Well....you should? It takes no efforts and has tangible benefits on how your meal cooks
Because in a recipe it's impossible to specify cooking times without pre-heating. It's easy to say 10 minutes at 200 degrees, because this would be exactly the same for everyone. Every oven is different, so the time would be different depending on your oven, which the person writing the recipe can't know. So if the instructions on something like bread say pre-heat and bake for 10 minutes at 200 degrees, they know the result would be good.
There is also the fact ovens warm up differently. If there is a heating element within the compartment where the food is being heated (especially above), this element gets way too hot and emits a lot of infrared radiation whilst heating up the oven. It does this because it wants to get to the set temperature as fast as possible. Once it gets there it only needs to maintain that temperature, which is much easier, so the heating element gets much less hot during this time. If you set something like a cake in the oven with a heating element right above it, best case the top of the cake gets baked more than the rest, worst case the top gets burnt before the inside cooks.
Then there's the fact whilst heating the temperatures inside the oven fluctuate a lot, some parts get hot fast, other parts take more time. When you have food that's sensitive to that you def need to preheat.
And there's a lot of chemistry going on, for example some foods get really greasy if they don't get hot enough while cooking. Whilst these food could be cooked with the temperature going from 50 - 150 degrees, the end result would be much better if it's just cooked at 200 during the whole process.
Now there are a lot of cases where this doesn't matter and if you know your oven well enough you can compensate. But there are plenty of legit reasons to pre-heat and you may even have better results when pre-heating, even if the end result was fine before.
So I agree, people should pre-heat and there are tangible benefits!
As a preheated oven, I can confirm this
Yer foods gonna be shite
Not necessarily tbh
Generally speaking, ovens will put out as much heat from the heating element as possible to reach the desired temperature quickly. Once at that temp, the oven maintains a largely even and consistent temperature so long as you aren't opening it repeatedly. That allows you to have the same temperature surrounding your food at all times and have predictable cooking results and timing.
If you put food in at the start without preheating, your food is surrounded by room temp air instead of heated air, yet is exposed to high temp direct radiant heat from the heating element. It will eventually reach the even temp expected, but only after several minutes of that initial exposure to the direct heat of the element. That is far more likely to lead to over cooking the surface exposed to the heating element and/or undercook the remaining surfaces and interior. It is closer to trying to bake in a grill than in an oven.
If the thing you're cooking is thin and is fine to heat from largely one side (like a pizza), your results may be acceptable if you keep an eye on it. If it is a cake or something though, it will be hot garbage, either burnt or soupy. Regardless, the cooking times on the instructions will not be remotely accurate.
Bro it's super easy and makes cooking way more consistent... You're not cool for not preheating lol
The oven is quite cool on the other hand
This logic will never make sense to me.
I don't see any attempts to logic, it's just fewer steps:
turn on oven
put frozen pizza in
versus
turn on oven
wait
put frozen pizza in
You end up with a worse pizza without waiting.
Unless you're high and eating a Totinos party pizza like a taco, then all bets are off.
People be lazy and just want to eat "something", even if it sucks
I notice zero difference between preheated pizza and non-preheated pizza. What would the difference even be?
Counterpoint, preheating just gives you a consistent starting point to follow their recipe. So you could follow their recipe once to see the intended result, then optimize it for your equipment (find the correct time and temp to get the intended result without preheating).
This all assumes you're cooking a frozen thing. If you're baking, follow the damned instructions. Baking is a science.
As a person who YOLO'd baking recipes for years then finally actually followed the instructions and then created some bangin' cookies.. I agree.
This whole "follow the damn instructions" kind of has some value I think.
You're literally always going to be wrong
You know what's the real bullshit? Listing melted butter as an ingredient. Mother fucker, who keeps melted butter on hand? Make the ingredient oil, or make melting it part of the instructions!
This is such a tiny hill to stand on, and I love it.
It's probably got to do with Americans measuring everything by volume, they have to melt it to measure it.
Our butter stick wrappers have volume measurements on them. I've never melted butter to measure it.
Every person measuring butter in cups (melted or not) is deranged and not worth listening to.
I like adding "Preheat oven to 350F" as first step when sharing my recipes with friends. Even when the recipe doesn't require use of the oven :p
:3
Go for it! Fortunately I don’t have to eat your god forsaken food
Do you never use the oven or do you just make terrible food when you cook? 🤔
That means your literally half cooking your food, anything below the correct temp is generally doing nothing, so either you are messing up your final product unknowingly or realizing it's undercooked and having to leave it in the oven for longer to make up the difference.
It's not a time saver, it's just making bad food. What a weird self own.
Always preheat to the exact temp. Otherwise you'll have half-assed food.
Edit somehow I got on your profile page.... I was wondering why every post I commented was yours haha.
I used to not preheat my air fryer to make frozen pao de quiejo. It was ok, but then one day out of curiosity I did the preheat, holy shit it made a huge difference. Preheat resulted in a far better crust than using the full sized oven. True story
Why not just follow the microwave instructions instead then? That's what I do when I'm hungry, lazy and impatient. Why spend 30-60 minutes waiting for food anyway just to screw up the recipe when you could have spent an extra 10 minutes to do it properly?
Bro posted a meme and people got up in here acting personally offended that somebody would not preheat an oven.
I don't understand the "it's just a meme" logic. I've seen it used a few times to excuse whatever the meme says.
Imagine if the meme was "Stop signs don't make sense, I've got places to be, vroom vroom"
That's stupid and dangerous advice. This meme isn't dangerous, but it is stupid.
Obviously if there was a "Sarcasm rabbit" type meme, now it makes sense. I've never seen this meme image before, maybe that's what it's going for, but for now it's going to get shit on.
for food that you make all the time where you have figured out the timing perfectly, for sure, go ahead. that saves energy.
but if you bake a cake or some shit that you don't do as often, always follow the recipe. i've had some pretty bad cakes from people who did not do what it said in the funny food book.
Leavened products, especially chemically leavened ones like cakes, need the oven to be hot when they go in for proper texture. The heat creates steam which means more and bigger bubbles, and the baking powder also reacts better at high temperatures, producing even more bubbles. And these bubbles need to start growing before the protein in the flour starts to set, otherwise they stay small and you get a dense texture.
It’s telling how many people equate preheating oven to cooking frozen pizza.
Sometimes things come out better that way, so do as you wish. Just know that many things will come out leagues better if you do that extra bit of prep.
I don't care what you say. I stir-fry in a cold pan like a boss. I like my vegetables flopsy and oily thank you very much
Imagine actively deciding to make shittier food, couldn't be me
Don’t listen to the haters, preheating is for babies
I just cook it like 2-5 min longer than it says and its always tasty and fine. I never preheat. Its fine.
It really depends on what you're doing. Consider a steak: If you put it into a cold pan and heat it up it's going to be 110% done on the inside before you get to temperatures that cause browning -- the protein is going to denature at ~70C, Maillard reactions occur at about 140-160C. So rule of thumb is if you want crisp or brown anything, you probably should blast it with some actual heat.
Then, when it comes to printed recipes: While every oven bakes differently they heat up even more differently, so if you want to give a baking time including the pre-heat is going to increase the error bar quite a lot.
And then there's stuff that needs proper rituals to turn out good, bread is probably the best example: Preheat, steam, falling temperature. Sure you'll get something edible if you put some dough in a cold oven but it's not going to be nearly as good, raise strangely, have structural issues, and forget about having a proper crust.
Oh, coming back to pans: "Hot pan, cold oil", as the Chinese say, is how you make iron pans non-stick: Without preheat not only is your steak going to be soggy, it's also going to be glued to the pan. If you use a teflon pan at the temperatures needed for a proper sear you'll quickly need to buy a new one while even bargain-bin iron pans are going to last generations.
There are only few things that are really sensitive towards low temperatures - cookie doughs, soufflé and maybe bread. For any other food preheating the oven ia just a waste of energy.
Food companies only write it on the instructions because the time the food needs in the oven is not valid when they have to count in the speed your oven needs to heat up.
Element is on max while preheating the oven, this can overcook the surface of the food before cooking even starts.
Be sure to follow the rule before you head out.
Rule: You must post before you leave.
