Our Place, the Los Angeles-based cookware brand, has become known for its beautifully designed and innovative products. From the Always Pan through to the more recently-released Always Pan Pro, every item the company has released aims to keep clutter out of the kitchen and allow you plenty of versatility. You may have seen on social media, Our Place’s latest release the Wonder Oven. The compact countertop appliance is a 6-in-1 air fryer and oven with steam infusion, and as you’d expect it comes in a variety of eye-catching colours.
Up until this point in time, I’ve been very resistant to air fryers. I’m not sure whether I thought they were a passing trend or maybe my love of traditional cooking clouded my judgement, but when Our Place sent us their Wonder Oven to review I decided it was time to see if my hang-ups had been right. After unpacking the Wonder Oven and setting it up on my countertop, I was immediately impressed by the sleek design. It’s so cute to look at and friends have actually commented that it looks like a retro toy oven.
The Wonder Oven features three dials on the front along with a door featuring a window panel so you can keep your eye on your cooking. The first dial is to set the temperature, the second is to select your cooking mode – Air Fry, Bake, Grill, Reheat, Roast and Toast – and the third is a timer. Before putting any food in the Wonder Oven, you need to pre-heat it and this is done in a couple of minutes. All you need to do is select your temperature and your cooking mode, then crank the timer dial to a couple of minutes. The Wonder Oven light comes on and when the timer runs out, it dings to let you know.
Inside the Wonder Oven there is a wire rack, a bake pan, an air fryer basket and a crumb tray. It’s worth noting that you can purchase additional bake pans and air fryer baskets if you want to make more food than a single one of those will allow you to. When you’re not using the Wonder Oven, even with an additional bake pan and air fryer basket, you can store everything inside.
I’ve spent the last few weeks rigorously testing the Wonder Oven and its six modes, and I can safely say I’m a fan. I’d seen in the adverts for the appliance that you can cook a 2 kilogram chicken, much quicker than a standard oven, so I thought that was the best place to start. Starting off with the Roast mode, and later switching to Bake, the chicken was cooked through within 50 minutes. That’s around 30 minutes quicker than my standard fan oven. Even better, the chicken was juicy and succulent, and it didn’t dry out the way that it can do in a standard oven. I was concerned that sitting the chicken in the shallow bake pan would result in a mess to clean up after cooking but it didn’t – the bake pan held all the juices so I could add them to my gravy.
Next up I tried the Toast and Grill modes. Making Toast was remarkably quick and the end result is a much crispier toast than you’d get from a toaster. I’d recommended turning the toast over half way through just to ensure an even toasting, but within 2-3 minutes I had perfectly crunchy toast to enjoy. In Grill mode I decided to make cheese on toast, and again like the Toast mode, it made a very crunchy snack in a much quicker time than using a standard grill.
The Air Fryer component took me a little getting used to. Some recipes I’d seen didn’t seem to work well with the Wonder Oven. For example my first attempt at chips resulted in raw chips that weren’t very crispy. After a bit of trial and error, I cracked it and it’s true what they say – air fryers produce the crispiest food known to man. I’ve used the Air Fryer mode to make roasted parsnips, chips, has browns and tofu, and honestly if I don’t have to use my standard oven again I’m not sure I’d mind. All of the things I tried cooked much quicker and resulted in a healthier but just as satisfying meal.
I think the best thing I’ve made so far in the Air Fryer is gluten free brownies. I didn’t expect them to work, and be particularly good once they were baked, but my brownies were the fudgiest I’ve ever made. They were so good I made a second batch and as I type up this review, I’m contemplating making more.
One of my favourite aspects of the Wonder Oven is the reheat feature. Using the water inlet on the top of the Wonder Oven, you can infuse steam while your food reheats. This makes things like leftover pizza taste a lot fresher once it’s reheated unlike when you heat it up in a microwave. I should point out the steam infuser can be used to keep meat and bread moist too in the appliance’s other modes.
After spending a few weeks testing the Wonder Oven, I’m seriously impressed. It does more than your standard Air Fryer and it’s incredibly versatile. If you live on your own or with one other person, there’s plenty of capacity to make most of your meals without having to turn on your standard oven. Add to that how easy it is to keep clean and maintain, and the Wonder Oven is the kind of kitchen gadget everyone should have. Don’t let its compact size fool you – the Wonder Oven is seriously powerful and you can fit a lot more in there than you might expect.
Released by: Our Place Buy the Our Place Wonder Oven now
