New kitchen appliance help - please

[minniecarousel]

We reno'd our kitchen and I'm just getting familiar with our new appliances. I have 2 questions:

do you have a convection oven? What do you cook/bake in it? What's the advantage over a traditional oven?

with a french door refrigerator, lower freezer, how do you keep the refrigerator stationery when pulling open the lower freezer door? I keep pulling the whole fridge toward me when I open the freezer door. (& I'm NOT that strong!) We can't figure out how to keep it in one place - it keeps moving.

TIA

 

[Beca]

Can't help with the freezer, but we do have convection ovens, and I LOVE them!!!

Basically, a convection oven has a fan built-in at the back to circulate the air in the oven. This keeps your oven from having hot/cold spots, and keeps food cooking evenly. Additionally, a convection oven does not have to run as high, or for as long as a traditional oven. Mine does an "adjustment" on its own. If I punch in 400, it automatically adjusts to 375 to make up for the difference. You will also need to shorten your cooking time if the recipe is for traditional ovens. I usually shorten the time by 25%, and my food comes out perfect.

The biggest differences I see in the conv vs. regular oven debate are:
1) Baked goods....come out AWESOME in my oven. Especially frozen pizzas. My mom kept telling me that she would buy the same pizzas at her house, but they never tasted the same. I didn't believe her until I stayed at her house and she cooked one....it was TERRIBLE!! And, it was the exact same pizza I cook here. Pizzas cook evenly and fast.

2) Large meats. Turkeys, hams, and other "holiday" foods cook SOOO well in these ovens. True, I don't use my oven for that very often, but it is nice to have them turn out so well.

We have a double oven, and both our top and bottom ovens are convection. I cannot tell you the last time we used the "regular" setting in our oven....we are hooked on convection!!!

 

[java]

I have the french door fridge and mine doesn't move? Is yours on wheels? that's strange.

On the convection. I never used mine because I could never figure it out. Yes the baked goods seemed better- but not that much better to me.

I think it's one of those things you just have to get used to. We moved shortly after we redid my beautiful kitchen. It still burns me to this day. I miss that kitchen. It was perfect for me.

 

[golfgal]

I wonder if there is a wheel lock lever or something that needs to get activated to keep your fridge from moving. I would look in the owner's manual and see if there is something otherwise you might have to put in some wooden blocks or something as stoppers.

 

[NAB]

We have a freezer in the bottom of our fridge but the whole fridge never moves when we opent the door. Does this happen at the store? We do have wheels on ours. Maybe it needs to be full. Only thing I dont' like on our french door one is the ice maker takes up a lot room in these so less space for food.

We have a convection oven and like some one said it is great for cookies, three pans at one time. You can also just use the bake or normal setting but since convections have three racks alot of times I have to take one out to use it for roast and such. Also find the convection oven will set itself 25 degrees lower so if you want 350 it will go to 325. I usually over ride this by upping my temp by 25 when I push convection because it takes so long.

Never burn banana bread any more or brownies bacause the temp stays the same in the whole oven compared to the normal oven where the heat comes from the bottom.

 

[OctMtnWoods]

My frig is on wheels, but there are leveling feet. We lowered the front 2 feet to keep it from moving around.

My convection oven does the same as a poster above. Punch in 400 degrees, it adjusts to 375. I never knew what to do about the time however unless the cooking directions gave info for convection oven. Thanks for the 25% off time tip.

I've done pies. They come out looking perfect. Nice and even! Same for turkeys or roasts. It cooks so evenly. Pretty sure I've done a frozen pizza too because it gives convection time/temp on box.

My toaster oven even has convection. Its a really nice one. It use it when trying not to heat up the kitchen for small items.

I keep forgetting my oven has a warming drawer. LOL I only seem to remember at holidays, but it SURE comes in handy when I do use it. I finally got all the food on the table at the same time & hot.

 

[Carys]

The bake setting does not circulate the air like the fan bake setting does; I use fan bake by default. Fan bake will cook quicker, and baking will be more even, but you really need to dial the temperature down a notch from the normal recipe bake temperature and start checking whether the food is done no later than halfway through until you've used it a few times times. Sometimes if you leave things in for the "normal" length of time they may look normal but they will be too dry, I get the best results by taking things out as soon as the skewer comes clean, even if it's only 2/3rds way through the supposedly correct cooking time. Have fun!