GAS STOVE EFFICIENCY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LIX, Issue 18089, 13 May 1922, Page 4 (Supplement)

GAS STOVE EFFICIENCY.

o. It is well for housewives to bear in mind the following hint.* in regard to gas stoves :- - Close iho oven door quietly. Do not bang it. Remove burners occasionally, and clean by placing them in boiling soda water. Light the oven fifteen minutes before it. is required, but, leave the door open for the first two or three minutes for it to dry thoroughly. All pastry and bread, etc., must be placed under the browning shelf and not on it. Many housewives feel the need of a timetable when cooking. Here is one compiled from experience : — To roast or boil joints, allow fifteen minutes to a pound. To boil a meat pudding allow two hours. To boil a fowl one hour will be sufficient.

To roast a chicken allow 45 minutes. To lightly boil an egg allow 2A minutes. To just het an boil tor three minutes.

To boil potatoes allow 25 minutes. To hake potatoes allow l' s hours. The chief disadvantage that can be brought against the gas oven is that ;ho interior gets greasy each time it is used, and that objectionable smells result from the grease splashing upon the burr ers. Many stoves are provided with a fxed oven outlet. So far so good, but no outlet pipe should be fixed into a chimney, for the heat is drawn out of the oven. and there will b9 difficulty in getting a top he;it for browning. Often when the. outlet is fixed l.hrougn a wall it will be difficult, to keep the burners alight because of the. wind pressure outside. If the cooker, however, i* fixed in a ventilated recess or in front of an open fireplace the result wiil be found most .satisfactory. The great point for housewives to bear in mind is that no fixed oven outlet is I'eaJJy necessary, for all meat and name should be roasted in a special meat roaster, litis contrivance does away with all bad smells and splashing of grease, for it consists of a covered meat tin which slides on to one of the grids in the cooker. When such a cov«r«d tin is used, there is less loss in weight per pound of meat than if the joint is suspended in oven or placed in an uncovered baking tin. Moreover, all dripping is saved in the tin instead of being splashed around the oven.