Halogen Oven from Clifford James

The lovely people at Clifford James sent me a Halogen Oven to review. It came last week and with the thought of cake baking in my head took it out of the box with great excitement. My excitement was swiftly replaced by terror as I took in the space age item in my hand, which was quickly returned to the box! It has sat in the corner of the kitchen for a week staring at me in disapproval as I use my plain old boring oven. Over the weekend I decided that I needed to man up and just use it! Thankfully it comes with an idiots guide for use which even I understood!

The halogen oven is billed as 'a revolution in cooking' using the technology of halogen to perfectly cook almost any meal. It can be used for baking, defrosting, cooking, roasting and steaming and unlike a microwave will brown food too. The fat from the food can drain away and it also has a built in self-cleaning function which I'm sure no-one will argue over!!! The instruction booklet that comes with it is very useful and gives you guide times for cooking meat, bread and pies. I would've preferred it to come with a cook book as well but this is available for £9.99 extra.

So far I've managed to bake cakes in the oven which were ok but not perfect so I obviously need to spend a bit more time on them and maybe rotate them next time. I also made chicken and vegetables which was more successful  than the cakes although I'd probably do the veg for less time. The great thing about cooking the meat was that all the fat got caught at the bottom so the meat wasn't sitting in it. I've seen some fabulous halogen oven recipes and once I've used it a little more am thinking of trying Asian Ginger Beef which sounds absolutely gorgeous!!!

The only downside to the oven is that it didn't actually come with the stand to put the lid on. You can buy it for £6.99 but it would have been much more useful if it came as part of the package. It was a real pain either trying to hold the lid when sorting out the food or trying to find something heat proof to rest it on. I guess if I would've actually bought the oven then I would have purchased this too and would definitely advise you to do so if you purchase one.

So would I buy a halogen oven? If I had a more spacious kitchen then yes. It's easier than putting on the normal oven and messing around with that but I still think that conventional is easier for bigger meals. For smaller things i.e. pizza, bread and cakes we will probably use this from now on. Also there are suggestions that the halogen ovens use much less electricity than a conventional oven and in these difficult times anything that saves you money must be a good thing!

The halogen oven is available to buy from Clifford James at £39.99