Guide for buying cookers

The sizes range from 50cm to 60cm with most of the manufacturers who promote freestanding cookers. A freestanding unit offering oven, grill and hob in one appliance, designed to slide between kitchen cabinets. Cookers have adjustable feet to fit flush to worktop height.

If you have gas you may wish to consider a dual fuel cooker as these combine the speed of an electric oven with the flexibility of a gas hob.

As well as these options, further options available include double oven cookers, allowing you to cook within both ovens at the same time; single oven with separate grill, allowing you to cook in the grill and oven at the same time; single oven and grill, allowing you to cook on either the grill or oven but not at the same time and fan ovens which cook more quickly that conventional ovens.

Then there are many choices to make on the extra features available on a modern cooker. Here are examples of the main choices:

Conventional ovens
Conventional ovens can be gas or electric. In a conventional gas oven, the heat comes from the gas burner at the rear bottom of the oven. In a conventional electric oven, the heat comes from elements under the base and at the top of the oven.
In a conventional oven, heat rises to give a hotter temperature towards the top of the oven, and a slightly cooler temperature towards the bottom of the oven.
The heat zones in a conventional oven make it ideal for cooking a number of dishes together, where different cooking temperatures are required. Conventional ovens are perfect for traditional cooking for things like cakes and roast meat.

Electric grill
Electric grills consist of either single or dual elements, and may have fixed or variable heat settings, depending on the model. The heat output of variable grills can be controlled by turning up or down, between low heat and high heat settings.

Fan assisted ovens
A fanned oven has an even cooking temperature throughout the oven as the fan circulates the heat. This makes it perfect for batch baking. Heat comes from the element in the back of the cavity, beit in the middle or top of the oven, and the hot air is circulated around the oven cavity so that an even cooking temperature is achieved throughout the whole of the oven.

Fanned Grilling
Available in ovens showing multifunction and fanned ovens in the specification.
Heat comes from the grill element, and hot air is circulated around the food, so that there is no need to turn during grilling. Ideal for grilling meats as it helps cook through the food as well as browning it.

Fan and base cooking
This feature is available in selected multifunction ovens only.
Heat comes from the element in the base of the oven, and is circulated throughout the oven by the fan.
Ideal for cooking moist dishes where the filling and the base need to be cooked evenly.

Hotplate lids
Some freestanding and range cookers feature hotplate lids. These are toughened glass on some models, or solid cast iron lids on our more traditional Farmstyle range. Lids to gas hotplates (on gas or dual fuel models) have a safety feature – so that if the lid is accidentally closed while a hotplate burner is on, the hotplate burner will be switched off.

Automatic programmer and clock
An LED automatic programmer - clock has a full 24 hour digital clock display.
It also has a minute minder function and it’s main function is that it can be programmed for automatic cooking in the oven under control of the programmer. You can set cooking start time, or end time, along with the length of cooking time required. When the programmer reached the end of the cooking time set, it will automatically switch the oven off.

Minute minder
The LED minute minder / clock has a 24 hour clock display. It also features a minute minder function – which acts as a timer to let you know when your cooking needs attention. The desired time is set, and an alarm will sound after the time set has elapsed. The minute minder works independent of the oven, so if your cooking needs an extra few minutes, there’s no need to reset the oven.

Multifunction oven
A Multifunction oven is an electric oven which has many cooking functions. These functions will include a selection of the following; fanned oven cooking, conventional oven cooking, grill, fanned grilling, base heat only, top heat only, fan plus base heat, intensive bake and defrost.

Pyrolytic
These ovens usually have a triple glazed door so the oven can withstand the heat required to burn off excess food. The ovens go to extremely high temperatures and automatically lock themselves so you cannot get close to the heat produced.

Shelve supports
Most ovens feature removable shelves and shelf supports. This makes cleaning even easier – especially as they can be cleaned in a dishwasher.
Shelves can be placed in a variety of different positions inside the oven, so that you can position the food you are cooking at the perfect height.

Stay clean liners
Stay clean liners help reduce dramatically the amount of cleaning an oven needs. The special coating burns off most of the fatty by-products and food splashes on impact, leaving your oven much cleaner and needing less wiping.

Top heat only
This function is available in some Multifunction ovens, and some electric conventional ovens.
Heat comes from the element at the top of the oven. Top heat is ideal for browning the top of oven cooked dishes.

Inner door glass
Most ovens feature an inner door glass panel, which is removable for easy cleaning.

Warming plate
A heat resistant toughened glass warming plate is a feature of some electric range cookers. It is perfect for warming plates before serving, or for keeping a pan warm at a low heat before serving.

Wipe clean enamel interior
This is a smooth hard wearing enamel oven or grill interior finish, which can be wiped clean after use.