Guides

Oven features

Whether you buy a wall oven or a freestanding cooker, ovens have common features to look for.

• Cavity size: Not all ovens that are 600mm on the outside are equal in size on the inside. The internal height of the oven is an important measurement to look at. The internal height should be enough so that you can place — for example — a roast chicken and a leg of lamb on each shelf at the same time.

  This internal height is also good to look for in 900mm oven: although you can place the two roasts on the same shelf, you are probably choosing a larger oven because you expect to cater for larger groups.

• Self-cleaning options: Most people don't enjoy cleaning an oven, so the engineers came up with self-cleaning ovens. These ovens have special internal liners on which fat and food particles lodge themselves. Run the empty oven on a very high temperature after cooking and these particles burn off — cleaning the oven. Self-cleaning ovens are generally more expensive. Sometimes self-cleaning ovens use liners which are available as optional extras. It's important to remember that you will still probably need to clean inside the door, the shelves and the fat filter.

  If your budget does not run to a self-cleaning oven, try to avoid ovens that have lots of screws or attached parts inside the oven. These gather grease and dirt and make cleaning harder. Cleaning the oven door will also be easier if the inside of the door has a full glass sheet. Otherwise dirt will collect on the join between the metal and the small glass window on the inside of the door, making cleaning harder.

• Oven doors: Some of us may remember burning ourselves from touching a hot oven door as a child. A lot has changed over the years and this no longer has to be a danger, thanks to improved door design that includes multiple layers of glass in the oven doors. Generally, an oven door with three layers of glass will be cooler to the touch on the outside than a door with two glass layers. This is particularly important to consider if you have children.

  Also while looking at the door, consider how it opens. Most have hinges at the bottom of the door. Alternatively you can also get oven doors with hinges on either the left or right side, so that they open sideways, like a microwave oven. Make sure these open far enough so that your elbows don't hit the door as you are lifting out that hot, heavy baking dish.

  Be sure to test the door to see how smoothly it opens and closes — not all door hinges are made equal.

• Controls and settings: Electric ovens currently on the market are generally all fan forced, and they should have functions for different settings. One of those should include running the oven without the fan. Take note of how clear and easy to understand the oven controls are — you don't want to keep referring back to the oven manual to decipher what the symbols mean.

• Grill: Many modern ovens do not include a separate grill area. Instead, the grill is inside the oven at the top. Look for an oven with a separate grill if you plan on grilling and baking at the same time, or just prefer that configuration.