Cannon CH60ETC

I hate eye level grills! They seem to be designed purely to spit hot fat in your eyes. Once those big and round Walls Sausages go under you better make sure you have pricked them well or you going to lose your ‘meat pies’ mate! Where possible the grill should be ‘crown jewels’ level, end of! I do most of the grilling food in the microwave now because of that.

Gas ovens are too expensive to run now and so never a consideration for our new cooker and if I’m going to be suffocated from carbon monoxide build up it’s still going to be because of our old boiler. You can also leave electric oven doors open in the winter after cooking to heat up the kitchen lovely! If you live in a tower or apartment block you can heat your whole flat that way!

So, Cannon make cookers? It was one we had to ‘snap up’ at this price! See what I’ve done there? I will admit we didn’t pay anywhere near the asking price at six hundred bucks and got a display model through Laskys, around 270 bucks. They wouldn’t deliver it though. I would not recommend buying anything on tick from this company only if you have to, outrageous interest rates on offer. We bought ours by slamming cash down on the desk. In fact it’s always asking if you can buy window products that are not pre-packed and have been used but still pretty new models, which is the case here.

This one has all the bits you expect with a feet level oven and a chest level grill, like I said, eye level grills a bloody nightmare. The grill heats up quickly and the filaments well protected by bars so you don’t burn your hands and fingers and doubles up as a small oven. The fat collecting tray could be deeper and it’s still a mystery what we are supposed to do with used fat as far as the new recycling rules go. I tend to pour it over the compost like treacle to flavour it for the hedgehogs and foxes.

The main fan oven heats up nice although you should always go by your judgement when it’s hot enough and not those instructions so much on the back of food packets. The hob is at a sensible level for adults although higher than normal and so if you have small kids the dangers are obvious and pans can easily be pulled off, not enough of these modern cookers having some sort of safety rail to stop that. As always designers and retailers want everything to look pretty as they know it sells better that way. When you have small kids you have a little gate at the top of their stairs and so you should have a safe cooker. You can’t cut health & safety corners in the kitchen. Our car safety seats have to be very strict to European law yet no law on safe cookers?

The ceramic hob heats up quickly and feels more power efficient that way. Nothing worse than waiting for ever for your pasta to cook because it took ten minutes to boil. The grill is also a small fan oven with a glass door so you can keep an eye on things without losing that eye. You will burn your hand if you touch anything hot on the plat or grill though. You will be amazed how stupid consumers think we are and what diagrams they think we need to stop us doing just that. Ceramic hobs do keep the surrounding areas cooler though than traditional electric plate’s and gas rings though.

The supplied trays and mesh are fine for your grilling and cooking needs and the handles to pull them out reasonably sturdy. Again you need to trust these guys not to uncouple and splash your lower half with hot fat when the tray falls off the handle. The oven claims to have self clearing linings but we will wait and see on that one. A woman does the job better, of course. Cookers ALWAYS need a good clean and because it’s a horrid job we don’t do it enough. Listen to your old mum on that one. The grill try handles are detachable and at times it’s like trying to hook the caravan up to the car to get these handles to lock in, again all to do with aesthetics. The knobs and buttons to turn things on and off and set timers etc are big and sensible and so neatly practical. You will need to wire this in directly to the cooker switch though and so not plug and play like most things in life. If its your FIRST electric cooker read the instructions.

I would not recommend a long warranty of over three years as they are generally a rip off and where salesmen and women earn their real commission. You are buying something practical and so it doesn’t need to be pretty or expensive but just cook your food. We did it with wood and fire to get where we are today so it can’t be that hard. There are not that many component parts to a cooker and as its very sturdy if there is a fault its normal a small fuse or you haven’t cleaned it enough.

So summing up we have had no problems yet and got a good deal shopping around and perhaps wise to have at least one year’s warranty. DO YOUR MEASURMENTS as cooker don’t squeeze into tight gaps and make sure the plug point will stretch to the wires. Cooker flexes are not standard length and need to be wired in correctly. Also measure your doorways as you can lift and turn heavy duty kitchen ware to get through side doors. This model is 60cms wide and not all kitchen doors are.