Steam cooking is no longer the preserve of professional chefs. For many months, 20 minutes was able to test the mid-range consumer oven Electrolux EOC6P67 from the SteamCrisp 700 series on dishes as essential as roast chicken, muffins and margherita pizza. A built-in oven chosen for its reasonable price
its very complete functions since it combines 25% steam and 75% rotating heat over a wide range of temperatures (from 30 to 300°C) and has a very useful integrated cooking probe so as not to take a dish out of the oven overcooked, as we were able to verify on a roast chicken.
A roast chicken in combined steam and rotating heat cooking The ideal for chicken is to obtain very crispy skin, tender thighs and a very tender breast. So of course, we can always follow the advice that Hugo Desnoyer suggested to 20 minutes
last winter: “put the animal in the oven for half an hour at 220°C, time to brown the skin well, a quarter of an hour on one side, a quarter of an hour on the other, then lower the oven at 130°C. Remember to water with a ladle or regularly turn the poultry in its cooking juices, say every half hour for 2h30, 2h45, 3 hours… in fact, as much as you want, emphasizes the artisan butcher, it will not damage not the poultry and it won’t change anything in the cooking…”
With the EOC6P67 oven from the Electrolux SteamCrisp 700 series, the water vapor that is released allows you to baste the skin of the chicken without needing to open the oven to do so. And the built-in probe is useful for checking the doneness of the chicken breast. At 70-72°C, the poultry is cooked through, the breast is tender without being dry. Our test is clear: 80 minutes were enough to remove a 1.8 kg chicken from the oven, perfectly roasted using combined steam and convection cooking set at 170°C and monitored by a probe set at 70°C. “Adding steam helps prevent the dish from drying out during cooking,” explains Bruno Van Der Weijdem, executive chef of the Electrolux Flavor Workshops. And to obtain what we are looking for in poultry: tender and juicy flesh with perfectly crispy skin. »
Steam combined with rotating heat also saves considerable cooking time. “Water carries heat better than air,” emphasizes Eliana Parra, product manager at Electrolux. As a result, this type of cooking uses less energy than a traditional oven. “It’s both more economical and more ecological,” concludes the brand representative.
Crispy-soft muffins, a pizza that only needs to be reheated
What we like in a cake is to have a pretty golden surface and a very soft center. Once again, the combined steam function of the SteamCrisp 700 range oven amazed us: our muffins had a beautiful crust while the center remained supple and airy. The probe, set at 100°C, proved to be a valuable tool, especially during our first tests, because the injection of steam tends to speed up cooking. In the end, our muffins took a combined 40 minutes of baking at 165°C.
We will quickly move on to the fish (tasty and a beautiful pearly color, thanks to the probe set to 52°C), to focus on the pizza. Pay attention to the dedicated function which equips Electrolux ovens, but also those of other brands. It is not suitable for cooking a fresh pizza, but only intended for cooking your frozen pizza or for reheating one from the day before by rehydrating it so that it (almost) regains its original texture and color.
Cooking a homemade margherita pizza using the pizza function is another matter. The cheese and tomato sauce keep releasing the water they receive from the steam, the dough does not cook. Brief; it’s a fiasco. By following the advice of Giuseppe “Peppe” Cutraro, ex-world pizza champion based in Paris, that is to say by raising the temperature of the oven to maximum with fan-forced heat alone, the result is infinitely more conclusive: “Preheat your oven to 300°C, place your pizza in the middle of the grill, if possible on a refractory stone which will have stored the heat, allow ten minutes of cooking for the dough and the tomato sauce, then ten minutes for the cheese, add the basil and it’s ready! ” Indeed. “The pizza function of our ovens is more intended for pizzas to be reheated,” confirms Eliana Parra. For a raw pizza, it is better to follow the advice of your pizza maker. »
* Recommended price 949 euros but it is regularly found on promotion around 700 euros. There are cheaper ovens, from 500 euros, such as those of the SteamBake 600 Series, with a combination of steam reserved for bread and pastries.
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