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Pits09 Pits09 is offline
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Default About those bench top convection ovens after 3 years of experience

Just scored 4 brand new ones still in packing from a liquidators
auction for $40.00 +GST

Now means we have 7 in the place will keep the original 3
But beacuse we use them almost every day pretty chuffed with them
and going through the power bill graphs and solar useage

Real power saving of about 50% since we now use fry pan and
microwave a *lot* less

Our other stoves are bottle LPG and old Malleys wood fired (great for
winter and cheap to run and the back boiler keeps the water heating
bills down substantially and always hot water on hand for a cuppa )

The bench top ovens retail a lot more than that each! And was the
only bidder so a great score as others at auctions had not seen
them .After auction chap walked up and asked why I snaffled all of
them ( I got ten had to take the lot you see )
sold 6 in the car park and turned a profit WAY TO GO $44.00
cash out $240 cash in (wish I could do that every auction)
so Christmas gift shopping almost completed and in front on cash
outlay
Have acouple that I have used over some time and love them .

However, the cook books instructions that come with them are very much
on the light side

Thus I share my observations
1 cooking time is between 20 &30% less (as are the power bills)
2 Cooking is even in fact the more you load it up the better the
result (otherwise the top rack burns some recipes)
as long as you leave enough space on the sides to allow even
circulation of heated air (think fan forced ovens here)

Found a half decent web based recipe resource that am slowly working
through to get precise temps measures etc sorted for the use with
these things (also to pass on to the gift recipients) to save them
the trial and error process etc

See http://www.myrecipes.com/recipes/browse-recipes

But on average the 20 to 30% less rule seems to apply to all except
cakes and breads (of late the bread efforts with these as more like a
brick manufacturing plant even the birds now bring own hammer and
chisels to get the left overs )

So if you see these things in the states I give them 8 out of 10
(once you experiment a bit with them
Cheers
P