Sorry if I am not returning reads and rates but I have no way of telling who has rated my reviews no...
Sorry if I am not returning reads and rates but I have no way of telling who has rated my reviews now despite the fact that Ciao says it is possible!
Member since:21.10.2000
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We have recently bought a new house - well it is new to us anyway! It is actually the slate mine managers cottage on The Great Orme in Llandudno and it was built in 1896. The cottage itself is in excellent condition as the previous owner had really looked after it well, but he did take his cooker with him when he left.
Naturally then our first task was to find a 60cm cooker to fit in the gap in the kitchen. Luckily this is a standard size for a slot in cooker, although I did take my tape measure with me when we went shopping just in case. It also had to be electric as the gas in the cottage does not extend to the kitchen and as I had cooked on an electric cooker in our previous house this was fine.
Initially we tried various big stores in town, Curry's, Comet etc., but I wasn't particularly happy with their prices or the attitude of the sales staff so we searched on line for the cooker we wanted.
Dave, my husband, was doing the searching for us and found the cooker we wanted at a good price on the Electrical Discount UK site. This was where we had ordered his mother's cooker from so we knew they were reliable.
We ordered the cooker but were informed that it wasn't in stock. We enquired about a couple more but only to be told that they were out of stock too, so in the end we gave the staff at Electrical Discount UK our specifications and asked what they had in stock. So in effect they chose our cooker for us!
The one that they offered us was the Beko DVC665 at a price of £324.98 with free standard delivery. We both took a look at the web site and checked that the specifications were what we wanted and it looked great so we said yes.
Luckily the colour of the cooker was white as the built in microwave in the new kitchen is white and it would match nicely. It was the standard 60cm wide so that was OK too.
The next thing we looked at was the energy efficiency as we wanted it to be as efficient as possible and both ovens are a B rating so not as good as an A obviously but good enough.
The cooker was delivered on time and fitted by our electrician. Incidentally there are adjustable feet on the bottom of the cooker to ensure that the whole thing is level when it is installed. So the saucepans won't be sliding off then!
Now for the worst bit and the smell! To prepare the cooker for use the manufacturing chemicals need to be 'burnt off'. This involves setting the hotplates to the mid position and leaving for 8 minutes, setting the top oven / grill to 200 degrees and leaving for 15 minutes with the door open and a further 15 minutes with it shut and setting the bottom oven to 200 degrees and leaving it with the door shut for 15 minutes. The smell of this process is awful! In fact in the instructions there is a warning to asthmatic sufferers about it! Luckily the day it was fitted was a lovely sunny, fairly warm day so we were working outside in the garden and could leave the doors and windows open for ventilation as suggested. The smell did wear off and disperse fairly quickly so it wasn't so bad after all.
I will just say at this point that the instructions that came with the cooker are all in English so you don't have to search through a huge book of foreign languages to get to the one you want! The booklet is well laid out and the instructions are very clear with lots of diagrams to help explain things such as setting the clock etc.
The cooker consists of the following features working form the top down:
Four Rapidlite ceramic cooking rings with 'hot hob' warning lights so that you know if any of the rings are switched on
The control panel with six dials, one for each hob ring and one each for the two ovens There is also an LED clock in the centre of the control panel
The cooker comes with three shelves, one of which fits in the top oven either for cooking or to hold the grill pan depending on where you put it and the other two are for the bottom oven. There are also a grill pan and a roasting tray, which is really useful for keeping things warm in if you have to grill more than the grill pan will hold in one go. There is a detachable handle for the grill pan, which I must admit I never use. I prefer to just catch hold of the grill pan with oven gloves.
The ovens, grill and hob all warm up to their full heat very quickly, which is all part of the high energy efficiency I guess.
The hob rings are at their most efficient if you use the size of saucepan which match the diameter of the hob ring. The saucepans to use with this appliance need to be steel or heat resistant glass pots. You must not use saucepans with concave or convex bottoms and aluminum bottomed pans will cause the ceramic surface to deteriorate over time.
The fan assisted oven is the better of the two ovens and it is what I am used to using. The heat circulates evenly to the whole of the oven making less cooking time needed than in a convection oven.
The clock on the cooker incorporates a timer which can be set for anything up to 23 hours and 59 minutes! I can't imagine cooking anything for quite that long though! Obviously it does not necessarily have to be used to remind you of something cooking. It could be set to remind you to do anything really.
There is also a programmable timer which can either be set as a 'cook period' which will cook the food for a pre set time and then switch off, or you can set it to start and stop at pres set times. This way you could put a meal in the oven and leave it to switch on and cook so that it would be ready for you when you got home from work for example. I haven't yet had the need to use this facility on this cooker but I used to use it a lot on my previous cooker for getting jacket potatoes ready to come home to.
The leaflet that comes with the cooker gives comprehensive instructions on cleaning each individual part of the appliance. Now there's a job I love - not! Really it is just common sense, wipe the surfaces when they have been used and keep it clean as you go along then it won't be a big job to do.
The cooker is guaranteed for a period of 12 months against faulty materials or defective parts but obviously not if it has been misused.
There is also a list of do's and don'ts which are all common sense but my favourite was don't sit on the cooker! Surely it's the washing machine in spin cycle that you sit on isn't it?
Seriously though I am very impressed with my new purchase and hope that it will revive my interest in cooking!
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