What is convection Oven Cooking?
Convection Roast for Electric Ovens
Learn about the benefits of using the Convection Roast Mode in your oven. Not only will meats be flavorful and juicy, you can cook an entire meal at one time on multiple racks. Convection ovens (fan assisted cooking) are designed to work for you. Watch my videos and see how easy it can be.
Best Uses
Roasting large or small cuts of meat, fish, and vegetables and cooking an entire meal at one time.
Roasting Large Cuts of Meat.
Meats should be cooked on a rack in a shallow pan allowing the heat to circulate around the meat and penetrate from the edge to the center. Large roasts such as bone-in Rib Roasts can be cooked directly on the roasting pan as the bones create a natural rack.
Temperatures: typically a higher temperature for searing is recommended at the beginning of the cooking time but too high a cooking temperature over a long cooking time can result in overcooked edges and underdone center. No basting or turning is necessary as the rack prevents the juices from being leached out of the meat.
Timing: cooking time for large roasts is reduced substantially in Convection, while smaller roasts generally cook in stated recipe time. If your oven is equipped with a meat probe using it when roasting large cuts of meat of 5lbs and over will prevent overcooking. Otherwise, check the meat with an instant-read thermometer â…” of the way through the stated recipe time to determine the degree of doneness. Always add resting and carving time to the overall cooking time. 10 minutes for smaller cuts of meat 20 - 30 minutes for larger cuts of meat.
Cooking an Entire Meal
Before you begin, calculate the cooking and resting time of the meat to determine when to add the vegetables or other side dishes. Ideally, side dishes should be ready to come out of the oven when the meat is carved and ready to serve.
Determine best rack positions to accommodate all the cooking trays and achieve desired results before heating the oven. For example, vegetables roasted on rack position 2 will benefit from the stronger heat from the bottom heating element while meats cooked on rack position 4 will benefit from the direct heat from the top heating element.
Roasting Small Cuts of Meat Small: quick-cooking cuts of meat with a cooking time of 20 - 40 minutes can be cooked directly on a rimmed baking sheet, using recipe timing and temperature.
A BRIEF INSIGHT TO THE CONVECTION OVEN
Forty years ago a new feature was introduced in ovens that came from Europe, the Convection Fan, a remarkable invention that provides many benefits over traditional oven cooking. Today, Convection is a standard feature in most ovens. However, the benefits of cooking with Convection have remained a mystery for most users. This is because recipes are not written referencing the appliances we cook with so learning the basics of cooking with these enhanced features and new technologies is the only way to benefit from using them.
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Recipes are understandably written with generic information; for example, “preheat the oven to 350 degrees.” But this simple directive poses a challenge if you have an oven that features eleven or two modes of cooking since you will first have to choose a mode to cook with before you can turn the oven on.
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The great thing about multiple modes of cooking is that you have the option to cook food in the traditional oven Mode or in a Convection Mode. With a little experimentation and practice, the results will guide you to your preference, and soon choosing the Modes that best suit the recipe you are cooking will be easy.
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Convection technology was developed by the baking industry to enable the baking of large quantities of food on multiple racks. By adding fans encircled by heating elements at the back of the oven, air could be evenly circulated ensuring all racks would cook evenly with no need to turn them.
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Convection Ovens are tools that can really simplify cooking. When you better understand how to use them, the marvelous results will give you greater confidence with your cooking overall.
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In a Convection oven, there is a heating element around the fan that is engaged in some cooking modes. However, even if the heating element is not engaged, the fan is circulating the heated air; this is still creating the Convection effect.
In addition to the Thermal Modes, Bake, Roast, and Broil many electric ovens also feature the following Convection Modes: