In my previous blog “Huge Utility Bill and Hot Guests” I talked about how we just couldn’t cool 3 Palms down on a hot summer day when we had guests and I had used my wall oven to bake enchiladas. This blog post is a follow-up on the oven part of that story.
At 3 Palms, we kept the original vintage wall oven from the early 1960’s. It’s very cool-looking and wonderful in a lot of ways.
But it’s a big energy-hog!!! Not only does it use alot of energy to operate, but it also heats up the house quite a bit, making our air-conditioner work harder.
Because it’s just me and Paul in the house, it seemed like a big waste to fire up our wall oven every time we wanted to bake or heat something up. So, we decided to get a convection oven. It uses much less energy to operate and because it’s well insulated and sealed, it doesn’t heat up our house at all!
You can do anything with a convection oven that you can do with a conventional radiant oven. You can also toast bagels and waffles and bread like with a toaster oven. The other day I prepared some crispy baked chicken followed by some chocolate-chip cookies using our nifty new convection oven.
A fringe benefit of the convection oven is that it cooks food faster than a conventional radiant oven. Typically, it can cook food 25% quicker than a radiant oven, which also ends up saving energy!
Once we moved to 3 Palms, we decided not to get a microwave oven because we noticed that whenever we heated up our food in a microwave, it would change the consistency of the food. Our food would dry out or become rubbery. Forget about re-heating pizza or other pastries unless you’re ok with a drooping rubbery mess.
Our new convection oven solves this problem. We love re-heating pizza in it, because it comes out perfectly crispy and delicious. In our household, this means less waste because now we actually enjoy our left-overs as much as if they were cooked fresh. According to http://wisegeek.com, “convection ovens carefully create a uniform temperature with internal fans that circulate hot air. Fans ensure that the same temperature reaches the top and bottom of foods, as well as foods at all rack levels. Convection ovens seal in the juices of meat so dishes taste more flavorful and moist. Baked goods, such as pies or cookies, will be perfectly browned, even if you place them on different racks. Pastry will come out better, too, because the heat doesn’t fuse flour and butter, but allows it to form flakes.”Our convection oven cost a little under $70, which is about how much you would pay for a microwave oven. But you can do so much more with a convection oven and it will pay for itself through energy savings probably within a year depending on how often you use your radiant oven. Can your microwave oven prepare rotisserie chicken? I think not.
Do you have a convection oven and do you love it? If you don’t have one, are you considering getting one now? Leave me a comment!
Tags: convection oven, radiant oven
