I’ve been dying to post my Thermomix TM6 review for a few weeks now, but I wanted to fully test it out as much I could first. And I feel like I finally have! So, is it worth £1099? Can it really replace your kitchen gadgets for good? What does it even do?!
First of all, I’d like to thank Vorwerk for gifting me the TM6 in exchange for my honest opinion of it here on the blog. And honesty is exactly what I’m gonna give you today in my Thermomix TM6 review!
So first of all… what it is and what does it do? Well, erm… it’s a Thermomix!! Does that help?
Sorry, I know that just sounds really vague, but there really isn’t any other words to sum up a kitchen appliance like this! I guess, to very crudely oversimplify things, it’s a big blender that can simultaneously heat up.
That bad description just make it sound like a soup-maker ? and of course, it’s soooo much more than that!!
Yes, you can use it as a soup-maker, but how about using it as a food processor? Or a slow-cooker? Or a bread maker? It can even boil your pasta, cook your rice and steam meat/veg. Yep, it can perform the role of almost every kitchen gadget out there, though it will need the help of an oven occasionally.
Throw in the tablet-like screen, the mixing bowl that weighs all of your ingredients for you, all of the different attachments and trust me… you couldn’t even begin to imagine the variety of things you can create.
So in terms of what it literally can do, there’s actually quite a lot to list… *takes deep breath*
What can you do with the Thermomix TM6?
Well, the Thermomix TM6 can…
- Blend vegetables, grind spices or blitz ice cubes etc.
- Weigh ingredients
- Boil and simmer (pasta, rice, sauce etc.)
- Knead dough.
- Whisk air into liquids and mixtures.
- Grate vegetables and cheese.
- Chop vegetables, meat etc.
- Steam vegetables, meat etc.
- Fry (to a degree)
- Ferment and create your own yoghurt
- Caramelise
- Slow cook meals
- Sous-vide vacuum packed meat etc.
- And thanks to the screen, the TM6 even doubles up as an online recipe book thanks to Cookidoo.
So basically, the TM6 really isn’t that far off replacing pretty much every kitchen gadget you could possibly have out on your kitchen worktop. For example, blenders, kettles, slow cookers, soup-makers, juicers, food processors, standing mixers, soup-makers etc.
Now you know what it can do, how about what it can’t do? And also, why do you need the help of your oven for some specific recipes?
Well, all is about to be revealed! In my Thermomix TM6 review, I felt that it was just as important to highlight what it can’t do as well as what it can do – that way, you guys hopefully then know what it is and what it isn’t.
So here goes…
What can’t you do with the Thermomix TM6?
- You can’t roast in it. The Thermomix requires some moisture to be in the mixing bowl whilst heating.
- You can’t bake in it. It can definitely create and knead dough, but you’re gonna have to then decant it into a suitable baking tin and pop it in the oven to bake it.
- It can’t replace a pressure cooker.
- The TM6 can fry food a little in a pinch but due to the small surface area at the bottom of the mixing bowl, it doesn’t achieve this particularly well.
- Sadly, you can’t deep-fry in it either, as the maximum temperature is 120c and you’ll need much closer to 170-190c to deep-fry.
So don’t be surprised that the first step of a recipe might read ‘preheat your oven to x degrees’ – particularly when baking. The TM6 can’t replace your entire kitchen in case you were expecting it to!
Essentially what this means is that when baking a cake for example, you’d use the TM6 as a food processor to combine your cake batter. Then you’d decant it into a baking tin and finish it off in the oven.
The same goes for making bread. Make sense?
So if you’ve read this far in my Thermomix TM6 review, you now hopefully know what the it does/doesn’t do. But what did I find myself using it for during a month of testing? What meals did I cook? What things did I bake?
Just so you know, whilst I create recipes for a living, I’m far from a professional cook! But I do bake a lot and I cook from scratch a lot due to my food intolerances – I basically can’t eat 95% of all pre-prepared food you’d find in the supermarket.
So I hope that by sharing what I used the TM6 for, this will give you an idea of how you might use it in your everyday life. Before we get to that, one of the first things I did was set up my Cookidoo account.
What’s Cookidoo and how do you use it on the Thermomix TM6?
It’s an app on the Thermomix that allows you access over 40,000 recipes which you can follow step-by-step – it literally guides you through measuring out each ingredient in a really simple, easy to follow way.
When you sign up for an account, you get a free trial for around 6 months, but it costs £30 per year or £2.50 per month after that.
To get started, I just went over to Cookidoo’s website on my smartphone and signed up for a free trial account. Then, using the touch screen on my Thermomix, I swiped right from the home screen and signed in. That’s it! That then gives you access to tons of recipes right on your Thermomix’s screen (like in the photo above).
So once that was set up, I was able to search for recipes using the touch screen, select which one I wanted and then it starts guiding you through every step of the recipe. That really helped me to get to grips with the TM6 and truly understand how it works.
And whilst there’s dedicated gluten free recipes on there (there’s even a section called ‘no gluten, no problem’ with some awesome recipes), I found that I could easily adapt any of the other 40,000 recipes to my dietary requirements without a problem.
Of course, you can just freestyle it too using the manual settings – you certainly don’t need to follow a recipe at all times. I had to mention Cookidoo in my Thermomix TM6 review, as it’s a huge benefit of using the machine.
I wish Cookidoo was totally free forever considering the cost of Thermomix! But I’m personally looking forward to getting to grips with using the TM6 completely manually in the future.
Ok, so what did I use my Thermomix to make?
So over the last month of using the Thermomix TM6, I’ve made gluten free cake batter, bread dough, pesto, soup, hollandaise, custard, buttercream for cakes, curry pastes, many slow-cooked stews and loads more I’ve probably forgotten to mention. A proper good mix of every day things!
Normally all of that would require the use of either my standing mixer, bread maker, stick blender – plus I’d have to buy a slow-cooker as I didn’t own one already. But (with a little helping hand from my oven too), I was surprised at just how many different functions the TM6 could perform – no other kitchen gadgets required.
Whilst of course, I could create almost all of those things without the TM6 (apart from the slow-cooker recipes of course), I have to say, it was more often than not, much easier to make them in the Thermomix.
Both custard and hollandaise didn’t require me to constantly stand there constantly stirring until it came together. Soup didn’t require me to chop anything by hand or blend it together. I didn’t have to use my stick blender for pesto. Plus, the all-in-one method for creating cakes is very Thermomix friendly.
But now I’ve used it for just over month, I feel like I can honestly give you all the advantages and disadvantages of using it in my Thermomix TM6 review. So here they are…
What are the advantages and benefits of the Thermomix TM6?
- The main headline here is the ability to blend, weigh, boil, knead, whisk, grate, chop, steam, fry, ferment, caramelise, slow cook and sous-vide all in one place. Whilst I have nearly every kitchen gadget under the sun already, what I certainly don’t have is the space to have them out all at once.
- Heating whilst mixing. It’s not something that any of my kitchen gadgets can do currently and makes making soup, custard, white sauce etc. so much easier.
- The screen is a real game-changer and in my opinion, that’s what makes the TM6 so much more than ‘a blender that can heat up’. I mean, my blender or slow cooker certainly can’t instruct me how to make a recipe in it!!
- Once you’ve cooked and simultaneously weighed out your ingredients in the Thermomix, you’ll find it very hard to not wish all your gadgets did that. I now wish my standing mixer could do it for example – instead of having to use a million bowls to measure out everything separately and THEN put them into the mixing bowl.
- Guided recipes on Cookidoo are great for newbies to the Thermomix and especially, newbies to cooking/baking entirely.
- It’s self cleaning, so if you make something sticky like honeycomb for example, it can do all of the hard work by getting rid of the sticky aftermath for you.
- It’s incredibly easy to use. Once you know what you want to do in the TM6, it’s actually scarily simple to do it.
- Lastly, I have to say, the build quality of this thing is amazing.
What are the disadvantages of the Thermomix TM6?
- It’s probably not realistically affordable for most people at £1099. Of course, you can opt for a payment plan to make it possible, but not having a TM6 won’t prevent you from making 99% of what you want to, with separate, cheaper appliances.
- Some functions (like caramelise or fry) absolutely cannot be used outside of a step-by-step Cookidoo recipe. I’m hoping that an update in the future will resolve this, but it’s not a huge deal-breaker for me personally.
- The temperature of the ferment setting is unfortunately too hot to create something like Kombucha or Kimchi – as someone who struggles with gut health, I was hoping to be able to make both in my TM6. I wish it had a little more versatility so I could make something other than yoghurt.
- As the blades always spin on every setting, the slow cooker setting slowly churns everything to be finer than I’d like. Instead of being left with nice, chunky, slow-cooked veg, everything is somewhat overly blended for my liking. It’s great for pulled pork, not so good for chunky British stews!
- The sous-vide setting is perfect for cooking vacuum-packed meat… but how do I vacuum pack meat at home in the first place?!
Final thoughts
So I thought I’d end my Thermomix TM6 review with a few final thoughts.
The TM6 made me instantly question the deservedness of every gadget on my kitchen worktop. As I stood looking into my kitchen, I had a smoothie blender, food processor, standing mixer, bread maker and a stick blender on top of my cupboard.
(I know it seems like a lot, but creating recipes to share here on the blog is my job after all!)
And whilst the TM6 could technically allow me to put every single one of those appliances/gadgets away, it’s only the blender, food processor and stick blender that I’ve put away for now. So why did the standing mixer and the bread maker survive the cull?
For me, until I’ve tested the TM6 for a much longer period, I can’t be totally sure that its whisking function is as good as my standing mixer with the whisk attachment. Is it better at mixing dough than the dough hook attachment? I don’t know! Currently, I haven’t tested it enough to be sure. So the standing mixer stayed.
Plus, when it comes to bread makers, I love that I don’t need to fire up the oven or really have any involvement beyond putting the ingredients. So the bread maker stayed too.
But of course, I can’t forget that the TM6 also provides functionality of gadgets I didn’t even have – like a soup-maker or a slow-cooker. And the reason I don’t have those gadgets is because I simply don’t have space!
So in that sense, even with keeping my standing mixer and breadmaker out, it still has given me more worktop space than if I also had my blender, food processor, stick blender AND then I had a slow-cooker/soup maker out too.
Without a doubt, it’s a great machine to have in your kitchen, but here’s the biggest question in my Thermomix TM6 review…
Is the Thermomix TM6 worth it? Is it worth the money?
So I’m sure most of you reading my Thermomix TM6 review will be wondering… is it worth the price tag?
So the question ‘is it worth the money?’ can only truly be answered by you. That’s because the answer totally depends on how much you’ll use it and what appliances you do/don’t have already.
For me, I could have put my standing mixer and bread maker away too, but I already own them and currently, I prefer to use them for those specific tasks.
In that sense, I’m getting less value for money (and space-saving value) out the Thermomix by not using it for those functions. Make sense?
If you don’t already own a standing mixer, bread maker, blender, food processor, soup maker, slow cooker etc., that’s where the Thermomix can provide the most value. The less kitchen gadgets you have, the more likely that the TM6 is worth the money for you.
But it has to be said that all of the above is weighing up the Thermomix solely based on its cooking functions and totally ignoring the awesomeness that the TM6’s large touch screen provides. And that’s actually pretty unfair of me!
You’ve got thousands of step-by-step recipes on Cookidoo right at your fingertips. It beats a cookbook by a mile, it beats staring at your tiny phone screen by a mile and there’s just nothing else like it out there.
Even without using Cookidoo and when just using the screen manually, it just makes cooking and navigating between all the many different functions a total breeze. So that definitely adds value to the TM6 on top of all its many different functions too.
Do you NEED to spend £1099 on a Thermomix to make food? Certainly not! But if you’ve always wanted any of the many kitchen gadgets/appliances I’ve listed above and space is your limiting factor, the TM6 is definitely an option you should consider first.
So yeah, to wrap this up, I think the TM6 is amazing to allow me to put away two big appliances (my big ol’ blender and food processor – plus, my stick blender) whilst allowing me to get the additional functionality of a soup-maker/slow-cooker/heated blender too.
I mean, if we’re judging this purely based on value of worktop space, I’ve definitely gained more functionality AND more worktop space already. But if we’re talking value for money, I’ll only start getting philosophical again – it really is up to you to weigh up your own situation, it’s a big decision!
All things considered, I’m definitely looking forward to integrating the TM6 into more of my recipe creation, mastering it and hopefully enjoying many more delicious meals/bakes!
That’s all folks!
Thanks for reading my Thermomix TM6 review! If you have any questions about the Thermomix, feel free to ask in the comments below this blog post ?? Or head over to Instagram, follow me and drop me a DM.
Thanks for reading,
Becky xxx
Oh and here’s some frequently asked questions which will hopefully help you to decide whether the Thermomix is right for you or not:
How much does the Thermomix TM6 cost?
In the UK, the Thermomix TM6 costs £1099 and in the US $1499.
Is Cookidoo free? How much does a subscription cost?
You get a free trial when you sign up, but after that it costs £2.50 a month or £30 per year.
What attachments and accessories come with the Thermomix TM6?
The Thermomix TM6 comes with the hard-back recipe book ‘Simple Ideas’, mixing bowl, Varoma, simmering basket with lid, splash guard, butterfly whisk, new and improved spatula and measuring cup.
Cookidoo is also pre-installed on the appliance and ready to use with access to 40,000 recipes too.
What is the difference between the Thermomix TM5 and TM6?
Though the exact same size at the TM5, the TM6 has
- A larger screen – a 6.8-inch touchscreen display.
- More accurate measuring – the ability to weight in 1g increments.
- More accurate temperature control – the ability to heat in 1 degree increments.
- Improved accessories – softer spatula, splatter guard, lid for simmering basket and the measuring cup now locks into the lid.
- Wi-fi access, software updates and online Cookidoo recipes without the need for additional recipe chips.
- You can also now download recipes from Cookidoo when online, so you can cook with them when offline.
Can you slow-cook in the Thermomix TM6?
Thanks to the more accurate temperature controls on the TM6, you can definitely replace your slow-cooker with the Thermomix TM6.
Just select the slow-cooking mode from all of the cooking functions (swipe left to reveal them). There’s even a massive selection of slow-cooker recipes on Cookidoo to get you started.
The blade is constantly moving during the slow-cooker mode, which isn’t great for chunkier stews, but perfect for soups and pulled pork.
Can the Thermomix TM6 pressure cook?
Sadly not, but you can cook similar meals using the slow-cooking setting, though of course, this will take considerably longer.
You also can’t bake or roast in the Thermomix TM6, so that’s something to bear in mind too.
Can you deep-fry in the Thermomix TM6?
Sadly not, as the temperature controls don’t go high enough to achieve temperatures ideal for deep-frying.
The maximum temperature is 120c and you’d probably need 170-190c.
Can the Thermomix TM6 clean itself?
Yes, using a combination of the blades and heat, filling the mixing bowl with water and washing up liquid does a long way to remove cooked-on food debris.
Just select the self-cleaning function from the functions menu.
What does Varoma mean on the Thermomix TM6?
When you set the temperature dial to max on the Thermomix TM6, you’ll see the word ‘Varoma.’
That means that the TM6 has reached its max temperature of 120c.
The Varoma is also an accessory that you can place on top of the Thermomix’s measuring bowl to steam meat or vegetables.
What appliances can the Thermomix TM6 replace?
The Thermomix TM6 can effectively replace a blender, slow-cooker, food processor, standing mixer, soup maker, juicer, digital weighing scales and stick blender.
In conjunction with your oven, it can also provide the functionality of a bread maker.
Where can I buy the Thermomix TM6?
You can only buy Thermomix TM6 through Vorwerk and this is best done online. You can find the USA website here or the UK website here.
I was gifted the Thermomix TM6 by Vorwerk, but all opinions are my own.
