An oven is a great asset for your manufactured home. This is a great way to take your cooking experience to the next level and make your kitchen very appealing and modern.
It can be used for cooking and to warm food. It is a fast way of getting your food ready. It saves a lot of your time.
Besides, you don’t get dirty working with ovens in the kitchen. This is one of those things that will enhance efficiency and a satisfying cooking experience.
Should You Leave The Oven On When You’re Not Home?
As a safety measure, always switch off your oven (and range) when you are not at home. Safety concerns should be your primary cooking tip. If you have just installed an oven in your manufactured home, you must be asking yourself a lot of questions on how you can make the best out of that asset. Switching your oven off when you are not at home not only preserves your fuel but also serves as a safety measure against potential fires. Say you have kids or pets at home and they unsuspectingly stray into the kitchen. They might temper with the oven and cause fires.
Keep reading this guide to explore more facts, safety concerns, and more fascinating insights on ovens.
How Do Ovens Cook Food?
There are two classes of ovens:
- gas
- electric
Knowing how each operates in cooking your food is a sure way to enhance the safety of your house. Improper handling of these modern devices can cause massive destruction of property.
Dozens of cases are reported every year of houses set up in flames by careless handling of household cooking devices like ovens.
Know how to operate them well and avoid these preventable errors in your manufactured home.
1. Gas Ovens
A gas oven, as the name suggests, operates by burning the gas fuel to warm a cooking compartment directly. Some are designed so that the heating gas warms the heating element.
To ignite the gas supply, you use an electric lighter from one or more burner units. This automatically burn the air in the oven compartment to a suitable temperature that is set in the thermostat.
For gas ovens, there are two major classes:
- the ones that use heating elements like strips of metal at the bottom and top of the oven
- and those that directly heat the heating compartment.
For both categories, gas ovens work with the principle of thermal radiation.
Thermal radiation can occur either through baking or broiling.
The former heats the food from below while the latter heats directly above the food. Generally, indirect heat is used in compartments. On the contrary, elements heat in a specific direction.
2. Electric Ovens
Electric ovens are available in two categories
- convection
- thermal
There are a convection electric oven and one that operates on standard thermal radiation.
Thermal
Thermal electric ovens use the same working principle as gas ovens with metal elements. The difference, of course, is that this model uses electricity as an energy source.
There are a series of coiled wires in this design where the current passes through releasing radiation that heats the food to the designed temperature.
Convection
A convection oven has a similar construction as a thermal radiation cooker.
The major difference is that it has an air-circulating fan often installed at the front part of the cooker.
It is positioned strategically at the oven cavity.
As you might guess, this fan helps in distributing the radiation inside the oven from the heating elements.
This results in a balanced cooking environment since heat is spread faster and uniformly.
Six Oven Safety Concerns
As we had mentioned earlier, ovens can be dangerous in our homes if they are not handled properly. They can cause fires that might jeopardize the safety of the occupants of the room.
Not to mention the massive destruction fires might cause. The truth is that there is always a possibility of it happening especially if the oven is handled carelessly.
Why not take these preventive measures and enjoy a worthwhile experience in your new home, free from any threats and fears.
We have compiled a comprehensive list of proper ways to handle your oven and avoid fire threats. Most ovens come with specific instructions regarding their operation and safety measures.
They are very important as well and you always need to spend some time skimming through them. It is worth doing.
Just like the manuals, we are given when purchasing other items such as smartphones, TVs name them.
1. Be Careful With Oven’s Self-Cleaner Mode
This is a mode that uses heat to eradicate splatters and spills.
While it is very helpful in keeping the oven clean, the self-cleaning mode can be a fire hazard.
Make sure all greases and food particles in the oven are wiped away before setting the self-cleaning mode.
Otherwise, you’ll play with fire. The moment you realize it, it might be too late and you will hate yourself for carelessly handling your oven.
Always ensure that the oven is clean before using the oven’s self-cleaning mode.
2. Play With The Ovens Hot Spots
All ovens, be it electric or gas models, have hot spots. Some spots are hotter than others.
This might not be a critical safety concern but it ensures that your food is properly cooked and avoids overheating and burning of your bread or whatever is in the oven.
Well, there is no particular trick for identifying the hot spots.
A toast trick has been devised where you set the bread in a grid pattern over the oven rack and set the temperature of 350˚C.
You can then notice the spot where the bread toasts very fast and consider that a hot spot.
3. Don’t Let Your Child And Pets Stray Around The Oven
Children and pets in your manufactured home should be kept away from the oven.
You can acquire baby gates to keep children and pests at bay. This will guarantee their safety.
There have been cases of children and pets unsuspectingly getting burnt by ovens.
You don’t want to encounter such situations in your manufactured home.
There are many child and pet safety products available today to keep your children and pets safe at home.
Children can be very playful and can inadvertently turn on the ovens without your knowledge.
If you are using a gas oven, these scenarios can cause gas leaks. Gas leaks have been known to cause fires.
Should you smell any leaks, keep the doors and windows open until it has all diffused away.
As such, you need to make sure that knock covers and strap locks are installed for your ovens.
4. Acquire A Fire Extinguisher
For ovens, you might consider it less important to have a fire extinguisher nearby.
In case your oven causes fire, only then will you realize its importance. Armor your kitchen with a fire extinguisher.
This is always recommended even for other cookers. Your extinguisher will enable you to put out fires before they become large scale.
5. Set Up Fire Alarms In Your Manufactured Home
Sometimes, you might have a very busy day and in the event of rushing out, you may forget to switch off your often.
If fire cases ensue, a fire alarm will safeguard your property since it signals you for an urgent response.
So make sure your manufactured home is monitored with a home security system and that involves setting up a fire alarm.
It will always give you peace of mind. Modern systems are designed with unique smoke detectors and other detectors for this purpose.
6. Cook With Care
- It is always important to check and ensure that your oven hood is properly installed.
- Safety in the kitchen is all-around and it starts with what you put on for the task.
- Loose clothing and long hair should also be watched while working with the ovens in the kitchen.
- It is recommended to work with non-slip footwear.
- Do not splash hot oil.
- As we had mentioned earlier, keep the oven clean since food particles and grease in the oven can ignite fires.
Two Important Things to Note about Ovens
1. Suitably Position The Oven Rack
Heat principally rises. The bottom of your oven is where the heat comes from making the top of it the hottest part. The bottom of the oven will also harbor a lot of heat.
If you set the oven rack at the bottom part, the bottom of the food will get crispier. It is, therefore, recommended to set the rack in the midst to ensure optimum heating.
This is a sweet spot to cook a delicious meal.
2. Routinely Check Your Gasket
A gasket is a spongy material that helps to seal the oven’s door and keep all heat inside it.
How do you notice a faulty gasket?
Well, if the door of your oven is leaking heat, collecting moisture, and maintaining an imbalance in temperature that means it is faulty.
You will have to replace it for optimum heating. It is cheap.
Wrapping Up
Your cooking experience has to be excellent in your manufactured home.
With the right oven, you can make it a wonderful experience.
You need to pay close attention to safety concerns and avoid cases of fire and injuries. Endeavor to check on your oven thoroughly and have great fun using it.
