Does anyone use a mini oven?

meanmarie

I have a small oven which I bought in Lidl for about €35. I am using it lately as my fan is dying and will not always heat, have cooked roast, sponge and and bread in it and have been pleased with the results....you will not fit a 12 bun tin in mine, have used 6 bun one and that is fine.

Nice to see you posting Sybill!

Marie

armyknife

I have and old Cookworks mini-oven I bought 20 years ago, and I use it a great deal, it's my preferred oven as it has simple controls, not fan assisted and produces very reliable results.

At the time it was the largest one Argos did, how I got it home on the tube, I don't remember.
So I'd guess nearly 30 litres capacity. It seems to be well insulated and the only place it gets really hot externally is on one seam of the oven door.

My somewhat odd cooking/baking method allows me to have some efficiency, or otherwise, figures to hand. I uses a plug-in electricity monitor to help me know when things are ready

I tend to cook things on temperatures on the somewhat low end of what you'd expect and I don't preheat the oven for one off items:

500-600g loaf done either as a cottage or in two tins uses 0.47KwH and takes precisely 47 minutes at about 160-165C

A large home-made quiche takes about 55 minutes and around 0.5-.55 Kwh at about 170C.

A large pizza around 35 minutes and uses up to 0.4Kwh.

I don't know how these figures compare to an gas oven or an electric fan oven, but I suspect I'm saving an reasonable amount.

I think common sense would suggest this as every time you open a fan-assist oven you get great wafts of warm air blasting out of the thing and you are also heating a significantly large capacity.
Plus some of the more modern stoves don't seem that well insulated and seem to leak a fair bit of heat.

YMMV

seabright

Another remouska fan here. Is great for chicken, fish, pork & stuff that dries out in a normal oven. Plus, it's a doddle to clean.

Steve059

I have a combination microwave/grille/fan oven, which, I'm ashamed to admit, I'm still not using to anywhere near it's full potential.

I ought to take to user guide to bed and read it.

[Deleted User]

I have one which cost me £19.99 in a lakeland sale. I keep it on the countertop and use it a lot, it has oven and grill functions. I bought it for convenience and energy efficiency, my main oven is a double oven which is set on the floor, awkward when you get older. I bought small cookware tins over time and have made bread, cakes and the like, also baked casseroles and pies etc and yesterday did some grilling. I don`t have or want a microwave. To get cost just use a simple cheap plug in energy device but I know mine is a lot cheaper then the main ovens

I have a remoska which is good but the mini oven is much more versatile and I would choose it over the remoska. It has a thermostat and timer but also has a constant on switch and the remoska is just on/off

Funky_Bold_Ribena

moments_of_sanity wrote: »

Good evening all, does anyone here use a mini oven? We have a large fan assisted gas oven but I get cross when my DD switches the oven on to cook a veggie or bean burger and was wondering if a small oven would be more cost effective?

Can you not teach her how to use the grill? Surely that would be more cost effective?

moments_of_sanity

Funky_Bold_Ribena wrote: »

Can you not teach her how to use the grill? Surely that would be more cost effective?

I wish it were that easy! I have bought a mini oven and must say I am really really pleased with it. I can't use it for roasts or cakes but for everything else I love it. :j

Eliza_2

I wouldn't use an oven anyway for a burger, surely it dries them out like anything. Show her how much tastier they are done in the grill (or even fried) or give her the electric bill to pay when it comes in. Or just disconnect it at the mains!

Ergh, baked burger!!

I use the mini oven for everything apart from large pies etc when I have guests. Everything else is either done on the hob or in the mini oven. Buns, scones, bread are fine. (obviously not huge loaves but rolls and smaller ones are great. I'm afraid I never know about temperatures and times as I just cook things until they're done though they cook much faster in the mini oven than the big one I find. Why heat all that air? I have another even smaller one I use in the campervan and apparently it makes the best pasta bake ever acc to my granddaughter!

I love mine!

roscoltman

I have one that we use mainly for camping so that I can easily make the various dishes we like with the BBQ like potato salad, various desserts, muffins and scones. I had a 20 litre one that after a number of years being stored in the garage between camps eventually lost one of the hot plates on the top. I now have a rather nice 30 litre one. I am sure that cooking in it saves a lot of electricity and I now use it in my home kitchen too, now that we are down only the two of us at home with the children all grown up and left home. The oven heats up almost instantly and cooks really well. I also cook on the low end of the temperature scale compared to my fan assist oven. We have a prepaid electricity meter at home and it definitely shows a decrease in consumption when I cook in the mini oven compared with the fan assist main oven.

Spendless

Gas is cheaper than electricity (or at least it used to be). There's a board for Utilities and someone on there would probably be able to work out the costings.