LG Neochef Microwave Review – This Baby Rocks!

When LG contacted me and asked me to review their LG Neochef I have to be completely honest here I was a little bit worried. The truth is that while I had a microwave my microwave skills were limited to warming up coffee and food (often), defrosting meat (occasionally) and once in a blue moon cooking some peas or if I was feeling especially adventurous maybe even cooking a potato.

Somehow I doubted LG would be impressed if I limited my review to how well it heats my coffee up every day. So I had to prepare myself for a lot of learning!

**Disclosure – LG compensated me financially for this review as well as sent me the LG Neochef to review**

When my LG Neochef arrived it was met with great excitement and a lot of trepidation.

My current microwave had two dials. One that moved between the different heating functions – defrost, low, medium and high… and the other dial was simply a timer. So simple that I don’t think I ever even looked at the instruction manual when it came out the box.

When my LG Neochef arrived I took out the manual and started getting worried that I would never figure it out. I’m the type of person that wants one button – it says cook and you press it. Then it should cook and beep when it is done. Get the picture?

So let’s get into this review to check out the features I love, what you can do with this microwave and how I fared with my new LG Neochef.

LG Neochef  Features That I Love

The LG Neochef boasts some really awesome features, here’s a run down of some of the features I love:

Ergonomical Design

It is a beautiful microwave that is the perfect size. The first thing I noticed about this microwave is the beautiful design and how shiny it is (in fact it is so shiny that it put my amateur photography skills to the test!).

It has a unified tempered glass front and a matte exterior and I believe it will fit in with any decor.

The exterior of the microwave is simple, with further instructions on the interior. I love the dial that pushes in too, such a snazzy little touch.

It is bigger than the one I had previously so it takes up a lot more space, but this also means you can fit so much more into it.

Anti-Bacterial EasyClean 

I just love this feature. The Neochef is so easy to clean and it has an Anti-Bacterial EasyClean Coating which helps to prevent dangerous contaminants to take root.

So far all I have had to do is wipe it clean straight after using and it is staying so perfectly clean without any effort. I am all for anything that makes cleaning easier!

Smart Inverter Technology

The term just sounds so smart and up to date with technology but what does it mean for you? Simply put this microwave can cook anything. It also means that food will cook and defrost evenly while preserving nutrients and locking in the flavour.

Childlock

Oh yes please, do I need to say more? I am so tired of my 3 year old trying to cook up a storm in the microwave and always fiddling with it. Now I don’t have to worry anymore since there is no way he can get up to too much mischief anymore.

So What Can The LG Neochef Do?

It looks like this microwave can cook anything and in a variety of ways from it’s healthy fry feature to softening ice cream!

Here’s what it can do:

• Grill cooking – to brown and crisp food
• Grill combination cooking – to cook with heater and microwave
• Healthy Fry
• Braai
• Roast
• Soften & Melt
• Defrost & Cook – cook food straight from frozen
• Defrost
• Keep food warm
• Make yogurt

So How Did I Fare With My LG Neochef?

I have to admit I am so happy with my LG Neochef and I really never thought I would be so impressed. I have gone from being a coffee warmer to being a full on microwave chef – cooking meals and even a cake! Yes a 3 layer cake that not only looked great but tasted good too. The only other cakes I have attempted have been tooth chippers of note (except for these yummy cupcakes that is).

I am also using it to do little jobs like soften butter – which I did previously use my microwave but with a massive difference. Previously when I “softened” in the microwave it would come out with a bit of completely melted butter, some soft butter around the edges and then hard as a rock in the middle. The LG Neochef softens it perfectly, all the way through without any melted butter or hard bits!

Defrosting food in the microwave has just become so much better – just like I am experiencing with the butter, the defrost function does the job properly and evenly which is a huge change.

The instruction manual came with a few recipes which I found really helpful since I was not sure what to get started with and this took all the guess work out of it, plus the recipes are included in the microwaves “popular menu”options making it super easy to get started.

Here are the two meals I tried from the LG Neochef Manual:

Popular Menu: Potato Gratin

I love potatoes and I also love cheese – add them together and you have a winner. This is why this dish caught my eye and I chose it as my first experiment. I use my oven to cook and one of the things I find tricky is coordinating a potato dish with a meat dish since the potatoes take so long.

Not any more! It took me just a few minutes to slice the potatoes and get this dish in the microwave and it took only 20 minutes cooking time in the microwave.

Ingredients:

• 1kg potatoes
• 1 clove garlic
• 20g butter
• 300g cream
• 100g grated cheese
• nutmeg, salt and pepper

Method:

• Rub a 20 x 20 cm dish with the garlic clove and butter
• Slice the potatoes thinly (about 5mm)
• Layer half the potato slices in the dish
• Season with nutmeg, salt and pepper
• Layer the rest of the potatoes and season
• Pour the cream over the top and top it with grated cheese
• Put the dish in the microwave
• Push Stop/ Cancel
• Push Popular Menu twice so the display shows 2
• Turn the dial until the display shows 2 -1 (you will see all the popular menu items and numbers inside the microwave)
• Then press start

It came out beautifully, the cheese was not just melted it was a bit grilled too – exactly how I like it. It is so important to have the cheese grilled in dishes like this!

Plus something I noticed after we had supper is that the dish washed so easily! Usually when I do a similar potato bake dish in the oven I spend so much time scrubbing the dish. I just wiped this dish clean with a cloth saving me even more time and effort.

Next time I am going to play around with adding mushrooms and other ingredients since I always struggle sticking to a recipe.

Popular Menu: Chicken Curry

My husband loves curry and we don’t often eat anything spicy because my kids complain that their mouths burn and they don’t like it even though I never go overboard with anything spicy. If I so much of think about adding a pinch of curry powder to food they moan.

I thought that being able to whip up a quick microwave curry might be a nice thing to do for my husband every now and then.

Ingredients:

• 400g chicken breasts (cut into chunks)
• ¼ cup olive oil
• 2 chopped onions
• 4 crushed garlic cloves
• 1 peeled ginger root
• 1 cinnamon stick
• 2 dried red chillies
• 1 teaspoon turmeric powder
• 400g tomato sauce
•  1/2 cup water or stock
• ½ cup plain yogurt
• 1 tablespoon lemon juice
• salt and pepper to taste

Method:

• Add all the ingredients in a large microwave-safe bowl and mix
• Cover with a plastic microwave cover (or you can use microwave safe plastic wrap and pierce it)
• Place the bowl in the microwave
• Push Stop/ Cancel
• Push Popular Menu twice so the display shows 4
• Turn the dial until the display shows 4 – 2 (you will see all the popular menu items and numbers inside the microwave)
• Then press start
• Stop it and stir at least twice

This dish took 20 minutes and it came out divine. My stove takes so long to warm up and when I started getting all my ingredients ready I put rice on the stove to go with this dish. I couldn’t believe it when the curry was ready to eat long before the rice.

Mental note to research how to cook rice in the microwave!

I have since made roast chicken that came out perfectly (yes with some crisp) and a stunning 3 layer cake.

So what is my overall opinion of the LG Neochef microwave? This baby rocks – it is absolutely superb and I believe that I have only just scratched the surface of what I can do in it.

I will be sharing the recipe for the 3 layer microwave cake I made this past weekend on my blog soon, so keep an eye out for that!

I highly recommend that check out other LG Neochef reviews and information online. You can find out more about the LG Neochef here.