Italian home appliance company Smeg launches its Galileo range of inbuilt ovens today.
The rather grandly named range (“inspired by the father of modern science and uniting the very best of Italian design, innovation, and culinary art”) is a series of cookers built with a new cavity design for better heat distribution.
The design should also minimise flavour transfer, so sweet and savoury dishes can bed cooke together, without making nightmare, prawn-flavour cake or chicken tiramisu.
There will be five ovens in the series (the Omnichef, the SteamOne, the Steam100, the Steam100PRO and SpeedwaveXL), with prices ranging from £499 to £3,499.
What is the Omnichef?
The flagship Omnichef is, the brand reckons, the first oven in the world to use steam, microwave and traditional cooking together. The oven’s interior has been redesigned so you can either use the cooking functions one after another (which the brand calls MultiStep cooking), or even simultaneously (MultiTech).
What this means for your average home chef is much faster cooking – according to Smeg, up to 70% faster. In real terms, this means being able to roast a whole chicken in 30 minutes, while retaining its juiciness and crisping its surface.
Galileo range features
The microwave and steam functions are available in some of Smeg’s current ovens but they’ve been improved for the new line. Its inverter technology has allowed engineers to remove the spinning plate to increase the amount of space in the oven, without leaving hot and cold spots in cooked food. The technology expands the number of cooking options the range can sustain, even allowing the oven to be used as a sous-vide.
The new design and features will, in some models, come combined with Smeg’s Vivoscreen technology. Vivoscreen is a touchscreen system that allows for automatic, multi-step cooking, with over 150 pre-set recipes.
The Linea features the Vivoscreen, while the flagship Dolce Stil Novo Omnichef comes with the recently launched VivoscreenMax. This will let users fully automate a complicated recipe involving various cooking stages. Choose a ‘pasta bake’ setting and you can dump all the raw ingredients in a dish and the oven will take care of the rest.
Oven design
There are some fresh design features across the range. All five ovens have an enhanced door seal and easy-glide telescopic rails. To simplify cleaning, all models have an easy to remove glass door and a vapour clean system that can hold up to a pint of water. In addition, some models have a pyrolitic self-cleaning function.
Galileo accessories
Alongside the Galileo ovens, you’ll be able to buy a range of accessories including a refractory pizza stone that’s also useful for baking, a barbecue pan and a pan especially designed for air frying, so less oil can be used while cooking. If you already own a Smeg oven, these accessories will be compatible with your current appliance.
The Galileo series will be available to buy in store and online from January 2022. Prices will start at £499 for the Classic Traditional Function Oven and rise to £3,499 for the Dolce Stil Novo Omnichef.
To see what we thought of some of Smeg’s countertop appliances, check out our reviews of the Smeg jug blender, its espresso coffee maker and its coffee grinder.
