Full oven vs convection microwave

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We are looking to move from sail to power. 55 to 68 foot range. We entertain a lot and the admiral is a baker. We are just amazed at how few vessels in this size have a full size (30” or better) oven on board. I would love to hear from those who bake a lot how you deal with microwave convection ovens vs a full actual oven? Tollycraft and Queenship seem to be the most prevalent offering an oven. Are there others in this size we don’t know about?
 
If Admiral is a baker , well then oven it is. Personally not for me. We use an air fryer. I never found any real use for the convection microwave we have. Ovens take too long to heat up, I did turn ours on at survey to make sure it worked. In the winter It would be ok I guess, ( free heat) . In the summer the a/c has trouble keeping up. But again we don't bake.

I am a grill guy. That is my oven. Something about cooking on a grill on the water. Maybe its from the extra salt from the air. Yes summer and winter I grill. Come on by Sat night , Stake and baked potatoes on the grill as per the wife.

Remember words I live by

Happy wife happy life
 
I want a combination microwave, air fryer, convection oven. It has to fit in the existing and rather tight opening already in our galley. And it has to be compatible with cabinet installations. All that means it's probably made of unobtainium.
 
I want a combination microwave, air fryer, convection oven. It has to fit in the existing and rather tight opening already in our galley. And it has to be compatible with cabinet installations. All that means it's probably made of unobtainium.
Here`s a possibility, the Breville oven has the functions but query the sizing:https://www.amazon.com.au/Breville-...84bad203bc38be76535e303762c&gad_source=1&th=1
Note Breville is an Australian company,though it manufactures elsewhere, almost nothing gets made here.
 
We often have 6 adults and 6 teenagers aboard for days on end.

The oven and the stove top elements get used all year for breakfast, lunch & diner. After diner is cooked in goes a loaf of bread, an apple pie or something else to use the heat.
The range gets used more than the microwave.

Yeah, we are fussy as our food must be hot and served on a hot plate, particularly if you are eating outside. A 300 degree oven easily does that for you.

Other than a coffee maker and an electric skillet, we don’t have any other plug-in cooking appliances as they are just not needed.

Here is the layout of the galley and a shot to show that it’s a 30” range.
 

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I want a combination microwave, air fryer, convection oven. It has to fit in the existing and rather tight opening already in our galley. And it has to be compatible with cabinet installations. All that means it's probably made of unobtainium.
Combo units made for built in mounting are uncommon, but they do exist. There are a few that are big (24" width or larger and ~1.6 cubic feet inside). The 2 smaller ones I know of (both 1.2 cubic feet) are the Samsung MC12J8035CT (which only has a 30" trim kit for some reason, but that can probably be modified) and the Panasonic NN-CD87KS (which has a 24" trim kit available). If you can't accommodate something like 22 or 23 inches of width for the unit and flush installation hardware to sit in then I'm not sure if there are any reasonable options.
 
I appreciate the insights. I am familiar with the Breville unit; very slick. I will almost certainly be making some cabinet mods to accept whatever we end up with as nothing except dedicated models fit the existing opening. A fellow TF member offered his approach as a model for ours. Very slick.

Barrie Helmsman 38 oven mod.jpg
 
Measure the width of the space you have there. If you can get 24" of width and have that much height to work with you can almost certainly modify the space to accept one of the available convection / microwave combo units, possibly even one of the bigger ones that looks more like a real oven.
 
Here`s a possibility, the Breville oven has the functions but query the sizing:Server Busy
Note Breville is an Australian company,though it manufactures elsewhere, almost nothing gets made here.
We have one (a Breville) in our dirt home. We love it! Bake in it all the time, make homemade pizzas, bread, broil, air fry, all kinds of stuff. I've barely turned on the big oven since we got it. It's big enough to fit a 12" iron skillet in it. When we get our boat, it'll be one of the 1st things I add.
 
If Admiral is a baker , well then oven it is. Personally not for me. We use an air fryer. I never found any real use for the convection microwave we have. Ovens take too long to heat up, I did turn ours on at survey to make sure it worked. In the winter It would be ok I guess, ( free heat) . In the summer the a/c has trouble keeping up. But again we don't bake.

I am a grill guy. That is my oven. Something about cooking on a grill on the water. Maybe its from the extra salt from the air. Yes summer and winter I grill. Come on by Sat night , Stake and baked potatoes on the grill as per the wife.

Remember words I live by

Happy wife happy life
Nordlunds are on our list. Beautiful but hard to find. Does yours have DDs?
 
We are looking to move from sail to power. 55 to 68 foot range. We entertain a lot and the admiral is a baker. We are just amazed at how few vessels in this size have a full size (30” or better) oven on board. I would love to hear from those who bake a lot how you deal with microwave convection ovens vs a full actual oven? Tollycraft and Queenship seem to be the most prevalent offering an oven. Are there others in this size we don’t know about?
Westbay Sonships, Ocean Alexander (in that size range) and many other PNW built yachts in that size have 27" or 30" ovens.
 
The 2 smaller ones I know of (both 1.2 cubic feet) are the Samsung MC12J8035CT (which only has a 30" trim kit for some reason, but that can probably be modified) and the Panasonic NN-CD87KS (which has a 24" trim kit available).

That Panasonic is the one we have. Works pretty well. Not huge, of course, but the cabinet's built-in space for it was originally filled with an earlier model Panasonic, and I mostly focused on what would fit. I didn't need to use the trim kit...

-Chris
 
I’m using a Toshiba combo unit in a slide in application, no trim kit.
Seems to work better than the cuisinart we just killed. This one stays much cooler on the exterior.
Really though, for a baker, a real oven is the only way to go. Many galleys can be modified to accept one if it doesn’t come equipped.
 
The last I visited this microwave upgrade subject, I got bogged down in the "cabinet ready" problem. I get that hot sides and hot air venting from the case might be an issue for mounting an oven in a blind wood cabinet. Any of you guys with these convection or air fryer type ovens have them in un-vented wood cabinets? Does grease accumulate inside the cabinet? Does impairing the hot air venting impact oven performance?
 
Any of you guys with these convection or air fryer type ovens have them in un-vented wood cabinets? Does grease accumulate inside the cabinet? Does impairing the hot air venting impact oven performance?

Ummm... I think our wood cabinet opening is semi-unvented. No fans or anything, but the cabinet is "much" deeper than the Panasonic unit, and there's some extra space above the unit too... with a piece of metal (boat-builder supplied?) ventilated trim across the top and in front of that extra overhead space in front of the cabinet opening.

The unit itself has an internal fan -- says it works when in convection mode, so probably works when air frying too. (Dunno if we've ever air fried anything, yet. Not exactly sure what that is.) I don't know if this internal fan is about venting too, though...

Gets warm down there, but doesn't seem to be excessively hot... and actually, I've not really paid much attention to it...

-Chris
 
The last I visited this microwave upgrade subject, I got bogged down in the "cabinet ready" problem. I get that hot sides and hot air venting from the case might be an issue for mounting an oven in a blind wood cabinet. Any of you guys with these convection or air fryer type ovens have them in un-vented wood cabinets? Does grease accumulate inside the cabinet? Does impairing the hot air venting impact oven performance?
On the units with trim kits available I'm pretty sure the primary purpose of the trim kit is to duct the hot air out of the cabinet to the front. They also physically mount the microwave to the cabinet structure so you don't have to worry about it staying in place.

If you can secure it and have enough space around it, just putting one in a cabinet and venting the cabinet might be sufficient. But if you have space for that, you should also have space to use the trim kit.
 
We love our Sharp Grill to Convection Microwave/Convection oven combination.
 
We are looking to move from sail to power. 55 to 68 foot range. We entertain a lot and the admiral is a baker. We are just amazed at how few vessels in this size have a full size (30” or better) oven on board. I would love to hear from those who bake a lot how you deal with microwave convection ovens vs a full actual oven? Tollycraft and Queenship seem to be the most prevalent offering an oven. Are there others in this size we don’t know about?

I'm surprised you're not finding standard household sized ranges on boats in this size range (55-68 feet). What are you finding? When I was delivering 20-years ago, Nordhavn seemed to equip mostly with dual-fuel rangee (electric ovens and gas stove top - JennAir I believe).

I would think that anything resembling a cruising style boat would have room for a 30" but I guess not. Curious what you're finding.

I like to bake and just make due with whatever I can find. I'd love a steam oven......

Peter
 
Most have gone to convection microwaves smaller cooking space and tough to bake in well. We entertain a lot and the larger oven would come in handy for roasting etc.

A few in the 50 to 60 foot range have a small oven, usually propane similar to what is found in many sailboats. Tollycraft 57 and 61 have ovens, Queenship 68 and some Pacific Mariners as well. I am sure Nordhavens do but they are out of our price range for consideration.

I think another beauty of the Tolley is the separate pilot house, not open to the galley and aft area. Night passages won’t create lighting issues. The search goes on.
 
The last I visited this microwave upgrade subject, I got bogged down in the "cabinet ready" problem. I get that hot sides and hot air venting from the case might be an issue for mounting an oven in a blind wood cabinet. Any of you guys with these convection or air fryer type ovens have them in un-vented wood cabinets? Does grease accumulate inside the cabinet? Does impairing the hot air venting impact oven performance?
The Toshiba I’m using is just slid into the opening. There’s a roll-type front on the cabinet so no room for a trim kit or anything like that.
I have about 1-1/2 inches on each side and a couple inches in the back for clearance. Maybe 2 inches on top. No heat issues at all. I guess there’s a fan inside that cools the outer case. Air frying with it works great, no heat build up in the cabinet at all, and the case is just warm.
 
And no grease accumulates in the cabinet where the air fryer vents its hot cooking air?
I think it might build up after a while, but I haven’t noticed anything yet. We don’t use it much, just for certain things. We also have a force ten gas oven for most things. But the air fry works so well we will be migrating more things to that method.
 
And no grease accumulates in the cabinet where the air fryer vents its hot cooking air?
America's Test Kitchen did a YouTube piece recently on air fryers. They ended up preferring the drawer style over the oven style because the oven is difficult to clean for messy stuff like chicken.

I'm really sold on induction cooktops. The propane Princess range in Weebles is definitely end of life (I bought it new over 25 years ago) and I'll replace with two induction jobs and something akin to a Breville Smart Oven for baking which will require the generator to run.

Peter
 
24” Viking propane 4 burner range/oven on our Kadey krogen 52. Admiral uses it quite a bit to bake. Warms up very quickly but does generate a lot of heat in the galley. Salon AC can generally keep up and keep things cool. We also have a microwave/convection oven but find things bake better in the propane oven.
 

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Be very cautious pushing many of the countertop convection units into a closed in cabinet without proper clearance. Many have some pretty big clearance numbers on the sides and tops due to not having internal insulation.. they get wicked hot. Convection and induction are a great combination if it can be made to work.
Hollywood
 
On one of my previous boats (OA 44') I ripped out an aging Princess electric oven that barely worked and replaced it with an induction cooktop + Breville Convection countertop oven.

The existing space had a stainless steel heat shield and it was definitely required to ensure that the Breville didn't set things on fire.

We also had a Panasonic similar to the CD87KS and while it could be used as an oven, the underside of many things was never cooked well enough for my bakery and pastry background. Not even close.

On my current boat, we have an older GE Advantium Speedcook Microwave and sort-of Oven unit, and surprisingly, it seems to cook like an oven more than the modern ones we tried.
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We have a different approach, we use a gas cooker for daily cooking with four gas rings an oven and grill below. Quite simply we keep greedy electric appliances to a minimum, 950 watt low wattage kettle, 900 watt toaster. The dishwasher and washing machine are used via the 3 kw inverter when cruising as the alternators will float the load. Clothes can be dried outside in summer and in the utility room in winter.
 
We are looking to move from sail to power. 55 to 68 foot range. We entertain a lot and the admiral is a baker. We are just amazed at how few vessels in this size have a full size (30” or better) oven on board. I would love to hear from those who bake a lot how you deal with microwave convection ovens vs a full actual oven? Tollycraft and Queenship seem to be the most prevalent offering an oven. Are there others in this size we don’t know about?
If he likes to bake, I'd go for a steam oven. (Never a microwave. Their fast....ish, but crap. And destroy the food you cook in them. Very unhealthy.) That aside, the steam oven is fantastic for baking, and also for reheating foods. It's also good for regular baking & broiling. I'd recommend one with top & bottom elements that are independently controlled. My wife is a gourmet & I love cooking as well. I've put these in both our RV & (smaller one) in the boat. Love them. In fact, because it heats up so much faster than our 36" Dacor oven in the house, I will often run out to the RV to use that oven for cooking. Especially when baking breads. That's my 2 cents.
 
We are looking to move from sail to power. 55 to 68 foot range. We entertain a lot and the admiral is a baker. We are just amazed at how few vessels in this size have a full size (30” or better) oven on board. I would love to hear from those who bake a lot how you deal with microwave convection ovens vs a full actual oven? Tollycraft and Queenship seem to be the most prevalent offering an oven. Are there others in this size we don’t know about?
While in St John USVI I met a former professional baker that was living there at the time. She would bake elaborate and beautiful cakes for people's birthdays. They were amazing by any measure. She made them all in her toaster oven on board.
 
While in St John USVI I met a former professional baker that was living there at the time. She would bake elaborate and beautiful cakes for people's birthdays. They were amazing by any measure. She made them all in her toaster oven on board.
I totally believe that. Our boat had no oven, and that was what we had for about 10 years. Just a large, counter-top one. It worked great. And they're light & removable. Plus, they make toast! The Mrs made cobblers & cakes, even a (small) Thksgvg. turkey once. The down side is they usually have zero insulation, and aren't very efficient. And don't "build in" easily. But they're functional & cheap!
 
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