Caso MCG 25 Ceramic Chef Microwave

Introduction

The Caso MCG 25 Ceramic Chef Microwave is a remarkably good value microwave oven, particularly as it has a flat bed, and a grill and convection oven on top of the usual features.

It offers some automated programmes to make life easier, although it lacks any sensors to automatically cook food, and its interface is a little clunky.

Design and Features

• Flatbed design
• Grill and oven features
• Slightly clunky controls

With its 25-litre capacity, the CASO MCG 25 Ceramic Chef Microwave is an average size for a countertop microwave. There are bigger microwaves available, but the smaller size here makes it easier to place the microwave on a countertop without losing too much space.

I like the mirrored finish to it, although it does make it almost impossible to take decent photos, and the surface is prone to picking up fingerprints.

There’s a large door eject button that’s clearly labelled, which swings the microwave open and ready for use.

Inside, there’s an integrated glass plate on the flat bottom. I’m a big fan of flatbed microwaves, as you can fit bigger and odd-sized dishes in them, such as rectangular casserole dishes.

There are a couple of accessories in the box, too: a wire shelf that clips into the supports so that you can use the grill or cook on two levels, and a round baking tray with legs.

Basic controls are available via the front panel, with buttons for all of the cooking modes, although the microwave features don’t get their own mode. Instead, I had to hit the Power button to cycle through the modes: 900W, 810W, 720W, 630W, 540W, 450W, 360W, 270W, 180W and 90W. There’s also a mode that says P000, which is just a low power mode at less than 10% of the microwave’s maximum output.

Don’t hit the Time button thinking that this lets you set the time; instead, there’s a control dial at the bottom to turn.

If you want to skip all of this, the Play button doubles up as a quick start option: one press sets the microwave for 30s, two presses for 1m and then 1m increments. After a short pause, the microwave starts automatically.

Other modes are available. Grill just needs you to set a time for it to run. Micro & Grill has two options (1 or 2), but these are presets and aren’t explained well in the manual. Apparently, 1 is 30% microwave and 70% grill for the cooking time, and 2 55% microwave and 45% grill. Some help as to which mode is best for different foods would have been nice.

Convection lets you set a temperature in 10°C increments between 200°C and 100°C. I had to hit the Convection button multiple times to change the temperature, as the Power button doesn’t do anything here. This mode has a preheat and the microwave beeps when ready, much like a traditional oven.

Microwave and Convection mode uses both cooking modes, and let me set temperatures of 200°C, 170°C, 140°C and 110°C.

There are also some preset programmes, accessed by turning the dial anti-clockwise and then selecting the number you want. Conveniently, the programmes are listed on the door and include: potatoes, popcorn, pasta, poultry, defrost, hot drink, reheat, fresh dough pizza and cake.

With these modes, some are time-based, selectable by hitting the Time button, others give you a weight or number count option, but how the modes are selected varies.

For example, select the Defrost programme and you have to select the run time, which I did by hitting the Time button and then using the dial. Selecting Potatoes, you have to choose how many potatoes you want. This is done by hitting the Time / Weight button, but the control dial doesn’t work here; instead, I had to hit the Time / Weight button multiple times.

Confusingly, the manual says that the Potatoes programme gives the option of 1, 2, or 3 potatoes, but the microwave only goes up to 2.

Multi-stage cooking is available, where you select one cooking mode to start with (such as defrost), and then a secondary cooking mode. It could be a good time saver, but I prefer to run one mode at a time and get the right results.

Overall, the user interface isn’t terrible, but I did find that when using the CASO MCG 25 Ceramic Chef Microwave, I spent a lot of time hitting the wrong buttons and getting error beeps while I got used to how it worked.

Performance

• Good microwave performance
• Integrated programmes hit and miss
• Useful combi mode

I tested the CASO MCG 25 Ceramic Chef Microwave with a variety of different tests to see how well it performed. I started with my simple microwave test, warming up rice. Using a thermal camera, you can see that the rice is nicely and evenly cooked, with the colder (purple) parts of the image where the rice was added into a colder bowl.

I used the defrost programme to defrost four slices of bread. As there’s no automatic timer, I had to manually set the microwave, and then check the bread every 30 seconds or so. From the thermal image, you can see that the bread has some cold spots in the middle of each slice, which felt a little cold to the touch, but after a minute or two out in the open, the bread was nicely defrosted.

I then tried a few of the microwave’s more advanced modes, starting with the potato programme. This option just used the microwave to cook the potato, which came out soft in the middle, but the skin was a bit dull and not crispy.

I switched to the combination grill and microwave mode, after coating the potato in oil, which gave me much better results. At the end of cooking, the inside of the potato was nice and fluffy, and the outside was crispy and tasty.

I used the convection oven to cook some oven chips. These normally need to be cooked at 210°C, but the microwave only goes to 200°C, so they needed to be cooked for longer. After cooking, I saw that the microwave had used 0.455kWh of power (not including the warm-up time). That’s about the same amount of power that a small oven uses.

The chips were similar to those cooked in an oven: decent outside and fluffy enough on the inside. If you need extra oven space, it’s handy that you can have it in the CASO MCG 25 Ceramic Chef Microwave; for the best results, I’d use one of my best air fryers.

Using the grill alone with four slices of bread, the overall result wasn’t very even, with the slice at the back right quite underdone. It’s worth bearing in mind, and turning the food regularly to get even results.

Should you buy it?

FAQs