
• So the skeptical engineer asked promptly if it doesn't break when something gets stuck in the mixer
• And a really good answer came back - the knife breaks first - we put rated break points in and the knife blades will just fall off
• That's bad for the knife - but that doesn't cost that much ;-)
• You can mix all night long ... while our old food processor would die if you let it run for more than 3 minutes in some modes ...
• There is a scale built into the mixer
• ... so you don't have to decant every ingredient twice.
• It just measures the whole device, so you can also place something on the lid for a quick measure
• When you have seen the device cooking something really at the specified temperature you start thinking of your induction stove as a hightech-campfire 
• "yeah, fire on, now hot" - I don't know if 80 degree are a 7 on my scale of 1 to 14 or even if there is a setting to make the 1.2 litres of soup 80 degrees hot.
• ... while you hit the 80°C button on the thermomix, set the desired time and let it run

Software support ?!?

Vorwerk has seen the opportunity to bring cooking to a level that is somewhat close to programming.

So they published some cookbooks and started a website with a recipe database where every user can post his own recipes, too.

Their implementation surely isn't close to perfection but it works (more or less) and the content is really good.

Conclusion

The thermomix isn't that good - just the rest is so bad (at least my old food processor was).
So - if you are brave enough - go to a thermomix party yourself.
They will (quite) surely let you go again without having bought one.
And - a killer argument for avaricious swabians like me - you will at least get a hot meal without any costs...