What is a Combi-Oven?!

They arrived to the Professional cookery scene in the late 1970s but still many chefs are not familiar with them. They are perceived as expensive and quite different from more traditional ovens. So what is so special about combination ovens?

The basic difference between cooking with a conventional oven and a combination oven is humidity. The unique feature however, is their flexibility and their ability to control humidity levels.

Let’s start from the beginning.

Some foods want to be steamed – vegetables, rice – sometimes you just want to steam them and to do so you can use a steamer. But the combi oven can also do this.

Some foods want dry heat – imagine a pizza in a wood fired oven. That is dry heat, which is replicated by conventional fan assisted ovens. The combi oven can do this too.

However, sometimes, a dry heat can literally dry out the food you’re trying to cook and the steam, while fast, can make food soggy. So, you might want a combination of dry and humid heat: remember how chefs used to place a pan of water under their bread to keep the oven humid during the cooking process?

Well, the combi oven is a specialist at this. With a combi oven you can control the levels of humidity to exactly the levels required for every dish, to give your entire menu a perfect finish.

In short, the beautiful thing about having a combi oven is that you don’t need any other oven.It can cook dry, humid or a perfect combination of the two.

Combination Ovens can be fuelled by electricity or gas, can be table top or roll-in, with ordinary pull-out doors or disappearing doors, traditional or pass-through. Also available in slim or mini version.