Halogen Oven

This is my first attempt to the use of a Halogen Oven for cooking. My verdict? I just love it!

Just right before Chinese New Year, my mom had been hinting on an oven. I went online to find an oven, but none of them seemed to bring me much delight, until I saw this "halogen oven" thing. It was on sale, and so I bought it. No harm trying, since it was actually lesser than MYR100.

Throughout the Chinese New Year holidays, I did not cook anything, but I received it just shortly before the holidays set in. I opened up the case, and not really knowing what to expect. And it looked just like how the photo showed it.

I didn't know what to do. Read the operations manual and they were all descriptions and guidance for meat cooking. As everyone knows by now, my lunch is mostly vegetarian. So, I went online to look for guidance.

However, seems like all the online guides to the duration and temperature were a bit too long and too higher. I don't want to overcook my veggies because I didn't want to kill the vitamins and to make them veggies turn yellow. So, this morning, I made my own arbitrary settings at 180 deg Celsius for 5 minutes of cooking on a low rack.

The preparation works were last night, though. Chopped the carrots to bite-size and the Chinese mustards too. Added some oil, because I worried about burning the veggies and getting their burnt parts stuck to the square cake pan that I use for the cooking. Not too sure if I can use the stainless steel plates at home, so this square cake pan is the safest that I dared to use anyway. Added some salt and soy sauce too, because I didn't like oil by itself, tastes weird.

When I turned on the halogen oven, the bright light of the oven shone so brightly at the corner of my tiny kitchen, giving me the feelings of a UFO doing some repair works in there. Since it was on a timer, I left for the shower instead of standing there and waiting for it.

The result was pretty amazing! As you can see, my veggies were not burnt, they did not turn yellow yet and the crunchiness of the carrots remained with its sweetness. Lovely!

With this newfound kitchen helper, I guess I will be more adventurous in my next lunch cooking. Thinking of some lean meat food stuff, since I am already at the stage 2 of my slim-down plans. I will share with you the stages of my slim-down programme in other blog articles, because they can be pretty elaborate.