Cooking in a halogen oven

Faith

I've just bought a halogen oven after reading great reviews on boards about them, and getting fed up with my rubbish gas oven. I've read a lot of things that say the cooking time is much shorter than usual in a halogen oven, so I've started this thread so that hopefully anyone who has one and is familiar with using it might post up some tips! I bake a lot so I'd be particularly interested in how to adjust baking times, but equally I'd love to hear any other tips or tried and tested cooking times . I'll share whatever I learn as I go along!

bogman

Have an Andrew James model, brilliant piece of kit

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Andrew-James-Premium-Replaceable-WARRANTY/dp/B002LYQF7A

Been using it a lot recently cooking Salmon & Hake

Cerulean Chicken

Well bad news for you, they are great for lots of things but baking is not one of them. At least I don't find them good for that, they make great scones provided you turn them over for the last few minutes to brown the bottom but in general cakey things do not cook properly on the bottom.

Great for making wedges, roasting chicken, cooking frozen or fresh fish fillets, sausages, roast potatoes particularly good, things like that you would normally do in an oven or shallow fry. Quicker than normal oven for stuff like that as no heat up time and smaller cavity but really don't think they would replace an oven for baking cakes.

Faith

Cerulean Chicken wrote: »

Well bad news for you, they are great for lots of things but baking is not one of them. At least I don't find them good for that, they make great scones provided you turn them over for the last few minutes to brown the bottom but in general cakey things do not cook properly on the bottom.

Great for making wedges, roasting chicken, cooking frozen or fresh fish fillets, sausages, roast potatoes particularly good, things like that you would normally do in an oven or shallow fry. Quicker than normal oven for stuff like that as no heat up time and smaller cavity but really don't think they would replace an oven for baking cakes.

Yeah I've already discovered that they don't cook the underneath. Feck it! They're still useful though.

/edit: Actually, does this mean you can only cook things that you can turn over? As in, you couldn't cook a pie in there?

Faith

Seems like I'm the only one using one of these! Mixed results so far. The first thing I cooked was a roast chicken, which was AMAZING. A few days later, I cooked another roast chicken, for the exact same time, and it was overcooked. The dark meat was horrible. It doesn't seem big enough to cook roast potatoes in with it at the same time so I've been using the oven too.

I tried to use it for heating up a sausage roll and it didn't heat the inside after 5 or more minutes, despite turning.

I cooked fish fingers last night and they look just as long, if not longer, than the grill.

I've made wedges, but they're just the same as doing them in the oven.

Tonight, I attempted to cook burgers. They were, without a doubt, the worst burgers I've ever made. I ended up cooking them for 20 minutes for them not to pink inside, and they ended up completely dry and horrible.

Despite there being two racks, I can't imagine you can use both at the same time because of it being top-down heat that doesn't circulate at all. The bowl is huge and a pain to wash. I've a large kitchen with space to store it out of the way, which is just as well because it's huge.

I don't know, I'm not convinced. Maybe if you cook at lot of processed food, they're good, but it certainly hasn't been great for food prepared from scratch.

phormium

I have one and use it loads, mind you I do not wash the bowl every single time I use it. I have roasted chicken as well, very successful. I find it great for wedges, fish fingers or any breaded fish or salmon fillets with a fistful of oven chips, sausages, roast potatoes but not at the same time as a chicken, not really big enough for the two. I find it much faster than the big oven and more importantly cheaper to heat. There is no doubt it is best for fairly fast things that would suit grilling or roasting, it wouldn't make a stew or anything like that. I have never used both racks at the same time, as you say it would inhibit the circulation of the heat no matter what the ads say.

I freeze a lot of chicken, often stuffed chicken fillets with ham around them, I cook them from frozen in it, great for sandwiches or wraps. Stuffed pork steak roasts very well in it too.

Markcheese

Used to use a commercial halogen (alto sham) oven years ago, it was a great yoke ... Used to cook joints of meat, turkeys ect. For functions in it... Mainly used it for long slow cooking though.. Overnight ...

Cerulean Chicken

I cooked salmon in mine yesterday and my boyfriend made scones in it this morning, in answer to the flipping things over question he flipped the scones for the last 30 seconds to get them browned. Scones are the only thing we've flipped in it, chips, fish, etc are just left on their tray in the middle of it.

Re: wedges being the same as in regular oven, yes all of these things come out pretty much the same as in a regular oven, but you don't have to waste the time or cost waiting for the proper oven to heat up, the halogen oven is hot straight away, that's where it saves on time. I find it handiest for making dinner for one when I need it, fish/chicken fillet etc onto the tray with some wedges/baby potato chunks, leave it for 20 mins max and dinner is done with no clean up, awesome.

deandean

Faith, I bought a halogen oven about 6 months back. After lots of use I conclude it's a so-so piece of kit backed by a massive marketing campaign (cue Mr T!). I bought the Andrew James (I think) model complete with all the accessories.

I can cook most meaty things in it (chicken, steak etc) but you need to tend it every 10 or 15 mins with a BBQ tongs, keep turning whatever you are cooking and it'll be OK.

Those pictures with a beautiful roast chicken surrounded by roast potatoes and vege all in the one dish: I wish!

It doesn't cook anything faster than conventional means, in my experience.

Food can get very dried out. Despite the adverts, it's cooks by 95% radiant heat from the lightbulb - same as a normal grill.

The one big advantage is that is uses about 1/3 the electricity of my main oven. So I might be using it more after the next budget grrr!

I would make far better use out of a 'slow cooker' TBH.

Dean