A very common request from visitors to my site is for more GE Advantium Recipes. I'd be more than happy to post them here (nicely formatted, with credit to the source) -- but I don't have many that I've written down (I'm more of a "wing-it" type of Advantium user). So, if you're here looking for additional recipes, please email me a few and help spread the Advantium love. (Or, if the comment feature is available, you may post them there as well.). My e-mail address is coder at this web site. (Sorry, if I put my e-mail as a link here, my spam volume will shoot up more than it already is. It's just coder @ wired .... ).

If you have favorite products that you like to use with your Advantium, post or send them too.

Thanks!

Posted by Aaron at 7:38 AM | Permalink

Hundreds of searches every month are directed to my site looking for GE Advantium oven information. The search terms are simple: GE Advantium oven. I'm not sure why my site is so popular for that topic. I did have a post and review in 2004 about it here.

In any case, I'll do a bit of an update after you read the other page if you haven't already.

One question you might ask, now 3 years after buying one: would you buy one again?

Yes, I would buy one again or something similar if I needed to. I find it handy for a number of things and would sorely miss it if I didn't have it available.

It's the simple things that it can do: warm a large frozen muffin in the morning to a nice temperature that tastes like it just came out of the oven, without giving it that microwave taste (2:00-2:15, U=6, L=6, M=4, black metal tray).

I can make awesome garlic bread recipe in about 4 minutes:

• Using 4 slices of French bread sliced from 1 – 1 ½" thick partially frozen to thawed, use a drizzle of olive oil on each (about a teaspoon), spread around the top (or use melted butter or margarine if you prefer, Olive oil though is likely the best for your health according to what I've read)
• Sprinkle liberally with garlic powder and any other favorite toppings. We have a large tub of frozen Parmesan cheese from Sam's – I usually add a pinch of cheese to the top of each and spread around (or even from a green can is OK).
• Optional: For extra yummy, use canned diced tomatoes (or fresh if you have them) and add to the top of each slice of bread before cooking.
• Pop it in the Advantium (4:00, U=10, L=8, M=2). If the bread is thawed completely, you can usually lower the microwave setting to 1 or zero (and sometimes you'll want to reduce the time a little bit).
• I often use a 'sub-sandwich' loaf of bread the same way with great results.
• (Also, you can coat the bottom in olive oil the same as the top, and use the black metal tray with the grill ridges to get a subtle grill effect on the bread).

A good slice of garlic bread can even make a lame bowl of Spaghettio's better.

We still use it for frozen pizza all the time. I add a bit of extra cheese to the typical cheap frozen Tombstone pizza, and a bit of extra spices and let it go its course on the normal setting. I often use the black ridge grill tray with pizza to crisp the crust in a subtle but tastier way.

Mac and cheese can also be kicked up a notch:

• Make a box of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese (I usually leave out the butter/margarine and substitute light Velveeta for a cheesier 'cheese' – about ½" slice)
• Optional – add ¼ cup of corn meal and stir well to give it a more 'gritty' cheese texture that couldn't be matched by starting with boxed mac and cheese.
• Add the results of draining 6-8 ounces of yogurt and making yogurt cheese to the mac and cheese at the end. Stir in till it's well absorbed.
• Add about ½ cup of shredded cheese (preferably cheddar of your choosing) and stir again till melted.
• Divide into oven safe dishware. Top with more cheese on each.
• Put it in the Advantium on the metal tray: 5:00-7:00, U=8, L=5, M=1. It's done when the cheese on the top has started to brown and melt completely (if you use a low fat cheese, this may never happen, so just watch it and decide when it looks decent).
• Careful – the dishware will be HOT!
• Sprinkle with fresh herbs or chives and serve (with the garlic bread would be very yummy).

Back to the GE Advantium review.

The thing still bugs us the most is that it's so loud!

It's great though at adding a quick 'browning' to things that would have required a long wait in the oven for the same effect (no preheating). I often finish off foods using the Advantium, melting toppings, etc. that I couldn't easily do with the microwave. I like the fact that I can heat the plate I'm serving on which makes the food seem more "restaurant-served", and keeps the food warmer a bit longer.

If the question is: Should I buy an Advantium oven?

That's tougher, as each person and family is different. Read my first impressions on the page referred above. I know there are two power levels for the oven – 120 and 240 volt. We have a 240 volt oven. It cooks things a lot faster than the lower powered one. I'd highly recommend getting the higher powered one if it's an option for you as part of the benefit of having a specialty oven like this is that it is designed to help you cook faster and easier. Check out the buying tips from GE here. If you have children, especially young children, this appliance needs to be respected more than a microwave. Not only can the food get hot, but the entire interior and plates can be scalding hot. Getting a pizza out of the oven after it's 10 minute cycle (for a frozen 12" pizza) is definitely a hot pad experience. The tray and interior are hot.

I hope this helps those of you stopping in for information about the GE Advantium oven.

One cook book that I'd highly recommend that isn't specifically an Advantium cookbook, but has more than a thousand great recipes (many of which can be cooked in the Advantium with some tweaks) is: The America's Test Kitchen Family Cookbook Revised Edition: Featuring More Than 1,200 Kitchen-tested Recipes, 1,500 Photographs And No-nonsense Equipment And Ingredient Ratings. I've definitely enjoyed it -- there's a lot to learn and many product ratings.

If you have recipes you'd like to share with others, see this.

Stop!

Before you post a comment here, consider instead posting your comment/question in a Google group I've created:

Heat your Food!

Visit this group

If you post a comment here anyway, I'll likely send you an invite for the group so as to better encourage discussion! :)

Posted by Aaron at 9:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (43)

According to my web site statistics, I see that someone was interested in "negative aspects to the GE Advantium" oven. Since we own an Advantium oven, I thought I'd take a moment to discuss the good and bad about the oven since we've been using it for about 4 months now. We have the wall oven model which looks much like a typical wall oven, although not quite as tall.

Great/Good

• We can cook things that would have required the oven much more quickly. It's awesome for last minute decisions. I can decide to make a toasted garlic bread with cheese side for a meal and in 4 minutes, it comes out toasty and tasty, without the feeling that it was microwaved (which, if you choose to use the manual mode, you can selectively control).
• Pizzas -- fast! We had a frozen pizza last night -- from start to finish cooked in 9:15 seconds.
• Fast cookies.
• Gadget-y. All ovens should be this versatile!
• Crisp foods, oven quality. Microwave-style egg rolls come out crispy, not soggy (although see the bad list for a sticky problem).

Bad

• Things stick to the metal pans sometimes quite fiercely. I'm never sure what will stick, or how to prevent it always. Usually not terrible, but it can be quite destructive to an egg-roll for instance when part of the the egg roll remains stuck to the pan after removal.
• Loud. The wall mounted unit is quite loud when running. There are some very noisy fans built in to keep the unit cool. The positive side is that they don't run very long after the unit has stopped heating (depends primarily on how long the oven was used and what settings were active). It's loud enough that you wouldn't want to eat with it running. We have a second oven -- a convection oven -- which isn't nearly as noisy as the Advantium.
• Manual microwave mode only has settings in 15 second intervals and the menu system isn't as obvious as a typical microwave
• Only a 12 inch circular cooking surface.
• Intimidating. My wife still hasn't used it much, in part because we have a second microwave tucked away underneath the countertop. I admit that I typically will use the microwave first if I want to defrost or just do "microwave only" things.
• Minor: Being a geek, I wish there was a way to upgrade the menus to include new recipes (not aware of any way to do this besides the option of programming in custom recipes). Maybe in a future version and future kitchen ...

Unknowns

• We really haven't experimented with the variety of menus much yet. Hopefully now that the house is starting to feel settled, I'll read through the included cookbook to look for some of the more interesting recipes.

Update! I've created a new review here, several years after this post with a few recipes, and further feelings on the advantium.

Posted by Aaron at 2:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Here's a list of some of the products we have selected for our house. As time passes, we'll try to keep this list up to date with anything we note later about individual products.

• Correct Deck -- Rather than traditional building materials, we've selected a composite building material which is made from hardwood and polypropylene. It should last longer than wood, and doesn't require the same type of care (frequent staining for example is not needed).
• Hardiplank Lap Siding -- Cedar is expensive. Vinyl and alumninum weren't options for our neighborhood due to deed restrictions (and they don't look as nice). Another product which is a composite product, wood-fiber and cement. It's got a great warranty (50 years) and doesn't require frequent staining like cedar. It does however require occasional painting.
• Danze Faucets -- Relatively new to the United States. They were cheaper and had some elegant designs which we liked (and the bath accessories such as towel bars were reasonably priced). Our plumber did complain some about the installation of the product, saying it was far more difficult than other brands. They went so far as saying they wouldn't sell them any more to their customers (we were their first and last). The faucets we selected were about half the price of comparables from other manufacturers.
• Wolf - We bought a consumer 48" gas rangetop from Wolf. It's been a mixed experience so far. The model we purchased includes both a griddle and a grill top, with 4 burners. The burners all came with the wrong pieces. The handles, which we were told would be available in black or red (and both would be sent), only came in red. We're still waiting for black two months later. It also lights slow (the burners), but we think it may have something to do with the fact that the burner inner/out rings were wrong. We're awaiting a final verdict once everything arrives. We'd heard some negative comments about the quality of competitors like Viking from our building contractor, so we stayed away from them and went with a more local manufacturer to us (Sub-zero and Wolf are both headquartered in Madison, Wisconsin). Update (4/16/04) The flame lights faster now after replacing the inner and outer rings thankfully. For some reason, the technician believes that the wrong rings were installed initially (how that would happen I have no idea!). We also had been waiting 8 weeks to get black knobs instead of red. Those too finally arrived -- oddly, we seem to have gotten a version upgrade as they have additional markings for "LITE" that the Red knobs didn't have:
  
  
  
  
  
  
• GE - The remainder of our appliances are GE in stainless steel. We bought an Advantium oven, which I'll write about later when I have time. Suffice to say, it's very cool as we can make our Saturday night pizza in 6-10 minutes, with no oven preheating! (And cookies in a little over 4 minutes!) I'll detail the specific appliances a bit more. We've learned that some things can be decieving when it comes to buying cabinet depth refrigerators in particular.
• LG Electronics USA - A front loading clothes washer and front loading dryer. Highly rated. Extremely quiet. The dryer does a great job. It often can finish drying the clothes in less time than it takes to wash a normal load! Both units are nice in that they tell you the amount of time remaning with the entire cycle. The washing machine is EXTREMELY quiet compared to the top loading washing machines we've owned in the past. A loud swishing noise occasionally as water moves around the unit. Then, a spinning noise as it spins the laundry from time to time. Considering how fast the laundry is spinning, it really makes very little noise. We've been very impressed! The only downside we've found potentially is that the units are a bit low (the washer). After having used them for a while, we wish we would have bought some stands for the units to raise them to a slighltly more comfortable height.

Posted by Aaron at 3:45 PM | Permalink