Electric cooker temperature

Best way I know to get spuds to brown well is to put them in the oven in the usual way,and then go out to the workshop for a few minuets just to finish off that little job. By the time you get back to the kitchen,your spuds will be well and truly browned,perhaps even black ! At least,they will be different. Some might not like them,but you can,t please everyone.

From experience,many times over,I can vouch for this method,but it can work out a bit expensive if you like spuds.

Some cooks are a bit iffy about using this approach,so check first.

For roasties, my wife reckons the goose fat from the Christmas dinner cooking is the bees knees for getting her spuds perfect almost every time. We don’t have roasts that often and there is always spare goose fat stored in little packages in the freezer. I’m not complaining.

Sounds like it could be localised volts drop, some may have noticed that modern ovens tend to top out at lower temps than they used too. (190, instead of 220). Oven stats are either liquid or gas operated, and tend to simply quit altogether, they used to be adjustable, but I doubt they are today. Incidentally, Nominal UK mains voltage is 240V, due to EU harmonisation, engineers were told that if asked, they had to say that the voltage was 230V all over the EU. The engineers gave this request VERY short shrift!

If the volts go down then the amps go up to compensate.

Start with a new thermostat.

Not so. The element is a resistor and if the volts drop so do the amps. The thermostat controls the heat by switching the element on and off, not by varying the resistance. During periods of low voltage the oven compensates by keeping the element on longer. Although it gets up to temperature eventually, the oven reacts more slowly because the element is less powerful than normal.

The sluggishness causes most trouble when the cook keeps opening the door to check progress because things are cooking more slowly than normal...

Dave

If that were the case we would never even need to turn anything on? Zero volts would provide infinite current!

Unfortunately, for you , there are Laws of Physics and Ohm’s Law is one of them.

Commonly written as V = IR, where V is volts, I is current in amperes and R is resistance measured in Ohms.

We had a new Belling cooker last year and the wife had the same problem so I checked the oven temp and it was about 15degree low. Anyway we called the man in (under warranty) and he reset the thermostat correctly and he said that the ovens were generally set low. All good after that

Lionel

SOD and NDIY so very true, getting my systems crossed, I'll go sit in the corner for a while.

Simon Collier, in an earlier post, described proper roast tatties technique, as taught me by SWMBO and it works OK for me. She has complained about cookers taking longer Sunday and Bank Hol. mornings, suggests that there is a higher load on the mains. When she said this, she was unaware that my Mother said exactly the same. Nothing changes. Very important to not keep opening the door to check. I guess that's why we have a light at the back and a glass inner door.

Off to workshop now to butcher more metal and finish off yet another of my many roundtoits.

John

People who can see through the glass door spend too much time cleaning. Just think, that time could be spent doing something productive. Your food never actually touches the oven itself, so who cares if it's a bit grimy.

Not done it yet: I agree with goose fat. A sprinkling of coarse salt helps, too. OK, it's a heart attack waiting to happen, but I'm sure it does no harm now and again! I've never heard of voltage dropping at times when many people are cooking, but when I was a kid the gas pressure used to drop alarmingly when thousands of mums were cooking Sunday lunches. That was in the days when coal gas came from the gas works half a mile away, and there was no gas grid.

Mike, if an extra sprinkling of salt is a heart attack waiting to happen then I should be very worried because when I was in the RAF and stationed in the Middle East we had to consume huge salt tablets on a daily basis, the theory was it replaced the salt lost from sweating. The practice was abandoned after an airman was hospitalised with gut trouble and eventually they removed a large mass of undisolved salt tablets from his intestines. Those in authority don’t always get it right, especially the establishment. Apologies for sidetracking the thread.

Dave W