Dear Illustrious comrades,
so we now live in our straw bale home and have a wood burning range which does all our cooking, heating and hot water in the winter. Come the summer our cooking options are much reduced in the house; no alternative to wood. Do use a rocket stove outside and probably will do a solar oven, but I would like to have an iven inside. Please would someone advise me about most energy efficient option for retro fitting into kitchen?
I've looked at steam ovens briefly and wonder if they can easily be retrofitted. Don't have an obvious place/vent to outside, so the simpler the better. I dislike microwaves passionately.
Do steam ovens need a place for heat/water to go? Do they make food kind of wet, steamed rather than roasted?
I'm thinking a table top kind of style rather than big built in….
Thank you!
Books 
Comments
To cook a 4 oz potato takes the same amount of energy. It has the same specific heat capacity no matter what. You can cook it more efficiently though. So roasting it on your wood burning stove is not going to be the same as boiling it in a pot, or a microwave oven. They all loose different amounts of energy.
Then there is the carbon foot print, here a solar powered oven is probably best (PV or ST), once the embodied energy of the panels and oven are paid off, the rest is carbon neutral.
Anything that involves burning, either locally or at a distance, is not going to be carbon neutral.
If you want to get an idea of how long it takes to pay back the embodied CO2 of a potatao by using a wood burner, work out the average ring count of what you are burning. So if the average is 10 rings, then it is at least 10 years to grow the similar amount of timber (contentious I know).
All about watts in and watts out.
We could do a standard test.
Set the oven at 180° (gas mark 4), put a litre of boiling water into a pre-heated dish, leave in oven for 30 minutes. Allow to cool and measure the evaporation losses.
...we just have fitted a Neff oven.
The o/s barely gets warm, the door is never hot, so I am guessing most of the energy input stays inside the oven?
This would suggest it is quite efficient, and it certainly cooks a lot quicker than the old Hotpoint!
Cheers
:smile:
Oh, and a kettle, of course. :bigsmile:
PS. There's a camping double burner and a gas bottle tucked away in case of emergencies, though the smaller of the 2 microwaves could be run off our generator.
Here's a really efficient one: http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00651T6AI (Russell Hobbs 18537 Halogen Oven )
Slow cookers are great if you have PV - you don't need a very sunny day to get a free meal. Trouble is browning the meat (if you are eating meat) at the start ;) That said I've found you can actually sweat onions in our slow cooker given enough heat up time.
The better steam ovens condense and catch the steam and/or recirculate it, so there's much less steam than when using a steamer on a hob. Most of these products have grill and/or dry oven capability as well as steaming, so they can cook things however you want them.
As others have said, some halogen ovens are quite good if you don't need steam, and microwaves are probably the most energy efficient (I can't think of any reason they wouldn't be, but I have no evidence). I can't think of any reason to dislike microwave ovens, but there's no point arguing with passionate beliefs.
There are various review sites for products. Which is a bit hit and miss because they only review a very few models. John Lewis is quite good to go and have a look.
I don't think there is much difference between the energy usage of a microwave and an electric over, gas uses a bit more because it has to vent the combustion gases, electric fan ovens seem to use a little less, but that may be because you can cram more in them. I like electric fan ovens.
Gas is my favourite oven type, seems to cook 'more gently', but the temperature spread inside them is greater (case of know your oven).
If I was forced to have just one oven type for ever, it would be fan assisted electric, cheap to buy, consistent and easy to clean.
One day I will find a decent grill, one day.
New top of the range Siemens oven does the lot - fan oven, grill, steam and microwave. Steam seems to be an increasing feature - have never used it but hear good things. I get the impression common in high end commercial kitchens.
For me a fan oven works but must be "pyrolytic" - has a programme to get super hot and burn off all the dirt. Much better than using toxic oven cleaner. We only ran ours a couple of times a year and always in winter so all energy went to heat the house.
Will likely try a steam oven this time - meant yo be great for defrosting and reheating without drying out as well as cooking. We're going to skip a microwave this time. I've no woo health fears about them, and I'm sure they're super efficient but they don't cook well. Reheating drys things out and is uneven, defrosting part cooks. Actually cooking pale wet and unappetising.
I have an electric fan oven and it's good, I also have a tiny cheap plug in worktop oven/grill and that's great to as you only heat a small space, got to be cheaper to run !!!
Boiling in water isn't, though some things change phase, like an egg. Liquid to solid. Which is strange when you think about it. It should get runnier as it gets hotter.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denaturation_%28biochemistry%29#How_denaturation_occurs_at_levels_of_protein_structure
Whatever, my basic point is that saying that something is changed at a molecular level seems like pseudo-scientific way of making it seem more dramatic than it really is.
http://www.dhmo.org/facts.html