CONVENTIONAL vs. CONVECTION – oven comparison

CONVENTIONAL vs. CONVECTION Oven Comparison

If you are in the market for a new oven, there are two types that you can choose from conventional or convection. Consider the pros and cons before investing your money. Knowing and assessing the differences between the two will help you make the right choice that will work best for your needs and budget.

Heat Source

So what’s the difference (CONVENTIONAL vs. CONVECTION) ? Technically, all ovens cook by convection, where the hot interior air does the cooking. Standard or conventional ovens use natural convection and radiant heat to cook food. The burners heat the air inside the oven and transfer the heat to the surface of the food. With convection ovens, an insulating layer of air that is cooler than the overall interior of the oven surrounds the food. Convection ovens have an additional heating element and an extra motorized fan, which blows heated air throughout, diminishing the cooler air next to the food. A convection oven has upper, lower and back heating sources.

Internal Temperature

Regulating the internal temperature is easier with convection ovens because the fan circulates the hot air continuously. The third heating element located near or around the fan in the back of the oven heats the air to a uniform temperature before it enters the oven cavity. The balanced heat circulation prevents hot spots. Conventional ovens tend to have hot spots. Food on the bottom rack tends to overcook or burn because it is close to the heat source. In similar fashion, placing food near the top of the oven often overcooks it because it is close to the upper heat element. Furthermore, the rising heat tends to accumulate at the top. Placing food near the center of the oven will yield better cooking results.

Cooking Time

Foods cook much faster in convection ovens. Convection cooking speeds up the chemical reactions of food during cooking. Baked goods release steam quicker, roasted meats render fats sooner and sugars in vegetables caramelize faster. A convection oven cooks food 25 percent faster than a conventional oven.

Cooking Quality

Convection ovens cook food more evenly compared to conventional ovens. Meats cook faster with more juice retained inside. Convection ovens cook meats with deeper flavors, crispier edges and are tenderer inside. In some cases, cooking with conventional ovens can result in drier meats, with a burnt outer part and not cooked well inside. Convection ovens can cook different foods evenly in different pans on different racks at the same time without transferring tastes, while conventional ovens cannot.

Types

Conventional ovens come in two types — range and deck. A range oven, also known as the general-purpose oven, is a part of a cooking system. It usually has a stove on top and an oven at the bottom. Some models may come with an incorporated microwave or convection oven at the center. A range oven may use electric or gas heat source. Deck ovens save space. They can be freestanding or built-in. Deck ovens may use electric or gas heat source. You can choose from single, double or triple deck ovens. Convection ovens may come in a range or deck along conventional ovens to allow cooking preferences. There are also portable or countertop convection ovens that you can buy if you have a conventional oven but would like to use a convection oven to cook small amounts of food.

Price

Most convection ovens are pricier than conventional ovens; however, consumers find they quickly recoup the higher initial cost from the energy savings achieved with faster cooking time.

Call Absolute Appliance Repair NOW if you have any problems with your oven!

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(415) 831-1259 San Francisco
(415) 388-0690 Marin County
(650) 525-0512 South SF / Daly City / Pacifica

 

 

Cooking with convection oven

Convection ovens—long a mainstay of professional kitchens—continue to gain popularity with home cooks, many of whom either opt for the compact countertop versions or purchase an oven with a convection setting. The allure of faster cooking times, evenly cooked food, and the oven’s improved energy efficiency is hard to ignore. However, for anyone new to cooking with convection ovens, there is a learning curve that often requires adjustments to either time or temperature—and sometimes both. If you’re trying to figure out how best to cook with your convection oven, we’ve got some helpful advice.

First, a few basic mechanics: A conventional oven uses radiant heat that emanates from the top and/or bottom surfaces. The result is usually an oven with hot and cold spots. What makes a convection oven stand apart is the internal fan that circulates hot air, creating an evenly heated environment for the food. The most obvious advantage to having a steady supply of heat surrounding and penetrating the food is that all your meat, produce, and baked goods will cook faster and brown more evenly.

Experts and manufacturers recommend adjusting any recipe in two ways: either by lowering the oven’s temperature by about 25 degrees or by shortening the cooking time by roughly a quarter. Follow the tips below and carefully monitor your first few attempts for browning, texture, and doneness. It may help to record the results—through trial and error, you will quickly get a sense of how your convection oven cooks and what further adjustments should be made.

 

cooking tips:

  • Air Supply

If the air cannot circulate over and around the food, your convection oven will be ineffective. Trays and baking pans with lower sides allow hot air to flow freely. Use shallow roasting pans and rimless cookie sheets when possible. Try to keep a two-inch clearance on all sides. Shelves should never be covered with aluminum foil. Trays and pans should be placed so they don’t hinder effective circulation.

  • Adjust the Recipe

Variables such as initial oven temperature, quantity of the food, desired level of doneness, and oven model will all affect cooking time. Experiment with your favorite recipes by either dropping the temperature by about 25 to 30°F or shortening the time (10 to 15 percent for cookies and up to 30 percent less for large roasts), or both. Consult your user manuals for specific advice.

  • Method Cooking

Roasting
Proteins: Fat renders rapidly, sealing in precious juices and leaving a crispy, uniformly brown skin without constant shifting and basting. Fruits and vegetables: The natural sugars start to caramelize more quickly, leaving centers that are creamy and moist, concentrated flavors, and edges that are crisp and golden.
recipe to try:
Roast Chicken and Root Vegetables with Mustard Rosemary Sauce

Baking
Butter releases steam almost immediately, making the dough rise higher. That means your baked goods will all be flakier, lighter, and loftier. For cookies, take advantage of all available shelf space by baking with several trays at once. Because the fan disperses heat throughout, you won’t have to rotate them as often.
recipe to try:
Chocolate Chip Cookies

Toasting/Drying
Nuts and grains: Achieve an even, golden hue with far less tossing and turning with a convection oven. Fruits and meats: The convection oven’s internal fan helps thinly sliced fruit and jerky dry out more quickly and uniformly than a dehydrator or a conventional oven does.

Extreme Granola

Your Oven is Lying to You

We’ve tested and reviewed a lot of different ovens over the years, and one thing has been a constant: Every oven has offered specific temperature control. Want to start baking? Select a temp, such as 350°F, and the heating element switches on. That’s the deal we’ve made with our modern ovens.

Sounds fairly straightforward, right? Nope. It’s all well and good to choose a temperature that corresponds to a recipe, but your actual oven temperature is typically far from exact.

Temperature patterns vary between models and manufacturers, but most work in a similar way: The temperature will ramp up initially, climbing above your desired temp to compensate for heat loss when you open the door to place your food inside. The heating element will then begin to cycle on and off. If your oven is well-calibrated and you’ve set it to 350°F, the element might stay on until the cavity hits 370°F, then switch off, then switch back on when it dips to 330°F.

Oven technology has come a long way from the days when the best way to tell if an oven was up to temp was by holding your arm inside and measuring the time it took for the heat to become unbearable. But at the end of the day, your oven is basically an insulated box with a heat source inside. It’s terribly difficult to perfect, and the idea of an oven that heats to the exact specified temperature remains a beautiful dream.

Heat varies throughout the cavity, it varies over time, and it varies from one oven to another. In fact, temperatures recommended by most recipes were likely developed specifically for the author’s oven.

Oven temperature is far from exact.

What to do, then? Are we wasting our time reviewing cooking boxes that vary in temperature no matter what? The short answer is no.

We know that oven heat fluctuates, so the bulk of our testing process is in real-world baking tests where we cook actual food and see how it browns. All ovens experience temperature variation, and heat is never totally uniform throughout the cavity, but our tests give us a reliable sense of whether there are problematic hot and cold spots in a given model. The best performing ovens are more consistent throughout the cavity.

If you’re cooking in a particularly quirky oven, try not to worry too much about accuracy. According to food guru Mark Bittman, oven temperatures are “a convention.” The former NY Times columnist told Slate that he prefers to think of oven temperatures as four broad categories of heat that work for different cooking tasks.

“[R]eally low, under 275 degrees; moderate, between 275 and 350; high, over 350 but under, say 425; and maximum,” he says. “But I don’t think about those numbers … I just think ‘what am I trying to do here? Blast this stuff or treat it gently, or something in between?’”

“Oven temperatures are a convention.”

Common sense and practice, then, are key to using your oven to its best effect. Both Bittman and Chang urge home cooks to pay close attention to when food looks, smells, and feels ready, rather than relying on cook times recommended by a recipe. If you’d rather use temperature measurements, an instant-read thermometer should do the trick.

After all, the temperature of your food itself is a far better indicator for doneness than the number on the oven’s display.

How to Choose an Oven

Appliances are the workhorses of your kitchen. Together, they will add up to about nine percent of your kitchen budget. This figure is surprisingly low, considering the technological advances and energy efficiencies today’s appliances offer. While features and performance are obviously the most important considerations in choosing appliances, how they’ll look in your kitchen probably matters to you, too.

How to Choose an Oven

The traditional range or stove, a single unit with cooktop above and oven below, is an affordable, space-conserving solution still chosen by most homeowners. But it’s just one of the cooking options offered today.

Some serious home cooks choose commercial-style stoves with six or eight burners instead of four, basting and grilling functions, and built-in warming ovens. (Real commercial stoves pose special challenges, such as special ventilation systems and noncombustible walls and floors, when used in the home, so commercial-style may be easier to live with.) Other people love the new modular cooktops that let you add burners, downdrafts, griddles, deep-fry and steamer units, woks, rotisseries, and grills. And these are just a few examples of what’s available!

A modular approach to overall kitchen design is a pronounced trend. Wall ovens separate from cooktops let you create several cooking work stations instead of just one. A double wall oven stacks two ovens to save space and deliver twice the baking/roasting capacity, which many people find useful for special occasions. And you can still get two-oven stoves, with one oven below the cooking surface and the other well above, at cabinet height.

The first decision in range shopping has always been gas versus electric. Many serious cooks prefer gas for its instant response, precise controllability, and lower operating cost over time. Others praise the evenness of electric heat and the lower initial cost of the appliance.

Today, you can get the best of both heating methods with “dual fuel” ranges that let you mix gas and electric heat sources; for example, gas cooktop burners and an electric convection oven/broiler. Convection ovens, most often electric, use heated air to cook up to twice as fast as conventional ovens that rely on radiant heating action. You can even get a combination microwave/convection oven.

Electric coils are the most popular kind of electric burners, and the least costly. Smooth-top surfaces are offered with one of three heat source types: radiating electric coils beneath the glass surface, halogen burners, or magnetic-induction elements. All require thick, flat-bottom cookware. If gas is your choice, sealed burners are easiest to clean, and a pilotless ignition system means no hot spot when burners are off. Commercial-style glass stoves offer high BTUs (British thermal units, the measure of cooking heat) and high style. They require heavy-duty ventilation systems.

What about controls? Controls that are located on the front or on the side of the appliance are most common and convenient, but universal access means just that: While someone in a wheelchair can reach front-situated controls easily, unfortunately, so can a curious toddler. People with young children may prefer controls located on the backsplash, out of reach of exploring fingers. Wherever they’re located, controls should be easy to understand and operate. Top-of-the-line ovens may include electronic temperature readouts and touch-pad, rather than knob or dial, controls.

While many people like to blend refrigerators and dishwashers into the cabinetry with matching fronts, the latest trend is to keep ranges visible. However, if you do want to de-emphasize your oven, the easiest way is with an under-counter model. (Make sure the oven you choose is designed for under-counter use, because not all are.) You may install a cooktop directly above the oven or locate it elsewhere in the kitchen. A cooktop directly over an under-counter oven functions much the same as a conventional range, but, with no range backsplash and with the control knobs located on the countertop, the result is a more integrated look.

Cleaning baked-on spills from the cooktop has always been a challenge, but several options make short work of them. For easiest cooktop cleaning, consider ranges with ceramic glass cooktops housing electric or halogen burners; simpler knobs and handles; and a top and backsplash constructed from a single piece of metal, so there’s no seam to collect spills. Self-cleaning ovens come in two varieties: one that uses a high-heat cycle that turns cooked-on spills into ash you can wipe away, another that offers a continuous-clean function.

Range Hoods

If you don’t have a ventilation fan above your cooktop that vents to the attic or outside, you’ll want a range hood with ventilation fan built in. Why? Even if you don’t find some cooking odors objectionable, vaporized grease can dull beautiful new kitchen surfaces, and moisture can compromise the efficiency of home insulation. The solution is an updraft range hood that funnels cooking grease and smoke into one area so that the fan can draw it through a duct to the outside.

Filters capture additional grease and odors. Look for range hoods that come in copper, stainless steel, and other good-looking, easy-care materials, or customize a standard hood with ceramic tile to create a major focal point, furthering your decorating scheme. As an alternative, down-draft ventilation, usually part of a cooktop or grill, also employs a fan and duct arrangement. Units that rise above cooktop level provide the most effective venting.

Call Absolute Appliance Repair NOW if you have any problems with your oven!

(415) 831-1259

 

GAS OVEN REPAIR

Is your oven not baking?

  • Bad bake ignitor. You can’t tell it’s bad by looking at it–you must measure amperage. Just because it glows orange, doesn’t mean it’s good. On round ignitors, look for a current draw of 2.6 to 2.8 amps. On flat ignitors, look for 3.2 to 3.6 amps. Insufficient current draw will not allow the gas valve to open. If unsure how to test, check this tech sheet.
  • Bad valve. If ignitor checks out OK, remove power from oven, pull the two wires off the valve and ohm test. Should read two to five ohms. If open, replace valve.
  • Pilot is out. Try reigniting pilot. If it goes out again, check 1) gas supply (out of gas, crimped line, etc.), 2) pilot orifice clogged or dirty.
  • Pilot flame not wrapping around thermocouple. Reposition the thermocouple bulb so the pilot flame wraps around it.
  • If pilot is spark ignited and you’re not getting spark to the pilot, replace the spark electrode, spark module, and the ignition wire. These parts are inexpensive enough that it’s not worth the trouble to just replace one, replace the entire ignition system as long as you’re in there.
  • If your broiler is not working check the above steps with the broiler instead of the oven

Is your oven not self-cleaning?

  • Self clean latch bent or misaligned. Inspect for proper alignment to make sure that latch is contacting the latch switch.
  • Defective Self clean latch switch. Run continuity check.
  • Bad function selector switch. Run continuity check on switch.

Is your gas oven not getting hot enough?

  • Sluggish ignitor. A good ignitor will fire the oven in less than three minutes. If it takes longer than this, the ignitor is starting to go. Measure ignitor current draw as described above. As the ignitor gets sluggish, it takes longer for it to fire the burner as the oven cycles on and off while the in use thus lowering operating temperature.
  • Oven door gasket ripped or torn.

Is your oven door stuck closed?

  • Defective ERC. Check for error code in display. If error code given, check against manufacturer’s code explanations in owner’s manual or tech data sheet inside oven control panel.
  • Misaligned self clean latch. Disassemble oven to manually free latch and realign or replace as needed.

OVEN PROBLEMS

Is your oven not baking?

  • Bad bake ignitor. You can’t tell it’s bad by looking at it–you must measure amperage. Just because it glows orange, doesn’t mean it’s good. On round ignitors, look for a current draw of 2.6 to 2.8 amps. On flat ignitors, look for 3.2 to 3.6 amps. Insufficient current draw will not allow the gas valve to open. If unsure how to test, check this tech sheet.
  • Bad valve. If ignitor checks out OK, remove power from oven, pull the two wires off the valve and ohm test. Should read two to five ohms. If open, replace valve.
  • Pilot is out. Try reigniting pilot. If it goes out again, check 1) gas supply (out of gas, crimped line, etc.), 2) pilot orifice clogged or dirty.
  • Pilot flame not wrapping around thermocouple. Reposition the thermocouple bulb so the pilot flame wraps around it.
  • If pilot is spark ignited and you’re not getting spark to the pilot, replace the spark electrode, spark module, and the ignition wire. These parts are inexpensive enough that it’s not worth the trouble to just replace one, replace the entire ignition system as long as you’re in there.
  • If your broiler is not working check the above steps with the broiler instead of the oven

Is your oven not self-cleaning?

  • Self clean latch bent or misaligned. Inspect for proper alignment to make sure that latch is contacting the latch switch.
  • Defective Self clean latch switch. Run continuity check.
  • Bad function selector switch. Run continuity check on switch.

Is your gas oven not getting hot enough?

  • Sluggish ignitor. A good ignitor will fire the oven in less than three minutes. If it takes longer than this, the ignitor is starting to go. Measure ignitor current draw as described above. As the ignitor gets sluggish, it takes longer for it to fire the burner as the oven cycles on and off while the in use thus lowering operating temperature.
  • Oven door gasket ripped or torn.

Is your oven door stuck closed?

  • Defective ERC. Check for error code in display. If error code given, check against manufacturer’s code explanations in owner’s manual or tech data sheet inside oven control panel.
  • Misaligned self clean latch. Disassemble oven to manually free latch and realign or replace as needed.

Call Absolute Appliance Repair NOW if you have any problems with your oven!

Phone lines

(415) 831-1259 San Francisco
(415) 388-0690 Marin County
(650) 525-0512 South SF / Daly City / Pacifica

 

 

 

 

THE HOTTEST NEW OVENS AND RANGES

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