Gizmo Guy: Do-it-all Ovens

Cooking a big holiday feast can be quite the juggling act. Not enough burners or oven capacity!

Some folks rely on the kindness of neighbors, taking charge of their stoves to prep the pies or side dishes, while your primary oven is cooking up the turkey. Others work the cook/remove/reheat in-the-microwave routine with varied goodies on their menu, to better or lesser effect.

But today, for those interested and ready to upgrade kitchen appliances, there are better solutions. A growing breed of multitasking ovens from mainstream brands (priced $1,500-$2,500) now pack five burners and two ovens into the same, 30-inch wide space where your old-school, four-burner/one-oven range now sits.

Or if you only need an extra oven once in a while, one of today's surprisingly versatile countertop toaster-ovens ($90-$260) could light your fire.

More is less. Raised with a big sis who delighted in baking blue food-colored cakes and a younger sis who loved her lightbulb-fired E-Z Bake Oven, Gizmo Guy has been curious about ovens since childhood.

At the annual CES trade show, ambitious Korean appliance/electronics makers LG and Samsung were first to excite me with the concept of multitasking, double-oven, extra-burner ranges that could bake batches of cookies and a roast at the same time, at different temperatures and without the aromas commingling. The innovators also pitched efficiency. When just using a smaller, broiler-equipped top oven - sufficient for most meal prep - it heats faster, consumes less fuel, and is easier to access and clean.

The bottom oven - averaging around 4 cubic feet in capacity - is about 20 percent smaller than on a conventional single-door range, and does require some deep-knee bending or stooping to use. But it's still big enough to cook up a 20- to 25-pound turkey. And all you give up with these newbies is the warming/storage drawer at the bottom.

As for the stovetop, the "fifth" wheel, or oval-shaped burner, gets plopped dead center, and is pitched as perfect for pancakes and grilled-cheese sandwiches with an often supplied grill/griddle plate that replaces or fits on top of the grating.

Familiar brands such as Frigidaire, Kenmore, Kitchen Aid, Maytag and Whirlpool have also jumped into the five-burner/dual-oven category, with models that are U.S. or Korean sourced. And in the last two years, the concept has really taken off, said GE marketing manager Tim Calvert, with sales growing "25 percent annually."

Gizmo Guy checked in with him to wax ecstatic about a super-powered and dexterous GE Profile stove that persuaded me to take the plunge and replace a still functioning though no longer sexy Frigidaire Gallery gas stove purchased in 1998.

Granted, I was initially attracted by GE's baby steps into the "connected appliance" world. A couple current models are remotely controllable with an app on your phone, say, to pre-heat the stove when you're leaving the supermarket. The gas range (PGB980ZEJSS) I bought offers Bluetooth wireless linkup to a matching microwave, which I didn't get. Had I done so, the appliances' clocks would sync automatically. And the microwave oven's downfiring lights and exhaust fan could be pre-set to automatically turn on when one or more of the burners on the stovetop is lit.

Really, it was other stuff - working the extra efficiency agenda - that got me to invest the big bucks in this pretty, all-stainless stove (online, it's possible to score one for under $2,000 including delivery; at retail the going price is $2,300 to $2,600.)

One notable difference on the GE is "edge to edge" grates that fully extend to the sides of the stovetop, with burners below likewise pushed outward a bit. That allows for bigger pots and pans to sit side by side, "and the industry's largest, swap-out griddle/ grill," claimed Calvert.

In this model, the fifth burner is actually a dual-mode heater, with both circular and oval flame-dispersing elements, while the front left burner is a rare tri-ring variety (usually found only on super-high-end stoves) that cranks out upward of 20,000 BTUs of heat. Even when watched, a pot of tap water (5 quarts) reached boil in under 17 minutes on that big bubba.

Also, good news - the smaller (2.5 cubic feet) oven preheated to 350 degrees in seven minutes. And the big (4.3 cubic feet) oven down below boasts a convection (fan-circulated hot air) function that automatically does more with less heat. The high-end model also features a special pull-out rack, which makes you feel less like a turkey when installing/extracting the big bird.

The occasional cooker. There's a bit of a catch-22 with today's top-rated toaster ovens. The ones that can do a lot (besides toast) are pretty darn big - hogging so much counter space you might not want to leave it up there all year round! But if you've got the storage space, they've got the capacity, especially the 0.95 cubic feet (interior space) Cuisinart Chef Convection Toaster Oven (TOB-260, $260).

That model was recently top rated by our buddy Josh Kirschner of the website Techlicious.com, then verified A-OK in our own testing, baking up both a 9x13 inch pan of mac 'n' cheese and an almost five-pound chicken to "golden brown" perfection, though not both at once.

In Kirschner's test, the rivals included the second-placed Breville Smart Oven Plus ($250), the Kenmore Elite Digital Countertop Convection Oven ($149.99 online at Sears) and smallest/cheapest Hamilton Beach Set & Forget Toaster Oven ($89.99), which the reviewer called "the best buy" and "easiest to control," but not without some failings: The cooking rack has no safety catch, it lacked a count-down timer, toast doesn't crisp to fully brown, and his roasted chicken came out pale on the sides. But it was the only one that fit well on his apartment kitchen counter!