Meat cooking tip

Soldato
Joined
11 Jun 2003
Posts
5,056
Location
Sheffield, UK
Just a quick one.

After moving house a few times in the last 2/3 years i've found this beats the hell out of "working out" a new oven. Gets meat EXACTLY how you want it every time and removes a lot of the guesswork.

Grab an oven thermometer with temperature alarms + probes on a wire. I use a Heston Blumenthal endorsed thing but it's not highly rated (but £20 and 1 bad review was "rare is set too high" the other "doesn't work with an aga" so...)

Stick meat in oven, poke the temperature probe into the middle of it, set temperature alarm (or in my case select the rare/rare-medium/medium/medium-well/well preset) as you please on the "clock" part and let it cook. It starts shouting when the food reaches the correct temperature for the level of "done-ness" you want.

My showboating dish is beef wellington but I live with greeks who like their meat a little less rare so I use a slightly cheaper cut than fillet and cook it a wee bit more for em. So far, so good.
 
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Soldato
Joined
22 Aug 2005
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Clydebank
wow a meat thermometer. I use one of the ones you stick in and cook in the meat with a round dial. Works fine. Can probably get them in the pound shop. The digital electronic ones are good too but you need to take the meat out to use it properly
 
Soldato
OP
Joined
11 Jun 2003
Posts
5,056
Location
Sheffield, UK
I've got a meat thermometer, I rarely use it I know how done my meat is.

i've gone:

Gas + fan
Electric + fan
Gas
Electric + fan

in the space of about 3 years. Once you're used to an oven, yup, it's generally not so hard to work it out but guesswork with a £30 cut of meat is likely going to end in tears. Much easier to use the probes and judge it by temperature.

Have a friend who's dad has an oven set in a fireplace with just a thermometer on the outside. Can happily cook anything perfectly, knows exactly how intense the fire needs to be for a certain temperature and does the easter cooking for a few families of Greeks as a result. It's one he's obviously VERY familiar with though (and built himself).
 
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Soldato
Joined
14 Jan 2009
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4,325
I often cook round mates houses and have no problem switching between different kinds of ovens. Prefer fan assisted electric though.
Just keep an eye on it and you can take an estimated guess based on how it's progressing and the smell, particularly with chicken, gives it away.

Just one more bit of washing up you don't need to burden yourself with. Useful though.
 
Soldato
Joined
19 Apr 2004
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Location
London
There is no way you can consistently get different joints of meat right without using a meat thermometer, there are too many variables, even if you're using the same oven every time.
 
Soldato
Joined
7 Nov 2009
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19,798
Location
Glasgow
You need to be aware that meat often continues cooking once it comes out the oven, this is especially true with meat with bone in. You may want to adjust the time accordingly.
 
Associate
Joined
21 Nov 2002
Posts
1,586
I'm guessing he means one of these jobbies. It'd be cool to know which was best though, there's a bunch of them around the 20 quid mark.

Although it's not a remote one, therapens seem to be considered the gold standard of kitchen thermos.
 
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