Source
r/Cooking•
PostingInPublic

Cooks of reddit, what are some good guidelines for choosing an oven temperature?

When you develop a recipe, how do you choose a good oven temperature? What are some general guidelines? What type of dishes or ingredients would prompt you to choose a specific oven temperature? What about higher temperature vs. longer cooking time?

Background: I'm asking because I just cooked a vegan "gratinated" dish for 70 minutes and everything turned into a mush! Should I have selected 250°C instead of 220°C to facilitate faster evaporation?

(Speaking of °C, if you could give °C that would simplify reading for me but I will convert the temperatures myself if you won't.)

Many thanks in advance!

Posted Sep 2, 2018, 7:19 PM UTC

10839
manhead666•

It's just a balancing act between browning and cooking through. Depends on the size of what you're cooking, what it's made of, and how well cooked you need it.

I would recommend using 180 C as a 'baseline' temp, and moving either side of that according to desired outcome.

Some temps that I use for reference: Roast potatoes200C Roast beef sirloin, pork loin etc 220 for 20 minutes followed by 120 until cooked to 50c internal temp. Slow roast meat (pork shoulder, beef short ribs etc) 140c Bread 220c for 10 minutes, then drop to 180 Cauliflower cheese 180 Lasagne 160c up to 200 for the last 10 minutes

If in doubt, I would suggest starting at a lower temp, and increasing it once the ingredients are cooked through to brown.

Hope this helps!

33
MobiusCube•

180C = 350 in freedom units.

22
asparagus_p•

You spelled "archaic" wrong

3†
ricree•

How does that help differentiate the two?

#KelvinForAll

6
asparagus_p•

It's a joke, as a rebuttal to the joke "freedom units".

1
squeezyphresh•

Or if the dish is pretty flat, you could broil it to finish.

5
CherryInHove•

There is a serious eats article about roast beef and they recommend doing the low and slow until it hits about 48 then resting for 30 mins or so, then doing the highest temperature possible for about 5 mins. It really helps with keeping the inside all pink but you still get a great crust.

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SavageOrc•

Easiest way, borrow a temperature from a similar recipe (preferably something you've used before) to get a baseline.

I've made some non-vegan vegetable gratins. The thickness of the vegetable slices makes a big difference in the final result. Thicker slices get you more texture in your end result, but take longer to cook. Thin slices can work too, but you probably needed to cook it for less time. Note that not all vegetables cook at the same rate. If you are doing some kind of mixed vegetable gratin, you'll have to play with the slices size to get it to be done at the same time.

27
permalink_save•

Another way to cheat, just cook them in the oven on a sheet first then assemble the gratin. Like kohlrabi never cooks properly for me, it is one that really needs to cook then be added since it's really unlikely it will overcook.

6
SavageOrc•

I like this.

It could be more than a cheat. You could use it to get some more browning and get some flavor. Or you could grill the slices to keep the oven off during the summer and just use the broiler or a torch to melt the cheese.

2
boomslander•

I don’t know why I’ve never thought of this, but it makes perfect sense. Any recipes you recommend to work on this technique?

3
SavageOrc•

https://ww2.kqed.org/essentialpepin/2011/09/11/gratin-dauphinoise/

This is a pretty classic recipe. I've used other root vegetables, but I like rutabaga the best as a potato substitute. I tried squash once, and cooked it too long. It tasted good but had the consistency of a mash rather than gratin.

Until you have more of a feel for it, you may need to test it with a knife more frequently get a sense of the timing relative to the thickness of your slices/your oven.

You could probably also use a thermometer to help you get more consistent results, but I've never bothered because testing with a knife worked well enough for me.

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boomslander•

Awesome. Thanks!

2
FluffyBlizzard•

I'll start out by saying this is more of an experience thing rather than a book learned type of skill, but I'll still try to provide some examples. Also I'll be using F° instead of C but just because that's what's used here in NA and the numbers aren't too relevant, it's more the concepts.

For most general cooking, an oven temp of 325-425 is fine if you are just heating things up really and not looking for specific textures or anything, you just need to know when to check things.

Some things, like large pieces of fatty meat, you want to start really high to render fat, then go low to cook the inside without burning the outside. Other large pieces of meat you want to go low all the way for a long time to break down all the tough tissue and make it tender.

Things you want crispy you'll want to end high, and things with just a top you want crispy like a gratin you want to warm through at a moderate temp and finish high like 450 or with the broiler to get that crispy top if it hasn't happened yet by the time its warmed through.

Other things like say some cakes, you want to keep relatively low like 300 to cook properly.

You just need to know how things react and plan accordingly, most of that comes from experience

12
BullshitBlocker•

It also helps to think of it like the temp setting on a stove - exact temperatures don't really matter too much. (Again, using F° because 'Murica)

Low: 250-275

Med: 325-375

High: 400+

Also, like cooking on a stove you don't want to just set a timer and forget about it. Keep an eye on it and adjust time/temp as necessary.

8
permalink_save•

exact temperatures don't really matter too much

Except for baking, if a recipe says 350 don't use 325 or 375 unless you know your oven is off or are using convection that doesn't self adjust.

2
cicadaselectric•

Knowing your oven is so important. Knowing if it runs hot or cold, adjusting for convect, if it has hotspots. I screw up everything for a little while when I move, because each stove and oven behave differently.

1
permalink_save•

I finally got an oven thermometer, bit too late now that we bought a house but it was good to know. I should probably get an infrared thermometer to both test the stovetop and they sound generally handy.

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[deleted]•

[removed]

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Deskopotamus•

Regarding meat I find it's usually better to start low with fat or heavy connective tissue, then finish with high heat if you need to brown it.

Browning is pretty easy, so it's really about getting your internal temp to the right spot then finishing it quickly.

Obviously there are exceptions to this though.

2
zekromNLR•

Also, in general: If you have a recipe and change it to differently-sized pieces, when going up in size, you generally want to reduce the temperature a bit and increase the time - as just increasing the time (required to get the proper core temperature) without decreasing the temperature risks overbrowning/burning the food.

This is especially apparent with bread: While a (Italian-style, i.e. thin-crust) pizza, which is thin and thus cooks quickly, will want to bake for just a few minutes at however high your oven goes, rolls bake for ~15-20 minutes by something like 250 C, while a proper loaf of bread bakes for around an hour at around 230 to 200 C. If you baked the loaf of bread at 250 C the entire time, it would end up burned on the outside.

1
reverendfrag4•

Tree fiddy.

6
ghanima•

It's a solid all-purpose temperature. Converts to 180C.

2
Miqotegirl•

You can always cook a dish or meat more. You can’t “uncook” a dish though.

5
vapeducator•

You need to provide the actual recipe that you used for us to tell you where the problem lies. The gratinee part of the recipe is best done at high temp for a short amount of time, since the whole purpose is to have a browned top crust. In fact, the gratinee can be considered as a completely separate process that you do under an oven broiler, a salamander broiler, a salamander iron, a Searzall torch attachment, or a culinary torch. Therefore, what's under the gratinee should be cooked the minimum time possible to become tender to preserve its flavor, color and texture without overcooking it. 70 minutes seems way too long and 220°C too hot, probably because the recipe maker was trying to find a middle ground between a more normal cooking temp of 180°C with higher browning temp.

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PostingInPublicOP•

Ok, so bear with me, I'm just a hobby cook. We're in a teach-a-man-to-fish situation right here :)

I'm usually watching the evaporation of the liquid (typically cream) and if it's mostly evaporated, I consider it done. I'm expecting a fatty, crispy residue on top and on the sides. The starchy stuff in the gratin should yield a nice coagulation(?), a very thick sauce-like consistency. The dish should stick together in a sense so you can lift parts of it out of the pyrex dish in one piece.

So I've got these dimensions of the dish, evaporation of "cream", crispyness on top, and doneness of the ingredients, right? Which I'd define to be: mostly evaporated, fairly crispy and very done. I think arguments might be had about the doneness though :)

So there is no recipe, because I'm not a recipe-cook, but this is what I've done the first time. The idea was to have a gratin, like an indian curry. The main ingredients are sweet potato and cauliflower.

Half a cauliflower, cut into half-flowers, toss the stem

one sweet potato, peeled and cut into cubes

half a tin of coconut milk

some ginger, some garlic

salt and pepper, some chili powder

some oil, ground almonds

Sprinkle pyrex dish with some oil, add sweet potato and cauliflower. Add spices. Mix. On top, add minced ginger+garlic. Using a spoon, add dollops of coconut milk on top. Sprinkle liberally with ground almonds. Bake for ~50 mins at ~180°C I believe.

That recipe turned out OK, but I had to turn it in the middle, because the cauliflower would dessicate and become ugly and char in other places.

So next time I've used the other half of the tin mixed with some 100ml of soy milk and all the other ingredients mixed into it so it was a cream-like consisteny, yielding the mushy, overcooked dish. The taste was still great though.

The main goal is to be able to add a sprinkle of sesame seeds on top so that they roast, but won't burn and so that I don't have to mix them under at some point to avoid extensive charring.

1
vapeducator•

OK, there's several major problems here. You're trying to run before you know how to walk. In other words, you're trying to invent new recipes without knowing what you're doing because you haven't followed enough successful recipes developed and tested by other people who have a lot more experience than you. There's nothing particularly "wrong" with your approach, but you're gonna get many more failures than successes because you don't know the underlying principles and techniques for good recipes.

In this case you're trying to make a gratinee dish on your own. But there's no need to invent a recipe like this from scratch because it's a classic French and Swiss dish that has been developed over centuries. You're basically ignoring the experience of 200 years of cooks who came before you, despite you being in the Internet age where it's ultrasimple and free to research tons of classic recipes. So besides ignoring classic gratinee recipes, you're also trying to "veganize it and convert it to all vegetables instead of using potato: the original main ingredient.

You're looking at the wrong thing for doneness. Evaporation of the coconut milk has nothing to do with the doneness of the vegetables. Evaporation should be minimal and unpredictable because it isn't desireable to cook down the liquid in the oven where things will quickly burn if they dry out. You do NOT want the coconut milk to have its water content to be evaporated away for it to thicken. That's not how the original gratinee recipe works, which is to have the liquid of the milk become absorbed and thickened by the starch of the sliced potatoes.

So let's go back to the original gratinee, which is actually called Gratin Dauphinois. Instead of converting entirely to cauliflower and sweet potato, instead use potato for half the dish and only these veggies for the other half. Maintain the integrity of the recipe by thinly slicing the potato, cauliflower, and sweet potato on a mandolin, as shown on the following video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=65&v=YvpYyfRkxSI

First, use a casserole dish of similar size shown. Use crushed fresh garlic to coat the inside surfaces of the dish. Use vegan margarine to coat the inside of the dish (not oil-which won't stick).

Go ahead and add a bit of your vegan milk substitute to just barely cover the bottom the dish. Layer the veggies in the following manner, from the bottom up: potato on bottom, cauliflower, sweet potato, and regular potato. Season lightly with salt, pepper, nutmeg between each layer of veggies. Add your coconut milk or other vegan milk substitute only on top of the potato layers until it is covered, then repeat for the next layer. Why is the order important? You want potato on bottom because it will cook and brown without burning so easily as the other veggies. You want potato on top in contact with the milk substitute so that its starch will thicken the liquid and make the smooth sauce during baking. The next layer has potato on top and bottom for the same reasons in reverse. Potato on the bottom thickens the milk to make the sauce while the potato on top will brown nicely to make the gratinee (browned crust on top). The cauliflower and sweet potato layers will always be interior and protected from direct heat. They also won't be as effective as regular potato for releasing starch to thicken the milk.

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PostingInPublicOP•

Hi, thanks for the detailed explanation! Of course you're right when you criticize that I'm changing too much at once, instead of working incrementally from known-good methods, I'll keep that in mind. I'll reference your post the next time I'm attempting that dish! Thanks and have a great day!

1
ferrouswolf2•

Not an answer to your question, but try to dry wet veggies before you combine them. Courgette/squash/aubergine/anything that’s juicy when you cut it should be dried before being combined with other ingredients.

You can do this by salting, pressing, , sauteeing or roasting.

For potato or zucchini pancakes you’d grate and then press the veggies before adding your binder. For ratatouille you’d salt and then roast your eggplant and squash, after sautéing your peppers and onions.

Don’t rely on baking to evaporate moisture.

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PostingInPublicOP•

But it very likely is :) I was trying for sweet potato + cauliflower, and the moisture in the cauliflower made the cooking process take way too much time!

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sean_incali•

I'm asking because I just cooked a vegan "gratinated" dish for 70 minutes and everything turned into a mush!

veggies when heated releases a lot of liquids. it's not so much the oven temp, but if you had it covered or uncovered.

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PostingInPublicOP•

Thanks, what difference exactly do you think covered/uncovered makes? I'd think longer cooking time and less charring/caramelization on top, right?

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sean_incali•

if you cover the top, the liquid just drips back into the pan instead of evaporating.

1
Hordensohn•

I got burned... Well exactly not that.... Many, many times.

It depends on how your oven is heated and how old it is. Also what heating modes does it have.

Do some low impact recipes first, and check how yours goes with general heating guidelines. Reference points. Here, the browning on Casserole was a giveaway from me that mine was under what people said. Now I either up the heat, ramp it up, or add broiler.

Oh well, now I have developed a feel for when I need to up or down the temp, shift it, add the broiler, or cover with foil.

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ThePearlyOne23•

Cook everything at 400. Everything!

2
aikaterinex•

The thing to keep in mind is the heat is usually coming from the top (& sometimes bottom) if the oven so turning it up by 30c will likely crisp the outside but leave the inside mushy.

Anything that needs 0-30+ minutes cooking I would say 180c If it is in for 1.5 hours+ I would go with 160c Things that are premade like nuggets should be 220c - they don’t take long

If you use fan bake, reduce the temperature by 20c. If you are struggling to keep things moist or they burn cover in tin foil

Hope this helps!

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Babydontcomeback•

Trefidy

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[deleted]•

[removed]

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manhead666•

That is a great method. My only words of caution would be to make sure you know how you're going to manage your potatoes etc as they probably won't react too well to having the oven blasting away at maximum to finish your beef. It's an 'ideal world' technique that isn't always going to work in reality.

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