We got a new stove and refrigerator about a week ago, well, over a week ago, not this past Friday, the previous Friday.
We had icky ones that we got with our house when it was new at the end of 1997. GE bottom line sort of stove, and a decent Kitchen Aide refrigerator, which didn’t really stay too nice over the years, and was just TOO SMALL for a family that grew and grew, and lives further out from stores that we shop than is useful for such a way as we live with a small refrigerator. It wasn’t really “small” mind you, just a normal refrigerator.
A few years ago, at some point, we got a secondary refrigerator, it was a used one that a family was getting rid of because of renovation, it still worked alright, looked older than our Kitchen Aide, or as old, but offered us a bit more room, and so we put the KA one in the garage and put the Kenmore in the kitchen. We had two refrigerators and that was better. But the Kenmore started falling apart here and there, and the KA seals went bad, so with recent $income$ we upgraded, as we are upgrading the whole kitchen piecemeal.
The stove situation is that the old one was horrible. It wasn’t level, and DH just couldn’t get it level, trying multiple times. The oven was overhot and we couldn’t really nicely bake anything, we just lived with it. It was a coil sort of cooktop, and the oven was large enough to roast a turkey, and then the bottom was a storage drawer, which was never a good place to store pans of any kind, you had to clean them to use them, icky!
Anyhow it was just a blah, nothing stove, and I used it for over 10 years. Finally, we upgraded.
Electrolux recently started marketing super duper kitchen products in the USA and we fell into love with them when we stumbled over a display at a Lowe’s store in May 2008.
The products are pricier than other brands, but what they offer is so worth it, they look nice, work even better, and offer such room for storage in frige on the shelves, and have great lighting and digital temperature controls … and the stove is huge inside, and I have a smaller oven beneath, and there is such versatile-ness in the system. The cooktop is ceramic glass … what an UPGRADE!
The oven has multiple choices in how to cook something, and contains convection features.
I made a lovely loaf of bread yesterday. I used the Proof function to rise the dough, then punched it (the dough) down and formed a loaf, put that in a bread pan, and put it back into the oven for an hour (with a damp towel over the top of the bread dough) with the oven now off. The bread rose super in that hour (I took it out near the end of that hour and slashed the top then put an egg wash on top) then I turned on the convection oven and let it bake. It baked well, even browning, no split, blow-out points to the loaf.
The thing about that is, the oven can be a proofing environment which makes the bread so ready to rise and bake nicely, and then the convection evenly bakes … ah, it’s lovely.
I’m using the Perfect Turkey function today to roast a 4-5 lb. chicken. A Probe function is part of that, and when the probe is used, when the temperature of the poultry is reached, the oven turns “off”, and goes to a “Warm” setting. The roasting is convection roasting, of course. (It worked wonderfully, the chicken is golden where it should be, and to the right cooking temperature, I checked it with a separate meat thermometer, an instant type. Also the juices run clear, the chicken is appearing done just right inside and out.) We will have it for dinner later, with chicken gravy, rice, and peas. I’ll just serve it “warm” or room temp, refrigerating it until just a bit before dinner.
When our stove was delievered I looked through the documention, and couldn’t find the Probe device. We called Best Buy (where we purchased the products) and they weren’t sure that one was supposed to come with it, but of course, we said, we buy a TOP OF THE LINE product and it doesn’t come with a PROBE to use that is detailed in our manual as important to use only the one supplied by the company … yeah, right.
So they called Electrolux and then called back for our shipping information to give to Electrolux. A week later, it arrived, and now I’m finally able to use it. (Yes, it should have been delivered with the stove.)
Our Stove: (Stainless Steel)
30″ Electric Freestanding Range
with Wave-Touchâ„¢ Controls
EW30EF65GS
Bought at Best Buy for less than MSRP … (http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?id=1196469743710&type=product)
Manufacturer’s Web Page: http://www.electroluxappliances.com/node31.aspx?categoryid=1006&productid=18087
Our Refrigerator: (Stainless Steel)
Standard-Depth Side-By-Side
Refrigerator with Wave-Touchâ„¢
Controls
EW26SS65GS
Bought at Best Buy for less than MSRP … (http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=8809355&type=product&id=1206142367143)
Manufacturer’s Web Page: http://www.electroluxappliances.com/node31.aspx?categoryid=1013&productid=18124