Quality built-in oven with “door open” grill

[nomis65]

Hi,

I’m fitting out a new kitchen with two adjacent double oven housings. I was planning to fit a Neff double oven in one and a Neff 29cm warming drawer below a Neff single oven in the other. You read so many good reviews of Neff gear that it was a no brainer. Or it was until the missus read the instruction manual that I downloaded and discovered that the oven door needs to be closed when grilling, even in the small top oven. That’s a deal breaker as far as she’s concerned, so I’ve been looking for alternatives.

All of the quality brands seem to mandate the oven door be closed when grilling. Neff, Bosch, Siemens, AEG and Smeg all say so, either explicitly in the manual or in the brochures. I’ve ruled out Miele because they don’t appear to make a double oven.

Hotpoint say the complete opposite and require the oven door to be open when grilling. The last oven was a Hotpoint and the missus was very happy with it, but the reviews of Hotpoint gear are mixed at best.

Is there anything out there of decent quality that can be used with the door open when grilling? I’d even go for 2 double ovens if there wasn’t a matching warming drawer by the same make. Unless I can find something better it’s likely to be a pair of Hotpoint Luce DX1032CXS double ovens, but it pains me to drop nearly two grand on a mid-range brand.

Thanks in advance.

Nomis

[lee8]

Re: Quality built-in oven with "door open" grill

The cheap crap tends to need the door open. Quality brands have them closed, due to thermostats controlling the temp which goes towards the energy saving of the appliance.

So why the need to have an expensive to run, cheap to buy unit that gives poor cooking results?

[Martin]

Re: Quality built-in oven with “door open” grill

nomis65 wrote:That’s a deal breaker as far as she’s concerned, so I’ve been looking for alternatives.

That’s a shame because the way forward these days is door shut for grilling. Better controlled, even heat dispersal with no spitting and acrid smoke spilling into the kitchen. The days of open door grilling have gone the way of a cooking pot dangling over an open fire having spent ages getting a flint spark to light the kindling. 😉

[lee8]

Re: Quality built-in oven with "door open" grill

We all know what women are like, if it’s not there way it the high way. Their is no way to change there minds. There just too stubbourne.

[chrisnicol]

Re: Quality built-in oven with "door open" grill

If you grill with the grill door closed, you are not grilling you are baking.

The reason to grill is to have heat from a single direction. So that you can cook the top of the food but not the rest.
Closing the door has two other problems, pans that you put it have to cook their handles. This prevents me from getting my favorite omlette pan quickly under the grill, it also makes it harder to see the moment when the top is just right. Ideally grills should be at eye level.
The need to have the door closed is driven by the need for themostats and the desire to have the control elements at the front where the heat disipates. It is certainly not to do with quality.
Professional electric grills which are only grills do not suffer from this problem. It would be possible to create a oven/microwave/grill which could grill with the door open, and be effecient in other modes but not enough customers demand it. t would cost more. Maybe grilling is going out of fashion.

[Author]

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