You never really appreciate what you have until it’s not there.
This thought was constantly running through my mind for the first three months after we moved into our newly renovated office, because all we had in our bare pantry was a kettle, water filter, and snacks.
In our efforts to stay frugal, my colleague, Claudia, and I would often make our own iced drinks to beat the afternoon heat. Without a freezer, that wasn’t possible.
Meanwhile, a few other colleagues would often bring homecooked food for lunch, and without a functional microwave or stove to warm them up, they could only eat food that had gone cold. Not to mention, a little less fresh than they’d prefer, since we also had no refrigerator.
Once Samsung’s BESPOKE Bottom Mount Refrigerator and Convection Microwave Oven with HotBlast™ 35L were delivered though, all of these inconveniences were alleviated, and more.
To explain how they’ve complemented our office in various ways, here are some scenarios that sum it up.
1. When you don’t have countertop space for a stove, steamer, microwave, air fryer, and grill, get you an appliance that can do them all.
Samsung’s microwave oven is one that works as a multifunctional kitchen appliance. For those with limited countertop space, this oven can replace a grill, steamer, air fryer, and of course, a microwave and an oven.
Some of the very first few things we cooked in this microwave oven that measures 52.8cm (L) x 40.4cm (W) x 48.1cm (H) were a frozen pizza and lasagna using the auto modes (more on that later).
The cooking process was convenient, and they turned out well. Their cheese was melted and crispy without their insides getting dried out.
Other than that, there is a mode that Samsung calls PowerGrill Duo, allowing you to enjoy evenly grilled foods.
“HotBlast™” refers to Samsung’s new microwave oven technology. With it, powerful hot air is blasted downwards, directly onto the food from 52 equally-distributed air holes.
What I liked most about this unit is the auto modes paired with a Quick Cooking Guide that comes inside the box.
It’s where you can find the right channels for cooking a roast or grilled chicken, homemade and frozen pizza, defrosting foods, steaming dumplings, air frying chicken fingers, or even proofing dough.
Via the oven’s pre-set cooking programmes, I can toggle between numbers to select a preferred setting and weight of my dish, to ensure it’s cooked well.
This allowed me to “set it and leave it”, allowing the Convection Microwave Oven with HotBlast™ to cook my dishes perfectly.
Basically, the oven makes a convenient tool for those who don’t have the skills or time to cook.
2. All those times you conveniently “forgot” to clean your crusty microwave oven for a long time because it was inconvenient? That’s no longer an excuse.
Since most of the oven’s heating components are exposed, cleaning is made easy by a quick wipe-down with a soft soapy cloth on the unit’s durable ceramic enamel material that’s also scratch resistant.
There are also no small and narrow crevices (where all the worst gunk tend to gather) that you have to painstakingly dig into to clean.
All the necessary oven accessories like its turntable, wire racks, grill, Stainless Steel Pro Steam Bowl, and Crusty Plate (essentially a pizza pan), are detachable and can be rinsed as well.
For any stubborn impurities with bad smells from inside the oven, Samsung’s manual suggests heating a cup of diluted lemon juice on max power for 10 minutes to deodorise the chamber.
3. When your leftovers start rotting, you don’t have to worry about bad odours circulating in the fridge before you have time to throw them out.
My boss once bought some food for herself that she split into a few portions: one to eat, one as leftovers to keep in a container in the fridge, and another in the freezer for a later date.
Busy with work duties and meetings, the leftovers packed in the refrigerator were kept for a little over two weeks and started going bad.
When we finally dumped the food out, we found that it had rotted, yet the pungent smells didn’t stink up the fridge. This was also true for the Musang King ice cream we kept in our freezer a while back.
It must be the refrigerator’s All Around Cooling system doing its work, as each compartment has separate cooling evaporators so odours don’t mix.
4. Forgetting about the refrigerated groceries you bought a month ago isn’t as punishing, because they’re likely still fresh enough to be edible.
Preserving food is the utmost basic function of a refrigerator, and the BESPOKE Bottom Mount Refrigerator does it effortlessly.
With a metal cooling plate on its rear wall, the fridge could maintain an optimal internal temperature to keep our food fresh.
This feature works by preventing the loss of cool air when the door is open, and it quickly restores any heat loss when it’s shut again.
We’ve had eggs sitting in our fridge for a month now, and upon checking, it looks like the fridge has been doing a good job at keeping them edible enough for my colleague to pair with his cup noodles.
As proof, we did a sight and smell test, and even a float test. Well, the eggs failed the float test, but didn’t have the slightest trace of funkiness, so we deemed them edible.
We say edible, because we wouldn’t necessarily recommend anyone hoard food or groceries for that long, especially those with sensitive guts.
Another colleague left some cut fruit sitting in the fridge for a couple of days, even over the weekend, but from sight alone, it still looked fine the following Monday despite not being kept in an airtight container.
(Alright, we can hear you judging our bad food safety practices in the office, but we’re working on them. Kind of.)
As a side note, ice freezes pretty fast in the freezer. Though Samsung claims that the fridge is able to make ice in four hours, testing this showed us that it’s able to freeze a fresh batch of ice in just three hours.
For those of us who make our own iced coffee in the office on a whim, at any time of the day, this feature is truly appreciated.
5. When you want to personalise your kitchen appliances to match the rest of your interior design, you’re given options.
As this is Samsung’s Bespoke series for its kitchen appliances, we got to choose the pastel pink option our oven and fridge came in. It also comes in a Glam White and pastel blue variant.
This is the brand’s way of allowing customers to furnish their kitchens in a way that syncs up with their individual tastes and design styles.
For the BESPOKE Bottom Mount Refrigerator, customisation is extended to the functionalities too.
You can use it as a single module with one full-length door (called the BESPOKE 1-Door Flex Convertible Refrigerator). If you want more storage space, you can combine two modules with either four doors, or two doors on opposite sides.
The doors of the fridge are reversible as well, simply by changing the hinges.
On top of having our microwave oven and fridge matching each other, they add a pop of colour to our office, much like the Aglaonema Pink indoor plants we have scattered around the space.
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All in all, Samsung’s Convection Microwave Oven with HotBlast™ 35L and a BESPOKE Bottom Mount Refrigerator are good additions to have in any space.
In our less-than-skilled hands when it comes to the culinary arts, they have proven to be handy (pun not intended) whether it’s for minor cooking, reheating, or storing food (for irresponsibly long durations of time).
However, even for a more savvy home cook’s kitchen, they’re appliances that can complement one’s skills well.
Sans discounts, the base price for the Convection Microwave Oven with HotBlast™ 35L is RM1,959, while the BESPOKE Bottom Mount Refrigerator is RM5,499.
- Learn more about Samsung’s Convection Microwave Oven with HotBlast™ 35L here and BESPOKE Bottom Mount Refrigerator here.
- Read our other Samsung-related articles here.
All Image Credits: Vulcan Post