Guide to cooking with a convection oven
If you are thinking of buying a new oven then one of the ones that you’ll be thinking about getting is a convection oven. But how do they work? Convection oven cooking works – surprisingly – by a process called convection that applies to both liquids and gas when they are heated above the temperature of the surrounding material.
Basically, convection ovens use a fan which is usually situated at the back of the oven to move around warmed air inside the cavity. The reason that this is done is because it allows the heat to be spread out over the cavity of the oven so that the food is cooked much more evenly. It also makes sure that the food is cooked a bit quicker because the fan gets rid of the thin insulating layer of air between the food and the rest of the oven cavity. So as you can see, convection oven cooking does have some major benefits over other kinds of cooking ovens that you could buy, especially if it is important for you to have evenly cooked food.
Because the food is cooked more evenly, it means you can much more easily control the food being cooked to stop it getting burned. Not only that, but because cooking the food saves time you obviously save a lot of money on energy and help the environment at the same time.
However if you are going to do convection oven cooking then you need to be aware of some slight difference when it comes to cooking the food correctly. First of all you should cook the food at a slightly lower temperature than you would in a normal oven – often around 35 degrees less. This is because the food will cook quicker and require a lower temperature to do so in a convection oven.
Also because of the way that a convection oven works if you use a high sided baking tray the air will not circulate well, so make sure that you use a low sided baking tray for best results.
Convection oven cooking times are often a bit shorter too, which is another benefit of cooking with convection oven. So if you are cooking turkey in convection oven this Christmas make sure you keep this in mind!
These difference don’t mean that you can’t cook all foods in a convection oven though – you can – as long as you account for the differences in the way the food cooks.