Last Updated on January 17, 2023
Knowing how to use a halogen oven correctly before purchasing one makes sense. After all, you need to understand how a halogen oven compares to a conventional oven to see if it’s worth your while.
There’s no doubt that halogen ovens have become more popular in recent years, and it’s partly due to their cooking process and reduced cooking time. Halogen cooking is viewed as a healthier option, but you still need to know how to use it to get perfect results.
What Is a Halogen Oven?
A halogen oven uses a fan and a halogen bulb as the heating element, which initiates the cooking process. These bulbs produce infrared beams, which create heat. The food is contained in a hot glass bowl, and the fan element moves the hot air around the halogen oven, making a significant difference in reducing the overall cooking time.
Things You Can Prepare in a Halogen Oven
You can cook almost anything in a halogen oven, from chips to roast chicken or simple roast potatoes. The list goes on. If you’re struggling with options, there are many recipe books dedicated to different halogen oven cooking tips and a step by step guide on how to get the perfect results.
The reason you can cook so many things in a halogen oven is due to how you can alter the temperature with ease. In this sense, A halogen oven works like other ovens, but as you are about to see, using a halogen oven correctly is just slightly different depending on the dish you plan on cooking.
The Basics of Using a Halogen Oven
Looking at your halogen oven, you’ll see that not many parts are involved. Your model may have a lower rack and a high rack option, and some will also come with a special extender ring, which allows you to cook more food in this particular type of cooker.
The good news is that your new cooking appliance will prove to be exceptionally easy to use, and we think you will find it more effortless than a normal cooker or a standard oven.
Halogen ovens come with a glass bowl and a lid containing the bulb and fan. The lid has a timer and temperature dial to change the cooking time and the temperature depending on the recipe.
Adjusting these settings is very straightforward and often via a couple of dials. Then, you kickstart the process and can then sit down for a tasty meal.
But let’s get on with a simple step by step guide to help all new halogen oven users.
Step 1: Preparation
First of all, you should not have anything else pressing up against your halogen oven. This appliance needs a lot of room around it because the glass bowl becomes extremely hot whilst cooking and could potentially become a fire hazard if not used correctly.
Furthermore, ensuring enough space around it allows the hot air generated while in use to escape.
Step 2: Placing the Food Inside
The next step is to place food directly in the halogen oven. This is where you need to choose between the high rack and the low rack. Using these racks is crucial because they lift the food off the bottom of the oven itself. The instruction manual will even suggest you do this, just like you would never put something on the base of other ovens.
This precaution also means the food will cook more evenly when placed on racks. Air circulates much easier when the food is lifted in this way, so even your potatoes should not have some cold or hard spots.
Step 3: Using Foil
If cooking something where juices are falling, you can place foil on the bottom of the halogen to catch it all. This is perfectly safe, so don’t worry about it: you can use foil in regular ovens, and this is no different.
Step 4: Setting the Temperature and Cooking Times
For cooking, look at the desired temperature and the time required according to the cooking methods or your chosen recipe. Halogen ovens make it easy to adjust to the correct temperature to produce delicious meals each time.
One of the best things about using a halogen oven is that you just need to set the temperature and timer and then let the oven start cooking.
You can do all the adjusting via the control panel, which is located on the top of the lid of the halogen oven. Note that the control panel remains there even when you add an extender ring to the halogen bowl.
Step 5: Checking Progress
Most of the halogen oven options on the market have a clear glass bowl. That makes checking progress while food is cooking and quickly determining how the food is doing very easy, unlike with a normal oven where you have to open things up to see what’s happening to your roast chicken.
In our opinion, this is one of the most straightforward kitchen gadgets to use.
Step 6: Serve
Once the timer has gone off, you need to check that whatever you are cooking is indeed cooked. However, if you follow the halogen oven cooking instructions, you should not have any problems.
The recipes for this particular cooker will lay everything out in easy to follow steps.
Remember to wear oven gloves to remove the food from the glass bowl. It is the same temperature as a normal fan oven, so be aware of this.
Additional Tips for Using Halogen Ovens
Aside from paying close attention to the recipes, we have some tips on helping you get the most from cooking with a halogen oven.
Find Some Ideas of What to Cook
Halogen ovens can be used to cook a wide range of things, so don’t just think it’s for making chips or a roast chicken. You can also use it for baking different goods, and indeed baking times are also reduced when you use this as your oven. Remember, it can also be used to cook frozen food, so that’s another convenient option to consider.
Check out some easy recipes for inspiration and take your meals to the next level in no time!
Safety
You have little to worry about from a safety perspective with these ovens. Sure, the bowl generates a vast amount of heat, but as long as you stay alert and do not get close to it, then you’ll be fine.
The glass is toughened and capable of withstanding extreme temperatures. The only time when you need to take care with this oven is the heat that appears when you lift the lid. The temperature used to cook the food can be pretty substantial, but it’s nothing different from the heat you feel when cooking food in an oven and being hit with that blast.
Cooking with a halogen oven allows anybody to cook food according to different recipes and produce something they love. Halogen oven users can even be pretty new to cooking, but in an instant, you can produce perfect roast potatoes or anything else that you would usually cook in conventional ovens.
The key is to stick to the recipes. Pay attention to the cooking time and temperature required to get the kind of result that you are looking for. This is pretty much a fail-safe approach to cooking if you can follow a few simple steps.
Cleaning Your Glass Bowl
One of the most wonderful things about halogen ovens is that they come with a self-cleaning option.
This involves you adding in some washing-up liquid and water before switching the device to the appropriate setting.
This cleaning option will not remove everything, but it uses a powerful swishing technique that creates almost like a whirlpool. It can help to remove some remnants left behind from the baking process or whatever you cooked, and it does make the overall cleaning so much easier.
If you used a low rack for cooking, then you can leave the low rack inside to help remove some of the remnants from there too. Unfortunately, a high rack will require you to clean it entirely yourself.
Overall Conclusion
And that is how to use a halogen oven, and as you can see, there’s nothing complicated about it. This cooking method uses hot air pumped around the halogen cooker to deliver that perfect roast chicken or mouthwatering golden-brown chips.
It’s fast, does not require any real cooking knowledge, and yet it also cuts down cooking times with absolute ease. As a cooking device, it works amazingly well, and it could quickly overtake your traditional oven as being your favourite cooking device in the kitchen.
We hope this article has given you some insights into halogen ovens, especially if you just bought one and are a novice to this cooking method. What do you think about it? Let us know in the comments! Also, for more tips on using and maintaining kitchen appliances, check out our other how-to guides.
Paul is the type of person who never met a problem he couldn’t fix. He can always be found tinkering with something in his house, even if it isn’t broken! His tips and tricks are often shared on our site. He’s the one you call when something breaks because he has been known to improvise fixes for everything from leaky faucets to malfunctioning dryers.