Gadget review: Vida halogen oven
Halogen ovens are fast, using infrared technology to speed up cooking times. They’re also cheap. We put one to the test.
Halogen ovens cook food extremely quickly and, in theory, allow you to make a whole meal in one place.
The infrared light cooks food through without the need to wait for as long as a conventional oven, while heat convection prevents the food from becoming soggy, like in a microwave oven.
They are becoming increasingly popular so we thought it was time to put one to the test.
Unpacking
The first thing that strikes me when I remove the Vida halogen oven I'm testing from its box is how alien it looks. The large glass bowl supports a halogen lamp ‘lid’ that sits on top of whatever you’re cooking, blasting it thoroughly with infrared rays. It's also huge. Give it legs and it'd be a ringer for the Martians in War of the Worlds.
Apparently, this thing is my ticket to a fast meal, so where to start? First, according to the instructions, I have to run it through a quick pre-use cook. It smells a bit during this, but that wears off, and the manual reassures me that it’s just ‘excess lubrication burning off’.
Feeling hungry
I opt for a whole chicken for lunch. Not all for me, you understand. Whole, frozen, chickens are often used as an illustration of these devices’ capabilities by companies promoting them. So what better way to see if this oven lives up to expectations? Even better, why not whack a few potatoes and vegetables in there and shoot for a roast lunch on a weekday?
There’s a couple of stands included in the box, one tall, one small. I place the chicken on the small stand so that the fat can drip through into the bottom of the bowl.
A guessing game
The instruction booklet, sadly, is next to useless. It’s written in really poor English and some of it doesn’t seem to make any sense.
There’s a table of suggested temperatures and times in here, but it doesn’t specify whether the ingredients should be fresh, frozen, cooked or chilled. Or what weights are involved.
Chicken, it says, should take 40-50 minutes at 200-225°C. That’s quite a large temperature and timing range to guess within, and I don't know if this is a kilo of chicken, an average-sized whole chicken or a single drumstick. So I go for 210°C for 40 minutes and decide to keep an eye on things
I plan on putting in the potatoes after 20 minutes, and then the veg 10 minutes after that. Hopefully, it should all work out nicely...
Starting out
The chicken is in, so I put the lid on and turn the time and temperature up. The whole thing lights up and makes a low humming sound, which is no more intrusive than a microwave. So far, so good, although I'm suspicious that this little spaceship is about to take off with my chicken.
As I prepare the potatoes, I notice that the chicken is colouring fairly quickly. A quick thermometer read tells me that 15 minutes in, the meat is around 40C quite far inside. That’s not bad going.
It’s time to whack in the potatoes, at which point I hit an obstacle.
When stacking up doesn’t stack up
The wire racks provided are a bit flimsy, and it turns out that I can’t put the potatoes on another layer – the chicken is too tall. I can’t put them underneath the chicken on a tray, as the small rack doesn’t raise the chicken high enough. Besides, the fat would drip on them.
So giving up on the idea of a low-fat roast, I pile it all in together with a tiny drizzle of oil across the potatoes and let it rip. It seems to be going well, so 20 minutes later I add some veg and lower the temperature a bit to within the region called 'boil' by the manual.
Anyone for crispy broccoli?
After returning just five minutes later, I see that the broccoli I added is turning an unattractive shade of brown. Whoops.
The carrots look awful, but actually don’t taste too bad, just a little dry around the edges. Clearly, I should've just boiled these, as they would've been ready just as quickly. I ditch them.
How does it taste?
The crispy broccoli aside, the chicken was very nice and moist.
The potatoes, however, sat in the chicken juices and refused to crisp up. They were quietly broiling instead – combining ingredients in this oven is not straightforward.
As lunchtime was quickly approaching, my patience finally ran out.
I chose to drain them with a slotted spoon (at least I manage to get rid of most of the fat this way) and finish them off in the oven instead of waiting around for the halogen oven to finish the job. I’m pretty sure now that the time given in the manual for potatoes is a massive underestimate. Though once dried and cooked by a regular oven, they taste pretty good.
I think that maybe I should have parboiled them first like normal roasties. But again, the instructions are so useless that I honestly have no way of telling.
Problems
This halogen oven would be great if you needed to cook just one thing quickly (with crispier results than a microwave, a massive plus), but this one is in dire need of better instructions.
It took me an hour and ten minutes to cook a chicken (slightly over 1kg) from frozen. That’s brilliant, and if you just need to cook one thing at a time, this oven is perfect. It’s much faster than a microwave, and doesn’t make things soggy. Combining a few items makes judgement very difficult though.
Improvements
What would be perfect is just a few step-by-step recipes with exact cooking times and temperature adjustments so that people could get the hang of the machine without the potential to waste good food simply because you don’t have a clue what you’re doing.
It’s just too easy to make mistakes with something this new and unfamiliar, and I would’ve thought a manufacturer would make the effort to put decent instructions in the box. Having said that, maybe other manufacturers do include better manuals?
Adjustable (or a larger selection of) stands would also make life so much easier. The oven is also very large – perhaps a smaller model could be produced for smaller kitchens?
If you have the patience to figure it out, or you have a big, well stocked freezer (and enough space on your kitchen counter), then a halogen oven could be right up your street.
The Vida Halogen Oven is available on ebuyer.com for £49.98 with free delivery
What do you think of halogen ovens? Will you be trying one out? Let us know in the Comments below.
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