A halogen oven makes life simple
Halogen cookers – I don’t know about you, but I enjoy cooking. I like firing up the electric oven and baking a chicken, or firing up the toaster oven and broiling bagels, English muffins, etc. Sometimes, though, I just want to plop a frozen rib roast into my halogen oven, then set it and forget it.
Since I own all three of the ovens I listed above, I feel qualified to speak to the advantages and disadvantages of each. I do want to focus mainly on the newest of these three technologies; The halogen oven.
Halogen ovens take advantage of two different heat sources in order to prepare your meals; Convection heat, which is the circulation of heat around the food being cooked. A small fan inside the oven circulates the airflow, allowing evenly cooked food. The second and main source of heat in the oven is provided by the heating bulbs themselves. The heating bulbs provide a much more intense heat than is produced with coil heating elements found in traditional ovens, like toaster ovens and gas or electric cookers.
Halogen oven
The bulbs in a halogen oven heat the food quickly, and the convection currents allow the airflow to evenly cook your food. The results are amazing; Great food, evenly cooked, in as much as half the time it takes to cook the same food by other traditional means. Take a moment to think about how long it takes to make a 5-6 bone prime rib roast in a conventional oven… I takes forever, or something like 30 minutes per pound of meat. And if the meat has been frozen beforehand, then you’re looking at an additional eon to defrost the roast. Now, this time saving technique may seem to go against the slow-cookin’ mantra of crockpotliving.com, but in reality it’s all about convenience, and this particular appliance is so darn convenient!
With a halogen oven, you can literally remove that same prime rib right from the freezer and place it directly in the halogen oven, eliminating the ever-annoying defrosting step in the process. The convection currents allow for the intense heat created by the halogen bulbs to penetrate evenly throughout the food, meaning that frozen food cooks just as efficiently as food that hasn’t been placed in a freezer.
A halogen oven is generally self-contained, and sits neatly on your counter-top or kitchen island. They are also a cinch to clean, as they can be easily broken down for the cleaning procedure. the oven itself consists of a heating element(the halogen bulb setup) resting on top of a glass bowl. The beauty of the glass bowl is twofold; It allows you to conveniently see and monitor the food being cooked, and it is an excellent conveyor of heat, allowing all the food to cook consistently and evenly. No more opening the oven door, sliding out the rack and removing the cooking pan to see how the progress of preparing the prime rib is going.
Another great benefit of halogen ovens is that they will cook almost any kind of food imaginable, just as well as any traditional means that you may be used to; You can use the oven to cook a roast as I’ve mentioned, or a whole chicken, any vegetables that you can think of that you enjoy cooked, or even a radical birthday cake. That’s right, since the food cooks evenly throughout, you could even use the halogen oven to make a delicious pineapple upside down cake, if that’s your thing.
Halogen oven cookbooks are available at any local bookstore and also online at places like Amazon.com and eBay. Halogen oven recipes are beginning to become commonplace as more people discover the joys of infrared convection oven technology. The recipe books will give you several ideas for home cooking that will ultimately help spark your creative juices, so that you may delve into creating your own recipe favorites. I recently perfected my mother’s pork chop + tomato rice soup recipe, which sounds a bit pedestrian at first glance but really packs a wallop in the taste-buds department.
The benefits of the halogen oven are almost too numerous to mention in one sitting, but I’ve tried. I’ll be adding to this post as other developments are discovered. I’ve only had my halogen oven a short time, but it’s already become one of most indispensable kitchen appliances. For other great kitchen gadget ideas, visit our crock pots home page and see how others are learning to live the slow-cookin’ lifestyle.
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