Mastery of Temperature

Create a perfect meal and a beautiful kitchen experience with a suite of cooking appliances that work seamlessly together to deliver Mastery of Temperature. Achieve precise and consistent temperature control across all sources of heat.

At Fisher & Paykel, we believe perfect kitchens are those that give a chef or cook absolute control to craft the perfect cuisine. And we know that perfect results come from the Mastery of Temperature.

When we come together around food in the kitchen, we expect to be supported by appliances that have greater levels of performance, versatility and consistency. We want them to look good – and to make us look good, too, by making technical cooking methods more intuitive, helping us to prepare varied ingredients perfectly, explore new flavours, and create perfect results.

Cooking today is one of the most popular subjects on the planet. It encompasses history and culture, provenance and sustainability, local and global food trends, scarcity and sustenance, invention and creativity. The “great recipe explosion” inspired by social media has seen cooking knowledge broadened and democratised. Recipes once handed down across generations are now shared in seconds, leading chefs are household names, and our more worldly food knowledge is accompanied by diverse and adventurous tastes and appetites. As our palates and culinary skills have become more sophisticated, so too have our kitchen products. But whatever you are cooking, the secret to success lies in the science of temperature and humidity. That's the part we design into our appliances, so at home you can achieve perfect results, intuitively. By understanding which technique, temperature and heat type you need to create perfect flavour and texture, you can choose the best appliance solution to suit your needs. Whether you're cooking with gas, convection, steam or sous vide, or induction – or a combination of heat inputs – a commitment to Mastery of Temperature underpins all Fisher & Paykel cooking products. It's the ability to introduce the right temperature at exactly the right moment; from gentle chocolate tempering warmth to the intense heat required to perfectly reverse sear a sous vide steak.

While steam ovens were once a specialist purchase, the Fisher & Paykel Combination Steam Oven makes steam-powered cooking accessible to cooks at all levels – and it is particularly suited to entertainers and those seeking healthier cooking options. Combination steam cooking combines humid air (steam), which is exceptional at holding a stable temperature, with dry heat circulated by fans (convection), to cook food with a very even and consistent heat. It brings control, consistency and precision to the home – and is often the cornerstone cooking appliance of the kitchen, thanks to its ability to retain the delicate textures of ingredients like salmon and snapper, the vitamin and mineral content of things like market-fresh greens, and the depth of flavour of a perfect cut of meat.

It seems ironic, but historically, the most precise endeavour in the kitchen – baking – has been powered by the most imprecise source of heat – the convection oven. Combination steam cooking changes this, allowing you to draw out the flavours of wheat into a light and fluffy structure within the perfectly crisp crust of a sourdough loaf. You can also brown, roast and grill, with the humidity of steam-infused cooking helping prevent dishes from drying out, preserving flavour and texture, retaining tenderness and encouraging the delicious crust of a perfect roast to form, as heat inspires multitudes of small chemical reactions, converting proteins and sugars into flavour, colour and aroma (a.k.a. the Maillard reaction, which occurs at temperatures greater than 153°C).

For good reason, steam cooking is associated with healthy eating. Steam-cooking greens like broccoli, or its more sophisticated cousin broccolini, in a combination steam oven at 100°C retains up to 90% of nutrients when compared to boiling. Its versatility also extends to desserts, with a classic crème caramel or delicate crème brûlée setting with a smooth and silken texture.

With combination steam cooking, centre-of-the-table dishes, such as a whole-cooked snapper, can be treated with the care and precision suggested by the adage that ‘seafoods should be threatened with heat and celebrated with joy'.

Salmon, cooked gently in a combination steam oven at around 52–55°C, comes to a perfect texture as albumin, a protein that exists in liquid form when raw, firms up into the perfect texture.

Using sous vide, you can create the “unmatched flavour and texture” of the 65°C egg "discovered" by French molecular gastronomist Hervé. “Perfectly cooked from end to end,” it was a staple of early 2000s fine-dining establishments. Using sous vide, you can dial in a temperature with degree-perfect precision, so the different proteins – yolks and whites (or "tight" whites and "loose" whites, to be more specific) – come together with different textures, without overcooking.

Using Fisher & Paykel's Combination Steam Oven to sous vide means saying goodbye to circulators and immersion – the typical accoutrements of sous vide cooking – and hello to a vacuum-drawer companion product that has been designed to make this once specialty cooking technique a simple proposition at home.

With sous vide it becomes simple to bring premium cuts of meat, such as well-marbled wagyu steak, to a perfect medium-rare state hours in advance of serving. Sous vide cooking uses lower temperatures than traditional methods. The ingredients are slowly heated to the set temperature – for medium-rare steak, 55°C – with no damage to the fibres and even colour from centre to edge – no more dry edges or rare centres. Sear and serve when you're ready.

Cooked sous vide, a venison tenderloin cooked at 52° has unmatched juiciness. And for those with exceptional patience, you can braise short ribs at 58° for 72 hours, for what is surely the ultimate in melt-in-the mouth tenderness.

Electromagnetic induction, the technology underpinning induction hobs, is efficient because the transfer of energy heats only the cooking vessel – it is heat exactly where you need it. Because there is no flame, there is reduced heat transfer to the surrounding environment, which can result in a slightly cooler kitchen environment.

At Fisher & Paykel, we design innovative induction appliances for all the above reasons, but also because of its ability to confer absolute control to the hand of the chef. Our induction hobs deliver a responsive, constant heat right across the temperature spectrum: from the low, constant temperatures required for perfect chocolate tempering (without a double boiler) or poaching butter while avoiding breaking, to the higher temperatures required to caramelise sugar (the base of many classic desserts) and the intense heat required to crisp the skin of precisely steamed salmon. As an added bonus – cleaning a glass induction hob is as simple as wiping the bench or countertop.

Whether you choose gas or induction depends to an extent on the type of cooking you do. Wok cookers might prefer the intense, instant heat of gas (however, we'd argue that our hobs paired with premium induction woks work equally as well). Choose Gas-on-Glass products for an aesthetically streamlined, more minimal hob solution. People with a collection of fine copper cookware might also opt for gas, as induction cooking requires cookware with a ferrous content – like stainless steel – to conduct heat.

In the end, good cooking lies in good decision making, like understanding whether to cook food slowly over gentle heat or quickly over intense heat. One easy way to make that decision is by considering tenderness – and whether you are seeking to preserve it by cooking as little as possible, or to create it through slower cooking at lower temperatures.

The same kind of thinking applies to the composition of a kitchen solution tailored to household needs, with the ability to flex and expand with your needs. An Ultimate Kitchen Solution is composed of complementary appliances all designed to work seamlessly together – from optimal food care (because perfect cooking begins with perfect cooling) to maintain freshness and nutrient quality to perfect cooking results. It's the ability to combine cooking techniques and temperatures. To dial in the constant temperature required for a caramel sauce, combined with perfectly poached pears wrapped in puff pastry in a combination steam oven, for mouth-watering tarte tatin, or with custard set perfectly in the Chill Mode of a multi-zoned fridge, for a smooth, silky and sophisticated crème caramel. It's the creation of any dish with the depth of flavour and textural contrast that pleases the palate.

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