Innovation: quicker cooking
Here's one I made earlier - much earlier
Stoves' new cooking system combininq the virtues of microwave and gas ovens can halve cooking times, writes Andrew Baxter.
What do you do when you have got dinner in the oven and your guests turn up half an hour early?
Most people would simply extend the pre-dinner drinks and nibbles session. But a new gas and microwave cooking system offers an alternative - you can programme the cooker to hurry up.
Stove's the Merseyside-based company which is the UK's only independent cooker manufacturer, has unveiled what is claimed to be a world first - a cooker that combines the performance of gas with the speed and convenience of microwave energy.
Stoves' Accelerated Cooking System can roughly halve the cooking time for virtually any meal. A 10 1b turkey that would conventionally take 3hrs 40 mins at 340,°f would take lhr 50mins, and would not require the normal 10 to 15 minutes of preheating.
According to Guy Weaver, Stoves' marketing director, existing electric ovens with a microwave cooking option rarely produce satisfactory results. "They tend to put speed ahead of quality cooking," he says. The ACS oven is based around Rotostar, an innovation in gas cooking that Stove's introduced last year. The company had been looking for a way to achieve the uniform distribution of heat from a gas oven that is normally possible only with an electric fan oven, The challenge was to prevent the flow of air from the fan blowlng the gas out. "We realised that the best place to bring the gas in would be at the centre of the fan," says Ben Gostelow, engineering director.
Stoves designed a fan with a hollow shaft through which the gas could be delivered. This enables the gas burner head to rotate within the fan at 1,500rpm and deliver a combination of radiant and convected heat more efficiently and more uniformly than other gas ovens. At the area time, though the system retains the moist cooking environment for which gas is noted (burning hydrocarbons releases water, slowing down the dehydration of food as it cooks).
The ACS system, says Mr Gostelow, is effectively a "turbocharged" Rotostar, as the gas fan is combined with low-level microwave energy. If the microwave boost is switched on, a computer speed control system works out from the original temperature and time setting which of four levels of microwave power to select, and when to put it on. In most cases the remaining cooking time would lmmeffistely he halved, and whichever booking mode is used, a display shows the cooking time remaining.
Mr Gostelow says the system could be used for cooking an entire roast dinner in a much reduced time, while avoiding overcooking smaller dishes such as roast potatoes. This by harnessing matching plate is achieved technology, an US technique for modifying the wavelength and distribution of microwave power. Preparation time for cooking some dishes is also be reduced, as precooking is no longer necessary.
Stove's has not yet announced product details for the system but cookers incorporating it are expected to be available later this year, costing £1,500. That compares with about £1,000 for Stoves Q-series cookers with Rotostar.
THE FINANCIAL TIMES, MARCH 1998
Cooking times are roasted by new oven BY ROBIN YOUNG
HELP is at hand for cooks who cannot stand the heat in the kitchen. A revolutionary oven, it is claimed, reduces roasting times by half.
Stoves Britain's only independent cooker manufacturer, has unveiled a £1.500 "accelerated Cooking System" that combines gas with microwave energy.
A 101b turkey that would normally take 3 hours 40 minutes at 34O°F can now take 1 hour 50 minuets, the company claims.
The oven, on sale later this year, does not need preheating. Although there are ovens on the market that combine electricity and microwave power, Stoves claims that the new one is the first to link gas and microwave.
The gas is injected through a pipe at the centre of the fan, enabling the burner head to rotate at 1,500rpm. The advantage over microwave cookery is that the food is cooked from the outside as well as from within, providing the browning and crisping effects of a conventional oven, but combining it with extra speed.
The Times, March 1998
A gas oven that evens the hot odds
With gas ovens it is always a case of the higher, the hotter. And many a finger has been blistered swapping dishes from shelf to shelf while cooking, writes Lynda Murdin.
But now a Merseyside-based company, Stove's offers gas ovens which give the top-to-bottom even temperature previously achieved only by fanned electric ovens.
Called Rotostar, and available in a new range of built-in-ovens, the system relies on a spinning gas burner head at the centre of a high speed fan. It was developed by an in-house engineer. "Conventional gas ovens have always been great for roast dinners, because you can put the vegetables at the bottom where it's cooler, the meat in the middle, and the Yorkshire puddings at the top, "says Guy Weaver, Stove's marketing director. "But if you want to cook a batch of, say, flans you have to keep moving them about on the shelves. That's not the case with Rotostar. Yet it still creates a moist cooking environment which doesnt dry up food." Next in the creative pipeline is a combination oven combining Rotostar with a low-level microwave.
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