That’s what the cookers in both our UK houses looked like. One was on wheels and I could roll it out of the way!
Newish Cooker - Need Advice
- Thread starter Naillig
- Start date
CookieMonster
Veteran
if the numbers are not meaningless, I have to ask . . . is the coil black/cold or red/glowing or some state in between?
on any given number, does it go from red hot to cold black sooner? later?
at a higher temp? or a lower temp?
if "broil" function alternates between glowing red and cold black on some mysterious undefined schedule . . .
how does one know how to cook anything under direct overhead really hot heat?
I'm not trying to be an axx - but certain cooking methods imply certain conditions - and "broiling" with an element that turns off/on at some undefined situation . . . does not work for me.
x minutes under a always on broiler does not linearly correlate to X+undefined Z minutes of an off/on broiler heat source.
on any given number, does it go from red hot to cold black sooner? later?
at a higher temp? or a lower temp?
if "broil" function alternates between glowing red and cold black on some mysterious undefined schedule . . .
how does one know how to cook anything under direct overhead really hot heat?
I'm not trying to be an axx - but certain cooking methods imply certain conditions - and "broiling" with an element that turns off/on at some undefined situation . . . does not work for me.
x minutes under a always on broiler does not linearly correlate to X+undefined Z minutes of an off/on broiler heat source.
My answer is no. Just high or low, but I'd imagine SatNavSaysStraightOn is offering you the best advice, Low, medium low, medium, etc. ,
unless there are 9 or 10 numbers (in which case, it's probably the British " gas mark" register).
If you're not sure about how to use it, I'd just give it a try out. Put it on "1" and see what happens to a piece of bread. Move it up to "2", see what happens.
As my neighbour Mrs Ross used to say:
Push it down the hill, ducky love, see if the wheels fall off".
- Joined
- 11 Oct 2012
- Local time
- 2:16 PM
- Messages
- 20,685
- Location
- SE Australia
- Website
- www.satnavsaysstraighton.com
I honestly don't know what broil is. here the grill element just gets hotter or colder depending on the number you give it ranging from 1 as black to whatever the maximum the manufacturer has chosen which will get orange in colour. Some do 1 half of the elements so you can just heat up 2 pieces of cheese on toast, and will have another setting for both sides of the grill (so split elements). They vary in heat. The numbers are manufacturer-specific and equate to very low, low up to very hot. How many they have depends on the manufacturer and how expensive the model is. Rather like a vehicle with an x-speed gearbox... it can have 2 speeds (some automatics are only 2-speed autos!) or it can have 6-speeds. they are numbered 1-2 or 1-6 accordingly. What that relates to in temperature is exactly the same concept as to how fast that gear goes - it depends on the engine and the manufacturer.... nothing complicated about it and they do not tally with gas mark numbers at all.
I have had a gas oven that only had a max temp of gas mark 5.... How anyone cooked anything in it was beyond me because it was always cold-medium warm and never anything else. Its grill was the more useful than its oven.
'Broil is the American word for what in the UK we call 'grill' (meaning grill with an overhead heat).
As has been said its likely the numbers on the cooker in question are simply crude indicators of increasing temperatures. My toaster has similar numbers. 1 is the coolest temperature and 5 (or whatever) is the highest.