Promises like that helped put the TurboChef on our must-test list. Would this latest speed-cook appliance cook our bird quickly and flavorfully enough to justify spending thousands more than you would for a conventional range?
To find out, we bought two 13-pound turkeys. We put one in the TurboChef Speedcook’s upper, speed-cook oven and the other in an Electrolux Wave-Touch convection range, a $2,000 smoothtop electric that is among the top range ovens in our new tests. We paid $7,895 for our TurboChef 30-inch double wall oven; the company said it is considering a price increase. (TurboChef also was selling a smaller, single-oven version with only the speed-cook feature for $5,995.) Here are the results of our head-to-head:
Time
Our TurboChef turkey was done in a blistering 53 minutes compared with 98 minutes using the Electrolux’s preprogrammed turkey
setting and a probe.
Taste
The turkey cooked in the TurboChef did indeed delight our resident chef and tester. It came out nicely browned and crispy
outside, moist and juicy inside. But so did the turkey done in the Electrolux convection oven. Both birds were picked clean
in minutes, as their aroma wafted through our labs and attracted hungry staffers testing other products.
Bottom line
The TurboChef Speedcook served up a delicious turkey in record time. But you can still slice hours off your next holiday turkey
for far less with a good convection-oven range. For more head-to-head appliance tests, check out our chicken cook-off and cookie bake-off.
