The Easy Food Test Kitchen is a well-oiled machine of recipe testing…which also means a lot of washing up. We’re always looking for kitchen equipment to help simplify our jobs and are eager to share our findings to help home cooks across Ireland make their kitchen routine a little easier.

We’ve become big fans of multi-purpose machines — or equipment that can do the job of several gadgets that are likely already taking up space in your kitchen — so you can imagine our delight when we tested the Ninja HB150UK Hot & Cold Blender & Soup Maker, available from Currys at €179.99.

This machine has an impressive list of capabilities and can crush, purée and cook both hot and cold food using its intuitive built-in settings. We made a few simple smoothies to test-drive the machine first, then added fresh fruit and sugar to trial its jam setting (verdict: delicious and fuss-free). It has a low noise level, making it suitable for a family kitchen. We’re looking forward to putting it to use this summer with some of our frozen cocktail features in the magazine…

We were most excited to test its soup-making feature. The instructions were easy to follow and even gave tips for customising your soup by creating a base and building flavour with more ingredients — ideal for someone who is learning to cook. According to the instructions, you simply pop in your raw ingredients, choose whether you want a chunky or smooth soup, then let the machine do the rest. Let us tell you: this couldn’t have been easier from start to finish. We made a made a carrot, ginger and thyme soup and set it to blend smooth. This process took a total of 30 minutes, achieving the perfect silky-smooth consistency.

The built-in heating element means you end up with a homemade soup in 30 minutes, no stirring or pot-watching required. While we chopped our ingredients, you can add large chunks of unpeeled veg and the Ninja will prep it all for you. It even has a sauté feature, which we will definitely be trialling in future soups!

We needed two hands to pour and serve the soup, which we appreciated as it attests to the machine’s sturdiness and durability. With a powerful 1000W capabilities, three pulse settings and a large 1.7 litre jug, this hefty machine can help you prep proper meals and — best of all — has dishwasher-safe parts and even a self-clean setting to start the job for you. We found that with this setting, there was almost no need to even clean by hand afterwards. No more dried-on mess from forgotten dishes! This was absolutely one of our favourite features of the machine and would make it ideal for a busy household, or someone who wants the quality and taste of homemade soup without any of the prep or clean-up.

As we loved this so much, we’ve partnered with Currys to give away a Ninja HB150UK Hot & Cold Blender & Soup Maker! To enter, simply answer the question below:

Terms and conditions apply. Competition closes Monday, March 14.

This competition is now closed. Check out our amazing competitions here