There are only few things that are really sensitive towards low temperatures - cookie doughs, soufflé and maybe bread. For any other food preheating the oven ia just a waste of energy.
Food companies only write it on the instructions because the time the food needs in the oven is not valid when they have to count in the speed your oven needs to heat up.Element is on max while preheating the oven, this can overcook the surface of the food before cooking even starts.
A simple example is a frozen pizza. The crust will overcook and burn before the toppings brown.
i turn on the oven right before grabbing the pizza. by the time the pizza is unwrapped, and doctored-up if i’m gonna add something, the oven is ‘warm enough’. if a brand of pizza routinely gets done ‘too fast’ on the bottom, i put a cookie sheet on the other rack underneath the pizza with about 4 minutes left. if i add lots of cheese or other stuff to the top, i might pop on the broiler for the last minute. only need 325F regardless of what the box says, and less time than it says, and the rack the pizza is on has to go one notch higher in the oven than for everything else. my oven is stupid. it only took like 10 years of trial-and-error to figure out the best way to make a frozen pizza in it, and step 1 is ‘ignore the instructions’.
As I type, I’m eating previously frozen pizza I put in a cold oven then turned on fan mode at 180. By the time it reached temperature it was evenly cooked
Only example I needed. What else would I be putting in my oven?
Broccoli
Brussel sprouts are amazing when roasted!
I just cook it like 2-5 min longer than it says and its always tasty and fine. I never preheat. Its fine.
It really depends on what you’re doing. Consider a steak: If you put it into a cold pan and heat it up it’s going to be 110% done on the inside before you get to temperatures that cause browning – the protein is going to denature at ~70C, Maillard reactions occur at about 140-160C. So rule of thumb is if you want crisp or brown anything, you probably should blast it with some actual heat.
Then, when it comes to printed recipes: While every oven bakes differently they heat up even more differently, so if you want to give a baking time including the pre-heat is going to increase the error bar quite a lot.
And then there’s stuff that needs proper rituals to turn out good, bread is probably the best example: Preheat, steam, falling temperature. Sure you’ll get something edible if you put some dough in a cold oven but it’s not going to be nearly as good, raise strangely, have structural issues, and forget about having a proper crust.
Oh, coming back to pans: “Hot pan, cold oil”, as the Chinese say, is how you make iron pans non-stick: Without preheat not only is your steak going to be soggy, it’s also going to be glued to the pan. If you use a teflon pan at the temperatures needed for a proper sear you’ll quickly need to buy a new one while even bargain-bin iron pans are going to last generations.
Always preheat to the exact temp. Otherwise you’ll have half-assed food.
Edit somehow I got on your profile page… I was wondering why every post I commented was yours haha.
Preheat your pizza or else
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I always just never preheat but keep the food in for an extra 15% of the time it says on the recipe.
I microwave it for 2.5 times the oven time.
Name checks out.
And overcook at the same time.
I never turn my over off, so I don’t run into that problem.
Damn every oven I’ve used turns itself off after 12 hours. Fucks up my BBQ when I forget to turn it back on.
look up if your model of oven has a Shabbat mode that’ll disable auto-shutoff
like I’m sha- shabba ranks?
Dunno what that is, but legit answer: no, like sabbath. In Judaism, or at least certain branches, you’re not allowed to operate technology on Sunday. This can include not turning on your stove but (I’m assuming here) not putting food into it. I’ve heard of a similar cosmic loophole for laundry.
lol do people really do that? leave their oven on all day and pretend they’re observing the sabbath? what am i saying of course people do that…
So the thing with judiasm is that God is perfect, God made the rules, and the rules have loopholes (such as this one with the oven) therefore the loopholes are intended and exploiting them just shows how much attention you pay to the rules and how religious and observant you are.
It is one of my favorite fun facts.
Oh yeah! The difference between judeo praxis and christian intent
God can’t see it if you set it the day before. But I’m just making a guess based on the name.
TIL of Shabba Ranks the musician
You must know Josh.
I like adding “Preheat oven to 350F” as first step when sharing my recipes with friends. Even when the recipe doesn’t require use of the oven :p
:3
Bro it’s super easy and makes cooking way more consistent… You’re not cool for not preheating lol
The oven is quite cool on the other hand
You’re literally always going to be wrong
Only exception I found is bacon. Get one of those big metal baking sheets with 1-2" sides, and line it with baking paper. Lay your strips of bacon down, without them touching, and put in the oven. Set to around 425 and your bacon should be done in about 10-15 minutes once the preheat beep goes off. You figure out the time that works with your oven and bacon thickness. Memory is a little fuzzy.
I read that somewhere once and it comes out way better. Otherwise the top side never gets browned and then you try flipping them to make up for it and it sucks. This way you don’t have to mess with it and the paper absorbs most of the grease. Easy to clean up.
Yep cooking bacon slowly is the holy grail of perfectly cooked bacon
It was just amazing as I had been preheating like all the instructions said on various sites, but it never came out amazing. Found one random comment that said to NOT preheat and stick it in cold was the magic I needed. I never liked cooking bacon on the stovetop. Throwing it in the oven is easier for me and I can do bigger batches, especially with two baking pans.
I never imagined 196 being such a nasty place until I started looking through this thread. How many posts need to be made, each with dozens or hundreds of upvotes, all just saying “Then your food’s shit [you moron]!”
Like, damn, I’m pretty sure Stamets isn’t gonna beam into these people’s houses and force-feed them food cooked in a non-preheated oven. Maybe, I guess, but just stun him with a phaser if he tries it? This really seems like a non-issue of one person’s preference that doesn’t need a whole community piling onto it.
I will literally kill you if you don’t like the correct type of roman pillar decorations
Now we get into the dangerous game of guessing Doric, Ionic or Corinthian. And if you like your life extra YOLO you’ll either say Composite or Tuscan.
We’ll call this game Roman Roulette. I’m going with Corinthian.
Death
196 doesn’t always think about the Roman empire. It thinks about pillars. Doomed to
What’s funny is you’re the only one who said “you moron”
I’m angry about the way this person cooked their own food that I don’t have to see or eat!
It’s telling how many people equate preheating oven to cooking frozen pizza.
Am I the only one assuming they refer to the step at the start because the recipe will always take longer so I’d rather just wait for it to heat rather than set right away?
Not even the Stormtroopers in episode IV did that
Imagine actively deciding to make shittier food, couldn’t be me
