How a Halogen Oven Works to Cook Tasty Meals
Halogen ovens are all the rage when it comes to cooking quick, economical and healthy meals - so let's take a look at how these amazing cooking units actually work.
A halogen oven operates with a type of cooking that uses infrared energy and relies on radiation for heat transfer. Infra red heat emitted from a halogen lamp to cook the food in the oven.
As infrared energy passes through food it causes the food molecules to vibrate and produce heat.
Standard cooking uses conduction or convection to transfer heat. Conduction requires direct contact between objects while convection uses a liquid or gas to transfer heat. When you sauté or pan-fry your food, you are relying on conduction for the cooking process.
Boiling, deep-frying or using a standard gas grill involves convection to transfer heat from the heated molecules of water, oil or air to the food being cooked.
The radiation heating in infrared cooking works directly on the molecules along its path, which makes it a very efficient way to cook. Standard cooking methods that use conduction and convection require heat transfer, and this always involves heat loss.
Radiation heating does not have this kind of problem. This means you need less energy to cook the same amount of food.
The oven operates with a heating chamber where the food is placed in a bowl made of clear glass.
The clear glass acts as an easy and fast heating conductor, as well as allowing the operator of the oven to watch and cook their food just how they want it.
To use the halogen oven you simply place the food on to either the low or high cooking rack and then place this into the unit's large glass bowl.
You can even use the device with any cooking tin, bowl, plate or dish in your kitchen, and then you just need to set the timer to the recommended time for the food you plan to cook.
These compact ovens cook just as quickly as microwave ovens and just as evenly as conventional ovens.
A microwave oven does not actually create heat and instead cooks food from the inside out by using short radio waves which cause rapid movement of molecules inside the foodstuff which generate heat.
A halogen oven, on the other hand, generates a huge amount of heat from the device itself - within seconds of turning the device on you will the halogen ring, which is filled with inert halogen gas, in the lid burning brightly.
The heating chamber often consists of multiple metal racks which help with cooking more than one type of food at the same time.
Inside the assembly there is a circular halogen lamp, a temperature control interface, a fan, an automatic shut off timer and other temperature controls. The heat lamp inside the oven is controlled by a thermostat when it comes to turning it on or off.
A simple on-off switch turns on the halogen lamp inside which generates waves of high density infrared light to heat the air within the chamber.
The fan inside helps the heated air to be evenly distributed throughout the chamber so that food gets cooked to perfection.
Grilling with infrared heat eliminates the mess and smoke of charcoal grilling so you can enjoy it year round. The same goes for cooking with an infrared halogen oven. No pre-heating is required, and you can even cook food without defrosting.
These innovative ovens make use of the very latest technology to cook food in a quicker time than your normal oven or cooker, and it also cooks much more evenly than a microwave oven.
Their versatility makes them very appealing indeed - there's really not much that can't be cooked in a halogen oven. Steaks, chicken, pork, seafood and vegetables all come out perfectly cooked. They can be grilled, roasted, broiled, steamed, baked or air fried.
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