Elec cost for oven at 200c for 30 minutes -v- 100c

diddymonster

I want to use least elec by not cooking in the main electric oven but instead by keeping things warm I’ve cooked in stages in an air fryer .. is there much saving in electricity in running the main electric oven at 100c for 30 minutes instead of at 200c ?

ariarnia

i think any electric you save cooking in the air fryer would be lost heating the larger space of the oven just to keep things warm. if i have needed to do something like that then i've cooked everything and let it cool then plated the meals up or put the things in there serving dishes and pinged them in the microwave right before serving to get everything hot (gravy or sauce helps keep everything moist and heated evenly)

but a air fryer is just a small fan oven. and heating something from 10 degrees to 180 degrees takes the same amount of energy in anything. a oven air fryer microwave whatever. the saving is keeping the loss of energy to a minimum. that means the most efficient way to cook anything is to fill the thing you are cooking with to capacity.

so if what you are cooking would fill the oven then the best and cheapest option is probably to cook in the oven. if it would fill the air fryer then the air fryer would be cheapest.

i dont know how much you are planning to cook in your batches or how big your oven or air fryer are so i can't say if you would need to do two or more batches in the air fryer to be spending more than using the oven but if you can't cook the full meal in one batch in the air fryer then its probably a good idea to think about if theres something else you could cook in the oven to fill it and maybe have reheated the next day? 

Alnat1

From a catering background "hot hold" or keeping things warm, is usually 63-70C. If you put the already cooked food in an oven at 100C it would carry on cooking and pretty much dry it up.

Rattusnorvegicus

Back in the day we used a 400 watt hostess trolley for keeping stuff warm.

Alnat1

That might be OK in a domestic situation for a short period of time. Hopefully nobody got food poisoning. Back in the day they probably blamed it on the dodgy prawn cocktail. 

In a commercial kitchen, food is heated to a minimum of 75C and can then be held at 63C+ for a maximum of 4 hours. If not used in that time, it must be thrown away.

Pete99

Your main oven will be really well insulated, so once it's up to warming temperature it won't use much more to keep it at that temperature, whereas air fryers and worktop halogen ovens don't have much if any insulation.

Alnat1

30 minutes in a 180C oven and my lasagne is baked. So is the coconut tart I put in at the same time and the flapjack I put in for the last 10 minutes.

Can an air fryer do that?

Astria

Pete99 said:

Your main oven will be really well insulated, so once it's up to warming temperature it won't use much more to keep it at that temperature, whereas air fryers and worktop halogen ovens don't have much if any insulation.

Unless your main oven is gas, in which case it can't be well insulated as the flame requires oxygen, so they tend to output a lot of heat, like an air fryer. You can put some plates on top of your air fryer though to keep warm from the waste heat, if you put them in the oven you are actually using more energy.

Alnat1

I put the plates in the little grill oven above the main one and it takes the chill off them. They don't get too hot to handle.

ariarnia

Alnat1 said:

30 minutes in a 180C oven and my lasagne is baked. So is the coconut tart I put in at the same time and the flapjack I put in for the last 10 minutes.

Can an air fryer do that?

you can cook all of those things in an air fryer. probably not at the same time but maybe each item would take less time so the total cooking time might be shorter or the same or a little longer. it might depend on your model and how big your dishes were if you could fit two things in together.

what you'd need to do is work out if its cheaper to heat and run the your big oven half full (i think those three things would only take one shelf in the middle of the oven if you had the right pans?) vs swapping things in and out of the smaller oven which is the air fryer. 

Alnat1

It's a range cooker with 3 ovens, small (with grill) medium (fan/grill) and large (used at Christmas only tbh and makes a good pan store) The oven I use mostly is the medium fan one and that would take1 item per shelf.