If you are in the market for a new oven, there are a lot of options and the range of features you can buy for your oven can at times be overwhelming.
There are smart oven features that allow you to watch your food cooking on a smartphone, there are automatic oven cleaning cycles that effectively burn away dirt and leftover food, and there are more precise ways to cook dishes besides the typical likes of grilling and baking.
One of the most fascinating and advanced types of oven available on the market, however, is the combination oven or combi oven, which is a versatile, highly efficient oven that allows for multiple powerful cooking options in one device and is commonly seen in commercial kitchens.
Most modern ovens have three main cooking settings with the most standard option using heating elements to increase the temperature in the oven itself, heating everything inside albeit not always evenly. This is sometimes known as convection cooking or dry cooking.
The most common solution to this is the use of convection fans to allow for much better temperature management and more even heat distribution.
Alternatively, many ovens have a grill function that does the exact opposite, heating only the top element to allow for perfect cheese on toast.
A combi oven adds the ability to inject steam into the cooking area, and steam cooking cooks food whilst retaining its moisture, keeping a consistent temperature and avoiding the issues of dry, cracked or shrunk ingredients that can sometimes happen in a convection oven.
This option is ideal for cooking fish, keeping the vibrant colour and flavour of vegetables or making steam-specific dishes such as fluffy bao buns.
Finally, this also allows for a combination cooking mode, which allows for much faster cooking times without the risk of burning the edges of dishes.
Whilst the true benefits of a combi oven will likely only be seen by professional caterers, a combi oven certainly can be a time and effort-saving tool if used to its fullest extent.