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Beware Electric Ovens

sidevalve

sidevalve

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Joined
14 Nov 2012
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Location
Durham NE. England
Just a note to all. Our electric oven [yes I know it's a little old now but it's not that ancient] no longer reaches temperature. It's not a big problem - we just increase the cooking times a bit and all is well. We will have to replace it soon BUT the thing is to anyone inexperienced cooking frozen items or meat it would seem fine, until they discovered an undercooked chicken etc. To anyone moving into a first home or flat beware - don't just follow the instructions on the packet or cookbook CHECK TO SEE IF IT'S DONE.
 
We have just ditched our microwave combi oven for this exact reason. From the word go it has never worked properly and everything has needed to have roughly 50% extra cooking time added to it and we were getting really fed up of it! It has gone to the tip... The new microwave is not a combi oven and even things we only microwaved are cooking much faster!

As an example, cooking scones in it should have taken 8-10 minutes. It was taking 15 minutes!
Pizza should have taken well, I forget what it is meant to take but it would need around 20-25 minutes
Chips should have taken something like 20 minutes - they would take 28-30 minutes...

It was driving up mad!
 
sidevalve said:
Just a note to all. Our electric oven [yes I know it's a little old now but it's not that ancient] no longer reaches temperature. It's not a big problem - we just increase the cooking times a bit and all is well. We will have to replace it soon BUT the thing is to anyone inexperienced cooking frozen items or meat it would seem fine, until they discovered an undercooked chicken etc. To anyone moving into a first home or flat beware - don't just follow the instructions on the packet or cookbook CHECK TO SEE IF IT'S DONE.
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Who would try to cook a frozen chicken in the oven?

I DO have a countertop convection oven that proclaims you can roast meats frozen right inside of it. But I've never done that yet.

It uses cyclonic fan-forced air, that's combined with super heated air coming from a powerful halogen orange glowing glass-encased heating element. :wink:
 
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It always takes time to get used to a different oven. I've had a couple of housewarming "disasters" over the years because the oven was taking far too long. Test out a couple of simple items in your lastest oven before preparing any grand dishes!
 
Strangely enough, our electric oven is giving trouble now too. A few months ago I realized that when I put a chicken in it to bake, the chicken was not getting as brown as it usually does. Also, the water which I would normally put in the dish with the chicken was somehow not drying out. It was from there on that I knew something was wrong with the oven. The chicken would then have to be cooked for about half an hour longer than usual. When taken out, it was still not as brown as it used to be, but from the taste of it, I could tell that it was cooked, so it was still edible.
 
I hate my oven, but there is not much I can do about it because I live in a rented home. Sure I can complain to the landlord to get a new one, but it will probably be the cheapest model around. I may end up actually needing a new one because one of my stove burners is not working as it should. Sometimes it heats up and other times it does not.
 
Our electric oven has stopped holding temp properly as well. It is not even that old, but I am not planning to fix it because we are hoping to be able to get a gas oven as well as a gas range soon.
 
ally79 said:
Our electric oven has stopped holding temp properly as well. It is not even that old, but I am not planning to fix it because we are hoping to be able to get a gas oven as well as a gas range soon.
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Ahh - gas. If only we could [no gas supply]. Then we could have properly cooked steaks and use a wok again.
 
sidevalve said:
Ahh - gas. If only we could [no gas supply]. Then we could have properly cooked steaks and use a wok again.
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Where I used to live, we had no mains gas, no mains water and no mains sewage, but our cooker was still gas. We used huge orange gas cylinders (47kg size I think: 5 foot tall iirc) of propane which was connected to the gas cooker.
 
Most of the stoves in apartments that I had were gas. Only two of them had an electric stove. :wink:
 
While cooking with gas is nice, I don't necessarily mind if the stoves are electric when living in an apartment - I get weirded out and worried about gas leaks and stuff blowing up. I wonder if your oven cooking time issues could have anything to do with the seal around the door becoming weak and leaking heat out. Do you notice your kitchen getting abnormally warmer than usual when baking something, for instance? Are the burners on your stove weaker too?

We have a combo microwave/convection oven too - but I almost never use it as an oven, it's too much of a pain in the butt. I have to remove the plastic rotating ring, then I have to find the wire rack to insert in it. But the worst part of it all, is in order to choose the temperature and set it to convection mode, I have to flip through a ton of screens on the LCD panel, which takes like 10 minutes, no jokes. And this is a KitchenAid appliance, you would think they would make them more user friendly than that. Plus, on top of it all, since the walls are so close to the food, they get covered with grease splatters if I am cooking anything oily.
 
Minę needs changing as well. I can no longer use the top oven as the temperatures are off so the dish probably won't bake even if I leave it in the oven for a day. In my country gas is very common and I am here thinking I should convert to natural gas which Is only available in my basement and never uśed. Natural gas is apparently very inexpensive.
 
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