The oven is an indispensable assistant in the kitchen. Neither a microwave oven nor a mini-oven can replace a full-fledged oven in terms of culinary variety. In this material, we understand what can be cooked in the oven in convection mode.
How convection works
Convection ovens are equipped with one or two fans. The built-in heating elements heat the air, and the fans disperse it throughout the entire volume of the oven, ensuring fast and even heating of the chamber.
The fan can be used not only for cooking hot dishes, but also for defrosting food and for drying vegetables and fruits. In this case, you need to turn on convection without heating or with a minimum temperature. Often in ovens there are various combinations of fan operation: with lower heating, with upper, with upper and lower, with an annular heater, with a grill. Only with convection is it possible to bake large pieces of meat, cook several dishes at different levels at the same time, get a crisp, dry out excess moisture. It is suitable for almost any dish. And we will try to cook some of them and see what happens.
Electric oven Beko BBIR13300XC black 28 299 *
Cooking
Whole baked chicken
We took a chicken weighing a little over 2 kg. Let’s find out how quickly the oven will cope with such an impressive carcass.
My chicken, if there is something superfluous, we remove it. We leave the skin on the neck, it will come in handy.
We mix spices. Basic – garlic, black pepper. Curry for chicken will never be superfluous, for flavor we will add Italian herbs.
Add soy sauce and sugar. You don’t need to add salt, the sauce is already salty.
Dip the chicken in the marinade, thoroughly coat everything.
Then we put it in the refrigerator to marinate for the night or for a day.
After the chicken is marinated, you need to prepare for baking it. We will bake on the bottle. You can take any bottle, preferably with a wide neck. To drain the fat, put the bottle in a baking dish. You can also use it on a baking sheet, but which is easier to wash: a small dish or a large baking sheet? Pour water into the bottle. Half the volume or a little more.
For additional flavoring, spices can be added to the water. We put the bird on the bottle.
To prevent the wings from burning, you can make pockets in the skin and fill them there.
It’s time to put it in the oven. What is important: put in a cold oven, do not preheat!
Set the temperature to 180°C. When cooking in convection mode, you should always set it 10-20 degrees less than in normal mode. You can also select the convection mode with the participation of a circular heating element, if such a function is available in your oven. Set a timer for an hour and a half. If the chicken is smaller, then an hour should be enough.
After time, we got a great grilled chicken with a crispy crust
toasts
Not everyone has a toaster in their kitchen. In addition, if you need a lot of toast for a large company, then you will have to fiddle with the toaster for a long time. For mass preparation of toast, the convection oven is excellent. First, turn on the convection mode and set the maximum temperature.
Lay out the bread on the rack.
After the oven has warmed up, you can put the grate. We put it on the middle level. In order to brown and not overdry the bread, two minutes is enough.
The toast is ready. Now you can make sandwiches with sprats, for example.
Pies with rice, egg and onion
What oven tests can do without baking? We will bake pies and check how convection copes with a filled baking sheet.
First, let’s prepare the dough. Get a suitable mixing bowl. Dilute 11 grams of dry yeast (standard sachet) with a little warm water. Add a tablespoon of sugar.
Stir and leave until the yeast starts to work. Then add 250-300 ml of warm milk and 0.5 teaspoon of salt.
Followed by 500 g of sifted flour. Do not add all the flour at once. Add as you mix.
We cover the finished dough with a napkin and leave to rise.
After the dough has risen, take it and let it rise a second time.
You can start preparing the filling. Boil eggs and rice. Rice is better to salt when cooking. Wash and dry green onions with paper towels
Add some butter to the rice. Let it melt at room temperature. Chop the onion, eggs and mix with rice. We taste for salt, if necessary – add salt.
The dough is ready. We tear it into approximately identical lumps.
We roll, we fill, we close.
Lay on a baking sheet. If desired, you can line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
We leave the pies for 15-20 minutes for proofing. It is advisable to cover with a dry cloth.
After the pies have risen, brush them with a mixture of milk and egg yolk.
Preheat the oven to 180°C on convection mode.
Put the baking sheet in the oven on the middle level. 25 minutes to prepare is enough.
Delicious pies are ready. Everything browned and baked evenly.
Pizza
The dough is the simplest: 250 ml of warm water, 7 g of dry yeast, 500 g of flour, half a teaspoon of sugar and salt, a little vegetable oil. We put the sauce and spices on the base.
We bake the base separately at a maximum temperature of 6-8 minutes. We preheat the oven in convection mode with all heating elements or in convection mode with top and bottom heating.
We put meat products, fried mushrooms, onions on the prepared base, sprinkle with grated cheese, put tomatoes and mozzarella pieces on top.
We bake at an average level with top and bottom heating in convection mode at 180 ° C for 10-12 minutes. Delicious pizza is ready.
Turkey jerky
What can be cooked with convection only? Dried meat! And one that can not be compared in taste with unleavened meat chips from the supermarket.
Let’s start with the turkey fillet. If the meat is chilled, then it should be slightly frozen. If frozen, do not fully defrost. This will make the cutting process easier.
Cut into thin slices. Thin ones dry out faster.
A versatile marinade suitable for any meat: enough soy sauce to coat the meat, garlic, sugar, peppers. You can add a teaspoon of nitrite salt, chili flakes and chili sauce. Mix and leave to marinate for 12-24 hours. Do not need anymore
When the meat is marinated, prepare it for drying. You can simply lay it out on a wire rack, but it is better to put it on skewers and hang it up. It was decided to sprinkle some of the meat with sesame seeds. Do not repeat the author’s mistake – sprinkle all the meat with sesame seeds, it is much tastier.
Line a baking sheet with parchment. We turn on the convection mode and set the temperature to 70-80 ° C.
Place the skewers on a wire rack, leaving room between the pieces of meat for air to circulate.
Close the oven door, leaving a gap for moisture to escape. And forget about jerks for 6-8 hours. In our case, it took 8, since the meat was not cut thinly enough.
From a kilogram of fillet, 480 grams of a delicious snack were obtained.
Results
Convection allows you to evenly bake the dish, cook faster and at a lower temperature. And some dishes can only be cooked with convection. So when choosing an electric stove or oven, you should definitely pay attention to whether it has a convection function if you like to cook in a variety of ways.
