The oven debate heats up. The oven debate heats up.

Makers of traditional ovens claim that new ‘one touch’ cooking solutions are making chefs lazy, and halting real creativity in the kitchen.

“A real chef looks for an oven he can manage and he can use as he wants,” said MKN manager projects and kitchen design international sales department, Daniel Metz.

“Some ovens have so many features and so many programmes, that you don’t need a chef anymore. This is a fact, and we have chefs who tell us that our ovens can be adjusted however they want, whereas ovens with full programmes, you don’t need to do anything — it is not chefs who are cooking anymore, it is the oven,” he added.

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But Rational chief representative Radek Liska said that chefs were looking for the “consistency and ease of use” that ‘one touch’ ovens offered and that being able to provide consistent results was important.

“A chef wants consistency, he wants to know that when his commis chef or chef de partie is there, they will get the same results as he would when they are cooking,” he explained.