dallas moore

Whirlpool Velos Speedcook Oven (GH7208)

When I moved into my new home, I decided to go with a day dream of mine by having some high grade appliances installed. There are a tons of different appliances that you can get for cooking and anything that can multi-task seemed to be a good choice. When it came to the microwave, I had recently heard about a product line that offered cooking using a variety of elements. The product line, branded Velos by Whirlpool, can cook using microwave, convection, “light”, and combinations of the three for quicker and “better quality” cooking. Seeing that a fair quantity of my cooking involved microwave use, I thought I’d spend extra for the appliance that would be getting the most use in my kitchen.

Like any microwave, it has lots of buttons on the front for standard cooking tasks. However, centered on the front is one of the main things that attracted me to the Velos line. It has this nifty touchpad interface. Using a rather simple and easily navigated interface, I can set my cooking process into motion and after a couple of touches, it is prompting you with instructions tailored to the task.

Say I want to cook some oatmeal? I press COOK METHOD, COOK, OATMEAL/CEREAL, REGULAR OATMEAL. At that point it will prompt me for how many servings, then tell me how much water I’ll need, how much oats, tell you to put it in a bowl, stir it, and then place it in the microwave. It will inform me how much the TIME TO COOK will be and if I choose to change the “DONENESS” it will update that time. At that point, I press START and it merrily cooks away. Simple task, with what seems like a bunch of steps, but the fact that just one of the many presets for cooking is to prepare lowly oatmeal. It can make your mind wonder what other foods preparations are built-in.

I am the first person that will pair steak and microwave together and think “no way.” I will now state that I have cooked steak perfectly in the Velos. Having something prompt me for how I want to cook (GRILL), how much it weighs, adjusting the doneness, informing me that I’ll need the grilling rack over the sizzle pan (more on that in a bit), and then telling me how long it will take to cook. It just makes me trust the results would be good. After hitting start, it merrily cooked away for awhile then prompted me to turn the steak over. After doing so, it buzzed along until finished. Pretty damn neat for preparing a steak and quite honestly tons of other items I’ve prepared in it, but sometimes things haven’t turned out perfect.

One of the things this oven offers is a special pan Whirlpool calls the “sizzle pan”. The sizzle pan is a non-stick pan that retains heat very well. When you cook with it, the oven will preheat the pan for three minutes. Then you toss in what your cooking and it continues with the cycle designed for that product. The sizzle pan can do pizza, french fries, grilled cheese, and on… and on. Where it quasi-fails is preparing items that are typically deep fried.

French fries, though edible, don’t turn out super crisp like you’d get if you deep fried. Chicken nuggets, the same. The nugget is cooked, but the outside just isn’t as crispy as I’d like. And the biggest failure that has a built-in cooking time, cheese sticks, just turned into a flaccid oozing mess. What I have learned to do is increase the doneness on fried foods up a hair to get them a little more brown. Sometimes it works well, like french fries, but the same method would further destroy other items … like the cheese sticks. Good thing there are other things I like to prepare.

The Velos also comes with a steam cooking container branded “Sure Mist”. It rocks. Perfect rice, perfect broccoli, perfect asparagus. Not more I can say other than the touchpad has everything to prepare stuff using the steamer in its database.

Convection baking is one thing that I’ve used the least. I’ve got a normal convection oven in my range that takes six minutes to preheat. The Velos tended to take longer to preheat. I can see possibly needing it if I were preparing a big meal and needed two ovens running at the same time. Having that capability is nice, especially in a 2.0 cubic foot oven, but I just don’t think I’ll be using it that much.

Finally, I’ll talk about my favorite cooking task. The lowly reheat. It’s there, and the touchpad actually has several options on what you want to reheat. My favorite is the REHEAT … DINNER PLATE.

Let’s say I’ve gone to eat out and like most places, I got enough food to feed a family. I usually get a “to go ” box—like a wimp. Using the reheat dinner plate option of the Velos, I just put the food on a plate and tell it to go. It uses a sensor to detect steam and adjusts the cooking time up or down based upon how much longer it thinks it will take to heat everything. I’ve yet to be disappointed with its guesswork.

Well, there it is in a nutshell. I felt it was a good investment, albeit it rather pricey. With any appliance purchase …

I recommend going to the manufacturer’s website and downloading user manuals first …

… as well as shopping around for pricing from several stores. I chose the monochrome stainless finish which drove the retail price up to just under $1,000. Other finishes cost up to $100 less. I ended up getting a 20% discount by shopping around but at $800, it was still very pricey. That aside, the Velos has become the “go to” cooking tool in my kitchen, it has easily made up for the cost in quality and my time.