Countertop Convection Oven: The new era of cooking

The Countertop convection oven has been drastically improving over the last few years.  These countertop appliances will change the way you cook and eat left-overs.  One of the main reasons that it will change how you cook, is because of their efficiency.  To understand it better, you need to know a little bit about how a countertop convection oven actually works.

Your standard oven that most homes have currently, relies on two different things to cook your foods.  It uses radiating heat from the walls of the oven and air convection to cook.  When the heating element heats up at the bottom, the air around the coils will start to rise inside the oven.  As this air rises, cooler air moves in to take it’s place.  Thus to a small extent, the air is convective or that it transfers the heat via its movement.  But one of the big issues with a standard oven is that the air doesn’t move enough around the oven and often there are hot spots that remain.  That’s where the countertop convection oven steps in to help eliminate these hot spots and help the food to cook more evenly.

Countertop Convection Oven: The secret is in the fans

A countertop convection oven uses a fan to force the air to move around inside the oven.  Circulating air transfers heat quicker than air that isn’t moving and is the same temperature.  By using the fan to move hot air past the food, the countertop convection oven can usually run at a lower temperature while still cooking the food faster than a conventional oven.  Often times the cooking times will be up to 33% less by cooking in a countertop convection oven.

Countertop Convection Oven: Guidelines to cooking

Some guidelines to cooking in a countertop convection oven would just be to keep in mind that the more the food is exposed to the moving air, the better it will cook.  For example, you want to use cookie sheets without edges, roasting pans with low sides  or use a rack to elevate the food above the pan.  Using a rack not only does this help get the food above the sides, but it provides the ability for the air to circulate under the food, cooking it from all sides.  And where the convection oven really shows it’s power is by being able to cook multiple dishes at the same time, without fearing that one won’t cook properly while the others burn.  No more swapping racks with the food to make sure that they all cook evenly.

So with all this in mind, a countertop convection oven might be just what you need to start out with.  The costs of a full sized convection oven can get very expensive.  So the countertop convection oven models will provide you with all the great features of convection cooking without breaking the pocketbook.