Row.co.uk Blog

In Finland, they have a saying “there’s more than one way to roast a reindeer.” Although reindeer meat isn’t a common dish away from the northerly-most Arctic communities, it’s an apt little phrase for the modern kitchen, wherever you happen to be.

Take anything you wish to roast, and you are spoilt for choice with regards to how to do it these days. There are so many different cooking appliances out there.

One such example is the steam oven. Most of us will have heard of steamers - those tall contraptions that are designed to help you stop boiling your Sunday vegetables to a grey mush - but a steam oven? How does that work?

Before anyone gets any elaborate visions of cooking machines powered by steam engines, steam ovens do, in fact, work in a very similar way to an old-fashioned steamer, using the heat from steam to do the cooking. The main difference is capacity - steam ovens come in the size and shape of a standard oven, which means you can fit a lot more into them.

More often or not, you will find a steam oven setting as one of several options as part of a multi-function unit, along with conventional and convection functions.

Cooking on steam

But what is the difference between all three, and how does the steam part work? A standard oven cooks by making the air trapped inside the unit hot. This is fine, but conventional ovens do not produce consistent heat throughout. Hot air naturally rises, and the closer you get to the heat source, the hotter it gets. This makes it easy to burn some things while other food in the same oven is still undercooked.

Convection ovens solve this with the addition of a simple fan - hence the term ‘fan-assisted’ - which circulates the hot air more evenly around the unit. Again, this is great, it speeds up cooking times and gives a nice consistent temperature which helps to produce better quality roasts and baked goods. But the downside is that all that hot air circulating can easily dry out your food.

That is where steam comes into its own. By adding a container or reservoir of water to the oven, when it heats up, it fills with steam instead of hot air.

Great, I hear you say - but who needs to steam two or three shelves full of vegetables at a time? Well that is where the word needs to get out about steam cooking. It is far, far more versatile than most people think. Put simply, anything you can cook in a conventional oven, you can also cook using steam. All you are doing is switching the cooking medium from hot air to hot water vapour. And this also has several advantages.

Steam carries heat more efficiently than air, which means a steam oven delivers a more consistent temperature without the need for a fan and also cooks faster. Steam also avoids the risk of your food drying out, which also prevents burning. Another advantage is that it is thought the moisture helps to lock-in more nutrients, making steam cooking healthier - plus, you don’t have to douse food in fat like you do with a traditional roast.

Of course, there are times when we all want a little extra crunch - roast potatoes with the outsides crisped to perfection in hot oil, a roast joint with crackling - which is why it is common to see steam ovens available in combination varieties. Why not pack as many options as possible into a single unit?

Whichever type of oven you opt for, don’t forget to guard against any mishaps with Row.co.uk’s fantastic value appliance insurance, starting at just £1.49 a month!

*The information in this blog is designed to provide helpful information on the subjects discussed. Please seek a professional for expert advice as we can not be held responsible for any damages or negative consequences upon following this information.

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Fridges that are the best for cool Prosecco and Wine

Row.co.uk Blog

It’s nearly time to put some fizz in your summer! Thursday August 13th is National Prosecco Day, when wine lovers all over the country will be popping a cork or two and enjoying a splash of Mediterranean sparkle.

Fingers crossed, the weather will warm to the occasion too, and all you Prosecco-lovers out there will be able to enjoy the refreshing Italian fizz the way it is meant to be - ice cold on a hot day.

But on that topic - what are your chilling options? Have you got room in your fridge for a couple of bottles of the good stuff? Come to think of it, are you tired of having to find new places to stack jam jars and margarine tubs every time you want to chill a bottle of wine.

If so, National Prosecco Day is just the excuse you need to think about investing in a wine chiller. Just think about it - instead of worrying about space and that awful feeling when a friend drops by unexpectedly and you haven’t got a bottle chilled, you can have a whole selection of bottles all cooled to perfection at any one time, tucked neatly out of the way just waiting for you.

But what type of wine fridge should you go for? If you’re new to the world of wine chillers, here are some things to consider when making your choice.

Standalone, built in or integrable?

One of the first decisions to make is where you are going to put your chiller. Standalone wine fridges have the advantage of flexibility - you can plug them in wherever you like, plus they are available in a much wider range of sizes. However, for appearances sake, you may prefer your chiller to be built-in as part of your kitchen. This takes more work, and unless you are fitting a new kitchen will probably mean having to rip out at least one unit.

A simpler option is an integrable wine fridge, which is designed to slot into an existing kitchen unit (after removing shelves etc) without having to be fully fitted. Depending on how you look at things, the downside is that integrable chillers are built to standard kitchen cabinet sizes, which means they are pretty big. That’s great if you want to store a lot of bottles of wine, not so great if you’re short of space.

Chiller zones

The most straightforward wine fridges do one obvious job - they cool your wine down to serving temperature, which for a sparkling wine like Prosecco is 6 to 8oC. However, if you are serious about your wines, you will also want to regulate their temperature for long-term storage. Dual temperature zone chillers are great for this, providing a second, warmer area that keeps your wine between 12 and 14oC, perfect for long-term storage and ageing.

fridge for wine in kitchen

Energy efficiency and noise

As we are all well aware, refrigerators can be noisy - an unavoidable consequence of requiring electric motors to run the compressors and fans. Adding a chiller to your kitchen where there is already a standard fridge can double this background hum, while a noisy chiller in a living space can quickly become a big irritation.

Energy efficiency and noise go hand-in-hand with wine chillers. Modern engineering has come up with all sorts of solutions to produce low-noise fans and electric motors. But a more basic principle is, the better your wine fridge is at getting rid of the heat it generates, the less the motors will have to work. That also means consuming less electricity.

Whichever wine fridge you opt for, make sure you will be enjoying perfectly chilled fizz long after National Prosecco Day by insuring your unit against damage or mechanical failure. Check out our great appliance policy deals and get a free quote today. 

*The information in this blog is designed to provide helpful information on the subjects discussed. Please seek a professional for expert advice as we can not be held responsible for any damages or negative consequences upon following this information.

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