Getting to grips with a new cooker

A recent house move introduced Andrew to a new cooker - it was love at first light.

She’s a beauty: a Britannia Delphi 90cm twin oven sporting six gas hobs; chrome trim, and a sleek sloe black steel body - phwoar. Cars I can take or leave, but the clean lines of kitchen machines... those I can appreciate. 

Finally at the age of 38 I’ve got the sort of cooker I’ve always dreamed about owning. The sellers left it in immaculate condition, unlike our old oven which we left, well, 'sold as seen'. Part of the reason we bought the house was the kitchen; it’s brilliant, and like our old place we spend most of our time in here. In her fascinating series ‘If Walls Could Talk: A History of the Home’, Lucy Worsley charts how our kitchens went from being a fire hazard situated well away from the main house, to being the epicentre of our homes. And the very thing that defines a kitchen is the cooker.

Start her up

But taking a new cooker out for a spin is always a bit daunting. Getting to know your cooker takes time. Eventually you come to learn how long it takes to heat up, or cool down, exactly how many seconds to hold the clicker down for to light the gas, and where the hot spots are in the oven. All these little foibles and idiosyncrasies help improve your cooking. I’ve all this to come.

Done to a turn

Perhaps the best bit about my new oven is the rotisserie. This lets you thread a chicken on a spit, and have it revolve under a grill giving a wonderful crispy skin all over and ensuring the fat drains away… in my case, onto waiting roast potatoes. The chicken came out done to a turn, the breast still moist and the skin as golden as that of an aged Hollywood starlet. 

I mentioned this to my new butcher, Chris, owner of Humphrey’s Butchers in the town. "Chickens are all very well and good," he said. "But bring me the spit and I’ll thread you something interesting on it - a rolled belly of pork, or a boned leg of lamb, perhaps?" "Deal," came my swift reply. There’s much more to come with this, I feel…

Time to cook

One aspect of every oven I’ve had is an automatic timer. Indeed, they've been part of oven design since the 1960s, yet I’ve never heard anyone say, 'I’ve put a roast dinner on timer'. I think we just don’t trust it all to happen - does a chicken roast properly if no one’s there to watch it? 

Tell us your experiences of using a new cooker. Did it work OK first time round? How old's your current one? Talk to us in the comments box below.

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