Friday, 3 October 2014

Mini Oven Review


(It’s the oven that’s mini, not the review by the way)

Due to our current, somewhat strange living arrangements ( read more here ) we decided to invest in a mini oven, which would allow us to cook some of the foods that we’d been missing, and were unable to conjure up on our basic camping stove and grill arrangement.

After doing a bit of research and reading various customer reviews, we plumped for the Andrew James Mini Combi Oven from Amazon. With a two-plate hob and multi-function oven, it seemed a good buy.

I’m pleased to report that we’re really getting on quite well with it and have appreciated all that it has to offer. On the downside, it does take longer than the average oven to heat up (the hob too) but once it gets going it cooks really well. In fact, pastry for example, cooks much better than it did in our previous oven, becoming a lovely even, golden brown colour, of which any Bake Off contestant would be immensely proud.

The oven capacity is a decent size, enabling me to cook a full roast dinner, and the internal dimensions allow enough space for a large pizza tray.

With a choice of five oven settings, however, it seems a shame that the instruction booklet doesn’t explain which setting would best suit which type of dish. The settings consist of: upper heating and low heating with fan; upper heating and fan; upper heating and lower heating; lower heating; upper heating. The instructions merely advise that four out of the five settings are suitable for baking, with the other function acting as a grill. So we’ve resorted to good old trial and error to work out which arrangement is best for which dish, and slowly but surely we’re getting there.

So if you’ve got limited kitchen space, are looking for a temporary cooker whilst living in a shambles, sorry doing a renovation project, or just fancy an economical change, then I can recommend the Andrew James Mini Oven, despite its sketchy instructions

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