A few years ago, my home was renovated and the kitchen was opened up to the living room. As a result, I lost some wall space, specifically the section that held the shelves that housed my microwave and toaster ovens. So when it came to equipping my new kitchen, I thought I could save some precious bench space by combining the two and getting a microwave/convection oven.
Don’t ask me where the idea came from. The only thing I can think of was that, not too long ago, I saw a television program where a modern woman was taken back to a 1970s kitchen and had to learn how to use her ‘brand-new’ microwave oven. Back then, housewives (sic) were encouraged to do all their cooking in their new microwave oven, including Sunday’s roast chicken. I guess that reminded me that the earliest microwave ovens were actually microwave/convection ovens that could indeed roast a chicken. I hadn’t heard much about them recently, so I was pleasantly surprised to learn that they were still around.
As a single person, I’ve found my little M/C oven invaluable. I use it as a microwave, obviously, but I can also use it as a standard, electric oven. I have a full-sized oven, of course, and use it for baking batches of biscuits and muffins and when entertaining, but when I’m cooking a tiny little frittata or mashed potato pie just for me, it seems a waste to fire up the big oven. As a bonus I can use its M/C function for, say, heating up a frozen pie without getting its pastry soggy. It also has a grill function.
So, all in all, I’m happy with my little oven. Though I must admit, I’ve had a few bad experiences with it, but they’ve been my fault and not the oven’s. They’re the reason why I’m writing this entry, so that you don’t do what I have done.
By rights I should be calling this entry ‘6 Tips for Cooking with a Microwave/Convection Oven’. You’ll find more extensive information about M/C ovens online, but here I’m speaking from my own experience.
Sections:
Before you buy
When I began investigating M/C ovens, I started by looking in the high-end department stores at leading brands, which could cost from $400 up to $1400. I was certainly not prepared to pay that much for what was still, to my mind, an experiment. And then I saw one in my local Kmart for $129.00. Could it really be any good, I wondered.
So I did a bit of research. I couldn’t find reviews of that particular brand, but I found other similarly priced ones, and the general consensus was that they were all right. Oh well, I thought, if it isn’t any good, I haven’t lost much. Five years later, my little Kmart oven is still going strong. (Since I bought mine, Kmart’s oven costs a few dollars more, but it’s now also an air-fryer.)
Tip #1: you don’t have to spend a fortune on your microwave/convection oven.
Getting Started
About the only drawback of my Kmart oven was that the manual didn’t answer my first question: what kind of cookware can I use in M/C mode? I had to work it out logically for myself.
Basically, as it’s in convection mode, you can’t use anything you can’t use in a convection oven, such as plastic. As it’s in microwave mode, you can’t use anything you can’t use in a microwave oven, such as metal. In the end, I worked out my best options were to use ceramic or glass dishes. (Silicone cookware can also be used in both microwave and convection ovens.)
Tip #2: when cooking in microwave/convection mode use ceramic, oven-safe glass or silicone cookware only.
I think my favourite trick in M/C mode is heating up frozen pies and pastries in a fraction of the usual time. While the microwave function thaws and heats up the filling, the convection function makes the pastry nice and crisp.
In fact, the M/C function can be used in almost all cases where you might use a standard oven. It can be used to heat up most oven-ready products such as chicken tenders (though it doesn’t work quite as well with oven-ready fish, for some reason). It can also be used to roast or bake vegetables, potatoes or meat, as well as egg dishes such as frittata and quiche. It can even be used to bake cakes or pizza.
When it comes to how long to cook an item in M/C mode, my rule of thumb is 25% or ¼ of the time it would take in a standard oven.
Tip #3: almost everything you can reheat or cook in a standard oven can be cooked in microwave/convection mode but in a fraction of the normal time.
Tip #4: in general, cooking in microwave/convection mode takes one quarter (25%) of the time taken in convection mode (i.e. a standard oven).
Warnings
In order to get the best results when heating a frozen pie, I often pre-heat the oven in convection mode before heating the pie in M/C mode. However, when I first tried this, I got a pie with crispy pastry, but a frozen filling. What could have gone wrong? It seems I had selected convection mode to pre-heat the oven, but I hadn’t turned off convection mode before selecting M/C mode when putting my pie in the oven. Therefore, the oven had stayed in convection mode and my pie had heated up long enough to crisp up the pastry, but not long enough to thaw out the filling.
Tip #5: when using more than one mode in a session, make sure to turn off one mode before selecting the next mode.
My worst experience with the M/C oven was that I twice (yes, I’m a slow learner) burned my dinner to a crisp. The smoke alarm was set off and it took days to get rid of the smoky smell in the oven. I couldn’t understand how my little oven, which couldn’t go above 200°C, could possibly have burnt my dinner in such a short time. And then it dawned on me. I had selected M/C mode but set the timer for convection mode. Therefore, my dinner had cooked four times more than it should have.
Tip #6: make sure that you have selected the correct mode and correctly set the timer for the mode you have chosen.