h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I have an electric fan-assisted oven.

There are two dials. One selects temperature. Fine. I get that.

The other selects function. OK so far.

Function settings are:

- off. Self explanatory.
- grill. Heat the element in the roof, duh. MMmmm... bacon.
- fan assisted oven. For baking and roasting stuff. OK.
- fan only. WTF?

What is the point of that last setting, apart from making you think you've put the oven on and only realising you haven't when you come back half an hour later and realise the er is still bloody cold?

Any ideas?

Fan only is used to defrost frozen food.

Seemingly slower but safer than bunging it in the microwave as it defrosts evenly without spot-cooking.

So says my cooker manual - never used it myself, I bung stuff in the microwave...

Would it work as a dehydrator to dry herbs or pieces of fruit?

>>Would it work as a dehydrator to dry herbs or pieces of fruit?

Yes it would, great for 'sun' drying a glut of home-grown tomatoes.

Deakie beat me to it.

When I bought my last kitchen (I could afford a complete kitchen offer from a proper kitchen fitting company, thanks to a generous severance payoff), a lady phoned up after it had been installed to come and make an appointment about the use of it. I thought she was being a nuisance, but she didn't let up so I arranged for her to come, and I am glad I did. She gave me some really useful tips on how to clean and use and get the best out of all the gadgets.

Defrosting by using the fan-only option in the oven was one of the helpful things I learnt from her. I don't use it often, but it does work exactly as Deakie says - quicker and more evenly effective than the microwave.

I can imagine the drying effect working too. Place your herbs or apple slices between two tea towels and blow a gentle breeze over them. Although a little warmth added might speed things up.

No - Deakie was right. It's not exactly quicker than the microwave, but not much slower, either.

I know it's there for defrosting. But I've always thought it fairly pointless. And it meant that when Sic wanted to bake a cake while I was at work, she had to text me a photo of the knob to check she was using the right setting.

Mol

My oven... the cheapest I could get at the time.. Has a myriad of functions... and I have no clue as to what any of them are, except for the 'full oven', and 'grill' You'd think if they are going to put fancy pictures on the front of the oven, rather than written descriptions, they might at least have the decency to put a description of the pictures in the instruction manual... Mind, I've distroyed the temperature setting dial, so you have no clue as to waht temp its on I guess mine also may have the fan only setting, as some of the unused settings do seem to produce very little cooking heat Oh to have a new shiney oven, ... I can dream

Maybe you could use it to dry a small dog's hair.