Beem Cucinetta Infrared Oven, 1300 Watt

First impressions, this item looks very stylish and should aesthetically compliment most kitchens. Everything on the outside of the box it came in was in German, but I was pleased to see the item was fitted with a UK 3 pin plug. The oven has four cook settings as well as the convector heat setting. The instructions thankfully have a section in English but the functions on the oven itself are written in German. The oven comes with plenty of accessories, everything you need to Roast, Toast, defrost and cook Pizza (a pizza stone included). You need to firmly press the buttons on the front to make them work. I thought the cooker was broken until I realised this. In operation it cooks flawlessly, setting the exact time, setting and temperature it cooks perfectly. Cannot fault that. However the cooling fan sometimes stays on for an inordinate amount of time. Should it still be on two hours after cooking a pizza for 12 minutes? Maybe mine is faulty.

This tiny cooker comes in a very garish box, which makes it look just a little bit dodgy. Having said this, it is well-packed, with all its accessories neatly packed inside. It comes with a pizza stone, roasting tray, drip tray, chip basket, shelf, rotisserie stuff and grill handle. It cooks with infrared, which it does quite well, although I didn't think that it was much quicker than using a conventional oven, certainly not as fast as my fan oven. I found it very easy to use, and didn't really need to use the interaction booklet. There are several different settings on this oven including toast, convection, defrost, roast and rotisserie. All are in German, but it's not too much of a problem to check which is which in the instruction booklet. You can then set the timer, and choose your temperature, if necessary. I wanted this oven mainly to use for baking, and in particular for bread. Unfortunately, this isn't really possible as the oven cavity is too small. It would be useful for things that do not rise very much, although it would have to be done in very small quantities as it is not very wide either. I can just about fit a six hole muffin tin in there. I just cannot see how they manage to spit roast a chicken in there, and I don't have one at the moment to test it with either... The exterior of the oven gets extremely hot during use - much hotter than my convection microwave does. My main concern about this oven though, is that it seems to be very unstable. It has a pull-down door which is quite heavy in comparison to the rest of the oven. With the door open, it is just incredibly easy to tip this over. No matter how careful you are, it seems like a terrible accident waiting to happen. It would be all to easy to forget and rest the hot dish on the door.