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A reliable, easy-to- use galley cooker will greatly enhance your quality of life afloat


‘Thousands of us are soldiering on with ancient cookers fitted when our boats first left the yard’


Marine Cookers


Is your pie piping hot? Does your toast brown evenly? Does your kettle boil briskly? If not, you may need a new cooker. Chris Beeson tests ten of the best


68 www.yachtingmonthly.com MAY 2013


potatoes, or just warming a pasty and heating some beans, the right cooker makes a big difference to the comfort of life on board. So why are thousands of us


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soldiering on with rusty, ancient cookers, fitted 20 or 30 years ago when our boats first left the yard, which now can’t even muster a half-decent piece of toast? For this article, we looked at 10 two-burner marine cookers with oven and grill, all currently on the market and ranging from £415 to £1,745, to find which ones offered the best combination of


performance, ease of use and value for money. You can use the results to inform your choice, but there are other considerations.


hether you’re roasting a chicken with two veg, browning a gratin and steaming new


There’s budget, of course, but


also how much space you have. Most northern European boats


have a 450mm space, a legacy of the once-ubiquitous Flavel Vanessa oven and grill. The rest of Europe has a 500mm space but they’re no friends of toast, so there’s no grill. For a typical Brit, this is beyond contemplation. Which brings us to the next


consideration – do you choose a separate or combination oven and grill? The former usually allows you to use both simultaneously but means a smaller oven and a hole in the hob to vent the grill heat, which can be useful for heating beans while you’re making toast but it is susceptible to hob spillages. Choose the latter and you’ll get a bigger oven, but it will be less efficient because the heat escapes through a hole either on the hob or at the back, designed to vent the grill’s heat, and the grill itself hampers convection. All in all, there’s a lot to consider.


PHOTO ABOVE: JAYNE TOYNE. TOAST: MIRANDA DELMAR-MORGAN


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