You found the perfect recipe, the picture is truly jaw dropping, you chop/stir/whip and prepare all of your ingredients following the recipe to the ‘t’. Into the oven it goes and man, you can’t wait for this baby to get done. Triple checking the recipe to ensure that your timer is set to the right time and most importantly the temperature.
Finally your timer goes off and as you slowly pull open the oven door you’re met not with that picture perfect dish in the recipe but some burnt-beyond-a-crisp-unrecognizable-dessert??? or something that’s so raw it’s still moving! WTH man! All that hard work, not to mention all those ingredients….wasted! You’re mad and rightly so. You blame the blogger or chef and, if it comes from a website, blast the blogger about how their recipe sucked. And even if hundreds of other folks are raving over the recipe you’re convinced that all those rave reviews are fake because there is no way theirs turned out when yours does.
Trust me I get it. It’s frustrating when recipes don’t work out. I’m not talking about when the taste is just nasty but when something burns when it’s supposed to take 30 minutes to bake but is burnt to a crisp in 15 minutes. Unless you’re Oprah-rich, we don’t have the luxury of wasting ingredients. Us “common” folks have to truly be mindful of our finances and what we spend it on.
As a blogger and recipe engineer (yes, engineer cause I’m nerd like that), the worst thing that can happen is that someone makes your recipe and it’s a total and utter failure. You take it personally; it’s hard when someone says your recipe sucked. You see when I create a recipe I make it multiple times to get the flavor exactly where I want it. Then I post it…NOT! Nope, not yet. Once I have the flavors perfect and the recipe written I then go the next step: Repeatable Quality. I then make the recipe EXACTLY as it’s written several times. I want to ensure that the recipe I post turns out the way I expect it to EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. Is it overkill? It is ridiculously expensive ingredient-wise? Is it overkill? Is it a bit obsessive? Yep but I take pride in what I post. Blame it on my uber-nerd background but it’s how I am.
Now it’s not to say that when the recipe is actually written and posted that something got omitted or fat-fingered. While you check a billion times, sometimes you simply don’t see the obvious and it takes someone else to point it out. We’re human, people are fallible. But when someone says something didn’t bake right meaning it was raw or burnt then, for me, that raises a flag. For me I always ask if they’ve tested their internal oven temperature lately.
Ovens can run hot or cold even though the temp is “supposed” to be set to a specific temperature it may not be actually that temperature internally. The first time t happened to me I was devastated as I took it personally. I questioned my skills as a home chef. Then Mr. Fantabulous said “when’s the last time you checked the oven temp?” Huh? I checked a billion times what I had the temp set to. Pfft – what’s he talking out? Then he said “No honey, when’s the last time you tested the temperature INSIDE the oven to make sure it was actually the temperature you have it set to?”
WHA??? Whus’that? How do you do that? So out came my $6 Oven Thermometer, the oven was set to 350 and into that oven my thermometer went. I sat there in front of my oven door just staring at the thermometer temp rising. Then my oven beeped that it was at 350F…or so I thought. Peeking through the window my thermometer was reading at 400F. Whoa, wait? So I waited a bit more.. still 400F. I ran 3 more tests and AH HA… my oven was running hot. But now what? Great… I needed a new oven…or so I thought. Now don’t get me wrong, I’d love a new oven but it wasn’t in the budget. But what was, was a new thermostat.
What’s a thermostat??? The thermostat is the part of the oven that is charged with regulating the oven’s temperature. This component monitors the interior temperature of the oven, turning on and shutting off the heat source according the temperature setting. Thermostats are present in both gas and electric ovens.
A quick fix by Mr. Fantabulous – mine needed replaced but others can just be recalibrated (don’t ask me how ask my husband as he’s that type of engineer) and my oven worked perfectly after that. 350F was actually 350F!
So on this week’s Tuesday’s Tip with The Kitchen Whisperer I’m sharing with you the most easiest way to test your internal oven temperature.
→ Place an oven-safe thermometer on the middle rack and heat the oven to 350 F.
→ When the oven indicates it has reached that temperature, check the thermometer.
→ Without opening a door, take the oven’s temperature.
→ HOWEVER you need to repeat this test a few times. So take three more temperature readings every 20 minutes without opening the oven door. Remember, Repeatable Quality
→ Take 4 readings, calculate their average by adding all 4 temperature readings then dividingdivide by four. If the average is between 325 F and 375 F, your oven is accurate and calibrated.
→ So now what? Either adjust your recipe to reflect what your internal temperature is. If the recipe reads “bake at 350F” and your oven reads 325F, then set your oven to 375F to bake at 350F. A pain I know but it’s free. Or call a repairman to remediate this.
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