Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Just got this item yesterday. We made chicken, baked potatoes, and cauliflower in it for dinner last night and we absolutely love how it works and the way the food came out. Now we are just hoping the element lasts. We'll update this review as time goes on, but we are likely going to be using this at least five days every week. Wish I had purchased one before this. For our boneless, skinless chicken breasts last night, we pounded them to 1/2" thickness, coated them with a mixture of sour cream, a little olive oil mayo, then dredged them in panko bread crumbs with spices and a bit of olive oil. We put these on the bottom rack with four Idaho bakers in the skins on the top rack for 40 minutes at 400°F. Then we put in a partly wrapped foil pouch of cauliflower pieces with some cayenne for another 20 minutes. This was the best chicken we've had in years, and the potatoes and roast cauliflower came out great as well. Clean up was amazingly easy as we had lined the bottom of the glass bowl with a sheet of foil. Fast, easy, low energy consumption and great tasting food! Can't beat this for the price. Oh, and did I mention it also fun!? ======================================================== A few things to consider adding on..... First, we have used this to make some of the best chicken and fish (along with potatoes and veggies) we've had in years. We love it. Tonight we tried pizza for the first time and we used two items we got from Amazon.com that I thought would help and it turned out they did. So here is a recommendation for you for under $15 including shipping if you have Prime.... We got the Winware 9" "Pizza Scream" (aluminum) and the 10" Cook Pro stainless mesh colander. Together under $15 including shiping, prime. Our pizza dough, rolled out to 9 inch diameter (about 200 gm), went on the "Pizza Scream" screen after pricking the surface with a fork and brushing with olive oil, and that was put on the lower rack to bake for about 10 minutes at 400°F. We removed that, added our toppings, and put it back with the oven set at about 450°F. We noticed the top browning a bit too quickly and then used the 10" colander, inverted as a "diffuser", and it then cooked very uniformly until the pizza was done -- one of the best we've ever made, and we have been cooking them on pizza stones in our oven placed with a wooden peel for a long time. This was better. Here is the science that caused me to buy these items. Aluminum has relatively high thermal conductivity 10X that of stainless steel, roughly. So the Winware "Pizza Scream" in addition to being ventilated, conducts and disperses any temperature gradients that develop under the pizza crust. However, since there is no rotation of the food being cooked, it is possible, and seems to happen according to my limited observations, that localized hot spots can develop that will result in uneven heat distribution during baking something like a pizza. This is where the inverted stainless steel wire mesh colander comes in. First, it causes turbulence in the air currents above the pizza resulting in more uniform air temperatures. Secondly, it heats up to the temperature of the oven and thereafter provides a uniform dome of radiant heating over the pizza surface. Radiant heating is actually a part of the electromagnetic spectrum, just like visible light, though not visible to our eyes. Imagine the colander mesh "glowing" in the infrared. That glow is more uniformly transferred to the food below. So the inverted stainless mesh colander serves this purpose of evening out the temperature via two different mechanisms while the aluminum "pizza scream" screen under the pizza allows a ventilated, even heating of the bottom crust. The combination I bought fits quite well, but I think one could also get the next size of "pizza scream" and colander to make larger pizzas. A 9" is perfect for me and my wife, though for one meal, and we like making things fresh rather than eating pizza left-overs. I have done a lot of bread baking, and I plan to use these two accessories to try to duplicate my 100% whole wheat bread recipe in this oven. News at 11 :) ====================================================================================== The inverted colander works great as a general dispersing medium for the hot air to create more uniform heating. The "pizza scream" works great for pizza in this oven coupled with the colander "dome". We bake the crust first and then build the pizza and bake it like that covered with the colander. Another thing we've discovered is that cooking vegies works great with the colander right-side-up and vegie chunks piled up from the center against the sides in a single layer with the pizza scream on top -- a perfect fit. This is facilitated by adding 1/2 cup water to the bowl (below the bottom rack) so that the moisture content of the air is close to saturation during cooking and that way the vegies don't dry out as much. We bought a few inexpensive 9" round cake pans on Amazon, about 2" high. And we've found that tossing the vegies -- cauliflower, broccoli, carrots -- in extra-virgin olive oil, salt and pepper and then baking them in these pans on the lower rack for about 20 minutes at 400°F - 435°F gives good results. In addition to water in the bottom of the glass oven housing (not touching the pan), we put a few tablespoons of vegetable stock or water directly in the pan every 10 minutes or so. This further helps to provide humidity and prevent desiccation. For the last 5 minutes, we crank the temperature up to maximum to increase browning. We use the pizza scream on top of the pan to aid in dispersion of hot air. We've also made great whole chickens by putting a lemon or orange in the cavity with several knife cuts in it along with a sprig of rosemary and several cloves of garlic. putting the chicken on the bottom rack brushed with butter and liberally salted and peppered, we cook at 400°F for an hour and then 350° for another 30- 50 minutes so that internal temperatures exceed 190°F an the chicken falls off the bone.