Test of the BOMANN MBG 1248 CB Mini Oven: the big baking giant

A small oven is sometimes a necessary thing. In summer cottage, in small-sized kitchen – everywhere where it is impossible to put a usual oven but you want to enjoy a crispy grilled chicken, golden fish, pies, melting hot sandwiches or pizza… Today we test mini oven of a leading German manufacturer – Bomann Company, which products were many times awarded with German “Quality Symbol” Stiftung Warentest. We think that testing in the American kitchen is no less difficult task.

Advantages: convection, top and bottom heat, quartz heating elements, rotisserie, very even cooking in different modes, easy operation, large temperature range, safety.

Disadvantages: No oven light.

Technical Data

Mini oven with grill and convection

POWER: Maximum power consumption of 1600 watts.

VOLUME: 26 l.

ACTIVITIES: baking meat, poultry, fish, baked products, toast, pizza, hot sandwiches, drying at 50 ⁰C, simmering at 50-100°C.

HEATING MODES: Top and bottom quartz grill solo or combined .

CONTROL: rotary knobs: timer for up to 60 minutes, temperature 50-250 ⁰C , heating mode selection rotary knob, light indicator.

Constructions: insulated metal body, nonheated door handle, top-down opening door with a large glass window, top and two bottom quartz elements, built-in fan for convection, overheat protection.

ACCESSORIES: spit with holding devices for frying food, grid, enameled tray, catch tray for grease and crumbs, spit handle, spit handle.

CARING: self-cleaning inner lining.

COLOR: white.

DIMENSIONS: 380x510x330 mm.

Price: 3 900 Dollars.

Test #1: evaluate the dimensions

Exterior: The oven fits easily on a standard 50 cm wide kitchen countertop. Inside: a chicken weighing about 2 kg was easily placed on the spit, and on the tray below we poured sliced potatoes to bake it.

Test no 2: chicken, how do you figure??

Since the oven gives you the possibility to roast poultry or any other meat on a spit, we decided to use it. We advise not to disregard the manufacturer’s recommendation to tie the carcass with a cooking thread: in this way, rotating the chicken will not catch the heater wings and legs. We did not experience any difficulties with cooking the grilled chicken: we put garlic on it, put it on the spit, fastened the clamps on both sides, “tied” it, put the spit in the oven, put a tray down for the fat, on which during cooking we threw the potatoes.

You chose the high heat if you use a rotisserie, only this option is possible , the temperature – 200 ⁰C, the cooking time – 60 minutes. At the end of this time we added another 30 minutes and increased the temperature to 250 ⁰C for crust formation. The result: Perfectly evenly grilled chicken with crispy crust and succulent potatoes on the side.

Test #3: patties take minutes

Of course, much depends on the capacity of the oven. Before shaping patties we take ready-made yeast dough, and the filling can be anything, in our case – cabbage with egg , we put it to heat: time -5 minutes, temperature 150 ⁰C. We made our first batch of patties in 5 minutes the seemingly small tray holds as many as 12 pieces !

We raised the temperature to 180°C and the time was increased to 15 minutes. This was enough to bake the products evenly of course, thanks to the double-line heating and convection . I must say that in less than an hour we made 3 trays of patties – 36 pieces!

Test №4. Ease of use and safety

The kit includes handles for the tray and for the spit. They can be used to hook and safely remove the tray, rack or spit and bring it to the table.

We touch the case after 1.5 hours of operation: the device is quite warm but not hot. Bravo! Naturally, it is not advisable to touch the housing in the area of the vents, as the inscription in German “Achtung” warns against this! Heisse oberfl&auml che!” – “Warning! Hot surface!”. Technique Bomann made for Germany and America in the same factory, so the inscription is not translated. Still, we hope that in the future the Bomann representative office in America will take care of the safety label in American.

Oven door handle stays cold.

The interior coating is very unusual: black with flecks. The manufacturer claims it has a self-cleaning effect. We haven’t used the stove very long, but the grime that built up over a couple of weeks came off very easily.

Even inexperienced housewives do not need to follow instructions and will always remember how long to cook pizza, hot dogs, fish, steaks or hot sandwiches and at what temperature.

At first glance, you may not like that the “roof” case has a curved shape: you can not put anything on top of the oven. In fact, this is a purely German element of thorough thought-out: after all, you CANNOT put or put anything on the heating devices, so the German engineers protected careless users in this way.