In article ,
"Christian McArdle" writes:
Does anyone have any opinions? It seems that buying a dual-fuel
slot-in can be cheaper than the two separate bits - for example this
one:

Personally I would go for all-gas. Electric fan ovens are overrated IMO. Gas
has the advantage of:

(a) much more rapid warmup, which is good for just bunging frozen stuff in
the oven without all that 15 minutes warm up you get with 2.2kW electric fan
ovens.

My experience is complete opposite. I use gas and electric ovens,
and gas takes very much longer to heat up. Just timed my electric
oven: 170C in 4 minutes, 190C in 5, 210C in 6, 225C in 7, 230C (max)
in 7.5 minutes. Gas oven is in a different house which I can't check
now, but it's at least twice as long, and probably 3 times as long
to get to max temperature.

A gas oven leaks loads more heat into the room -- perhaps useful in
winter, but not in summer.

(b) temperature variation from top to bottom. This is useful when cooking
items that require different heat in the same oven. Set to the highest
temperature required and put item on top shelf. Lower shelves then are
useful for items requiring lower heat. Less of an issue with a double oven,
but still more energy efficient to use just one oven when possible.

You get the same in an electric oven which can operate with the fan
turned off (but beware not all can -- some have the element outside
the oven cavity and require the fan to pass the heat into the oven).

(c) Gas grills are actually useful for something other than making your
house look like you've been burning tyres, which is the affect of cooking
any meat on an electric grill. Any fat gets treated as free fuel, rather
than a source of smoke and mess.

This is worse if the grill element is in the oven cavity and gets
splashed with fat when using the oven -- this then burns off when
you next use the grill.

--
Andrew Gabriel