Just as the dot-com boom created some unusual corporate mergers, today’s appliance landscape includes a few surprising functional combinations.
Whirlpool’s Polara range can refrigerate food, while General Electric’s Arctica refrigerator can heat food to speed thawing. OK, it may not be AOL buying Time-Warner, but you get the idea.
Now from General Electric comes the Trivection line of ovens, combining traditional, convection and microwave cooking capabilities all into a single high-tech unit.
As a result, the company says the ovens can cook three to five times faster than a traditional oven — just in time for the holiday cooking crunch.
On first blush, the Trivection ovens might appear to be another attempt to simply stick multiple functions onto a single box — the Swiss Army Knife theory of marketing.
Not the case here. Trivection ovens are less about multi-tasking than they are about trying to apply multiple cooking methods to making that next meatloaf or apple pie.
There have been additional new “speed cooking” technologies that have popped up in recent years. Most have been variations on the use of halogen light bulbs to cook quickly without some of the traditional drawbacks of microwaves.
While the halogen units have found a niche market, they have limited cooking capacity and require yet another dedicated spot on the kitchen counter.
Trivection ovens are aimed at replacing full-sized ranges or in-wall units. They ship in standard sizes, requiring no custom cutouts or unusual electrical supplies.
“The design has three cooking methods that work in concert — a traditional bake/broil, convection cooking and a low-power microwave `assist’ capability. There is an additional 2,500-watt convection heating element and fan which rotates in two directions, making a big difference in the evenness of the cooking,” said Leanne Dugan, general manager for General Electric Cooking Products.
“Since the fan moves the air in multiple directions, you don’t have to open the oven to turn dishes anymore.”
While the Trivection ovens do utilize microwaves in cooking, they are not intended to serve the same role as your countertop microwave.
You can’t use it to make popcorn or reheat coffee, but you can leave a forgotten fork in the oven without fearing fireworks.
The microwave portion was created to be of low enough power to avoid the usual problems with metal, but still strong enough to help speed the cooking process.
In addition, Dugan says the microwave is unique in that it operates in a load-independent manner.
That means that, unlike traditional microwaves, it will cook two baked potatoes with the same efficiency as it would four baked potatoes.
“We knew it would be very important to make sure people could use their current cookware with Trivection, as well as their current recipes. We didn’t want people to think this would require any kind of change in terms of how they like to cook,” Dugan said.
Part of that effort to be as user-friendly as possible included the development of Trivection’s Autorecipe Conversion system.
Using algorithms that automatically calculate optimum cooking methods, Autorecipe lets you enter the kind of dish you’re making and the traditional cooking temperature and time.
It then decides how to best combine conventional, convection and microwave energy to cook the meal, and tells you how long it will take.
“Let’s say you want to make mom’s meatloaf, so you punch in `meat’ at 350 degrees for one hour, which is what the recipe calls for. Autorecipe then calculates how to cook it and shows you that the normal hour cooking time is now 30 minutes.” Dugan said. “There are nine different food type settings such as meat, fish, dough, etc.”
The Trivection line of ovens began shipping Oct. 1 and retails for about $2,400 to $3,700 depending on the model.
They are available in single- or double-wall configurations, as well as slide-in range units. For additional information visit www.geappliances.com.
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Don Hunt and Brian Edwards write about technology related to buying, renting and fixing homes. Write The High-Tech Home, Chicago Tribune, New Homes section, 435 N. Michigan Ave., 4th Floor, Chicago, IL 60611.
