Elementary Chef

Most people have both a regular stove and a microwave, some will also have a convection oven.

If you go into an appliance store, there will be a mind-blowing variety of cooktops, ovens, and microwaves in all kinds of configurations. We’ll work with what you’ve already got, though, because the same set of rules apply to most.

Right now let’s talk about traditional stoves and ovens.

You might be lucky enough to have the owner’s manual around, so it’s a good idea to read it, if you’ve got it. Most manufacturers of this kind of equipment also have the owner’s manuals available online for more-recent models, if you really want to find one. There might be some unusual features you’ve wondered about, so that’s a good place to start in that case.

If you’re used to nuking everything, what you’ll find with standard stoves is that cooking most things with them takes longer. It takes about 20 minutes at 350 degrees to heat up leftover pizza, but things like pasta (boiling noodles by themselves) takes about the same amount of time.

Like many things in life there’s a trade-off. Pizza and bread items taste much better heated in a traditional oven; other things benefit from the range of temperatures you can get from a traditional stove. It may well be worth the time.

You most likely have either an electric or gas stove. Gas is preferred by professional chefs, because you have immediate temperature control. When you turn it on or off, the heat level you want is right there, unlike electric stoves, which take time to heat up, and time to cool down. If you’ve got an electric stove, it’s a good idea to keep that in mind. If a recipe says, “remove from heat,�? you’ll need to take the pan off the burner and set it on one that’s turned off, or on some other heatproof surface if all your burners are in use. On a gas stove, you only need to turn the burner off.

Whether you’ve got gas or electric, you’ll hardly ever need to use the highest heat setting. The only time you really need that is if you’ve got a BIG pot of water to boil for pasta, or an equally-big pot of soup you’re making from scratch. Otherwise, too-high heat can scorch both the sides of your pan and the contents. You’re not really going to save yourself any time by turning it on full blast. My ex-mother-in-law was really good at serving frozen vegetables that had bits of burnt mixed in with bits of ice when she was in a hurry. ;>)

There’s really not much you can do about the time it takes something to cook on a stove. It takes the time it takes.

No matter which kind of stove you’ve got, you might not know that the oven settings may not always give you the temperature it says. Even though it says 350 degrees, you may be getting 250 or even 450. The way to check this is to get an oven thermometer at wally world or someplace like that, and check it out. If it seems you’re always burning stuff, it might not be your fault!

If everything seems to take way too long to cook, it also could be you’re opening the oven and checking it too much. Remember every time you open the oven, you let out heat, and then the oven has to kick in again and get back up to the right temp. This fluctuation in temperature is especially bad for cakes.