Let me guess, you may have a convection oven and have never used it? Mom and I attended a convection cooking class last week and I thought I would share some things we learned . . .
Ok, this is gonna gross you out and you are probably going to turn me into the local health officials (or at least never eat at our house), but NEVER take a chunk of protein from the refrigerator to the oven. You must allow the meat to get to room temperature before cooking. Scott has done this for years and I have been a little squeamish about it, but we've never gotten sick and his steak is delicious. (this does not apply to seafood and hamburger - they must be refrigerated).
NEVER cook by time, only internal temp. Do not use the suggested internal temperature either, as that temp is for well (well well, I mean cremated) done. Keep in mind that you should not cut the meat immediately after removing from the oven, but allow it to sit for about 15 minutes. Also, keep in mind, that in that 15 minute window, the meat will continue to cook - so take out even earlier to allow for this. (the prime rib our instructor cooked, raised 30 degrees in those 15 minutes).
Use convection for everything except custards, quiches, and angel food cakes.
Reduce your oven temp 25 degrees and reduce the cooking time by 25%. This will save you $$ as your cooking time is less. For example: If I use all the racks in our oven, I can bake a batch of cookies in 8 minutes - using conventional bake, I can only use one rack at a time and it will take about 24-32 minutes. You can also bake multiple different items without the flavors mixing.
Quit peeking in your oven! Every second the door is open the temperature drops 10 degrees. Get a remote internal probe so it's not necessary to check it all the time by opening the door.
No comments:
Post a Comment