Cuisinart CSO-300 Steam and Convection Combo Oven - Silver | Perfect for Baking, Roasting & Healthy Cooking | Compact Countertop Oven for Small Kitchens

I have had this for a few months now. And boy am I so D@%# happy I got it! It is really a nice piece of kit. It has a quality to it that certainly has it appearing like a top quality item. I mostly bought it cause my old steamer, a cheap one, was giving out. I bought this and love it, I do have to change how I steam cook my items with this oven due to how it works... my old steamer pushed steam from the bottom up, this one pushes it out from the top side on the right... It has more area inside than my older steamer, so I have to think about where I place my potato and such in it. my old steamer had a two tray system, and I do miss that. So I had to re think of how to cook things in this steamer as it only has the one tray. Luckily it has a bigger inner area.. I have found a few glass pans that I can put side by side, one for rice, another for a pan or another glass bowl. When I steam the rice, I am able to steam frozen chicken at the same time, 45 minutes, and I'm done... it's great...There is another neat feature that lets you broil and steam at the same time, didn't think you could do that. But you can, and I have tried it on a few things already. It's great and nice, cause you can get a nice juicy item, but then it broils and gives the outer edge of the food a more crunch of sorts. It's pretty neat what you can do with this...BTW, the steamer only uses about 698 watts of power, and that is only when it's steaming... it steams on and off, but inside the temperature is kept steady, so it's not necessary using 698 watts the entire time. It's about double that when you broil too.I have read people saying it's difficult to clean. It nearly deterred me from getting this item. But now that I have it, I have no idea what their problem is about cleaning this steamer? It even tells you how to do it properly in the manual. Anyhow, it's soooo not difficult to clean out at all, not one bit!One thing I did do as preparation of getting this item was to buy myself one of them thick cutting boards that was pretty close to the size of this oven, it's slightly bigger. I did this cause I was not sure just how much the heat could damage my counter top, so I would recommend anyone buying this item to do the same thing, they are like only $14.Also, be sure to ALWAYS empty the water tray after each use, one hour of steaming in just the steam only mode can fill up the water drip tray.I certainly recommend this to anyone that wants to eat more healthy, steaming foods is a great way to start. I rarely even add any spices to my foods cause the juicy foods are so delish!Few Tips:An average size potato, scrubbed and rinsed off in water, takes about 45 minutes, and bigger heavier potato will take at least ten more minutes to steam. Rice in a bowl, I prefer glass bowl, fill the bowl with 1.5 cups of clean water and 1 cup of rice for 45 minutes... but in the last five minutes add a "Knorr homestyle Stock (concentrated stock) such as chicken flavor and add some shredded carrots, let that steam the last 5 minutes and you have a damn good rice... Frozen boneless chicken slabs, lightly rub your choices of cooking oil on it, not much as it's frozen and quickly add your already blended spices to it, cook from frozen for 45 minutes, same goes for frozen boneless fish slabs... so damn good, I often just cook them with out spices and they are juicy, well heated, and yummy... And set your steamer to the 210 F setting for all these tips. Broccoli, chopped carrots, cauliflower, really only needs about 7 minutes of cooking at 210 F steaming... and all these are only on the STEAM ONLY option. And ALWAYS empty the slide out tray at the bottom of the door, it's the drain excess water, it can fill up good on the 210F in an hour of steaming... I have also cooked rice and chicken at the same time, I found the perfect glass container to cook the rice in and I use the included pan with rack for the chicken. Fits perfectly beside each other... Hope this helps!The CSO-300 is a home version of a commercial CombiOven that lets commercial chefs use steam along with radiant heat. Its operation is easier done than described, but everything starts with a big chrome click wheel. The click wheel rotates to select between operating modes (there are nine), then a push of the click wheel lets you set temperature within the operating mode, and another push lets you set time. You then push a separate stop/start button to begin the cooking. It's easier than it sounds, although the black-on-blue LCD display isn't as legible as you might think. The only other front button controls the oven light.The nine cooking modes are Toast, Convection Bake, Bake Steam, Broil, Broil Steam, Steam, Super Steam, Bread, and Warm. It does remember the settings within each mode, so that if you like your Toast at setting 3, it remembers that for next use.I was underwhelmed with the quality of the CSO-300's accessories. The baking pan, chromed wire shelf, and chromed wire roasting rack are laughably cheap and warp in the dishwasher. Think Mattel EZ-Bake Oven quality.Another big disappointment is the manual that ships with the product. The operations manual has one table showing suggested times for food categories, but this is minimally useful. If you want to dry-roast you can refer to traditional cookbooks or convection books, but the whole point of this oven is to combine steam and radiant heat and they're aren't a lot of consumer references to help (the Williams Sonoma website does have a few more recipes). The same printed manual (turn it over and read from the back) serves as the cookbook. Unfortunately, the recipes are inappropriate for someone just learning combination cooking (steam plus baking or broiling). There are 32 recipes in no discernible order. Not all of them even use the oven (e.g., champagne vinaigrette?). Several are overnight recipes or rely on previous preparation of other recipes. For example, the Red Chile Pork taco filling sounds great...but it takes 3 hours, and you have to already have made the Red Chile Sauce, which takes 80 minutes...and the Red Chile Sauce assume you've already made the Roasted Tomatoes, which take 20 minutes. This is nothing but food porn if you've come home from work and need to cook dinner. Even worse, the recipes are badly written and have obvious errors. For example, the recipe for roast chicken says to season the whole chicken with pepper, "toss with the garlic and fresh herbs" then "marinate" overnight.Steam comes from a reservoir on the right side of the oven that you remove to fill, much like a single-serve pod-style coffeemaker. The tank is large enough that it lasts for a full cooking cycle. Preheating is very fast in convection baking. You can cook rice, proof bread, or bake bread with steam for an artisanal crust. Steam begins within a minute or two when a steam cooking mode is selected, and it's of impressive volume. Adding steam during cooking makes for surprisingly moist meat roasts. Overall I found the food quality to be very good. Roasted/steamed veggies are moist and deliciously caramelized. The machine produced passable slow-cooked ribs (tender and moist) in a couple of hours. Dry roasting is good. Be aware of the pull-out drip pan beneath the machine that catches condensed steam, as dumping it in the sink is precariously like carrying a wide flat roasting pan full of water.Cooks well, looks great, but minus one star for horrible manual and minus another star for cheap build quality in accessories.An 8" Lodge cast iron skillet fits well inside. A small (11.75" x 8.25") Silpat fits on the shelf but not flat within the baking pan.