This small investment will make your life so much better
There are kitchen gadgets that are so simple they can hardly be called gadgets, but as kitchen aids they’re so incredibly useful that you’d be crazy not to invest a few euros in them. Take that pourer for your olive oil, for example — remember? The one that keeps your expensive olive oil from sloshing all over your salad by the centilitre. But this little thing will also make your life in the kitchen so much better…
It’s an incredibly basic item and costs next to nothing, but you’ll be surprised how many people don’t have one. So here’s a call to action: if you don’t already have this hanging in your oven, hurry to the nearest HEMA or Blokker or wherever and get one straight away!
Measuring is knowing
The oven thermometer — because that’s what we’re talking about — will build a bridge of trust between you and your oven, which you may think you have completely figured out, but which is still either drying out and burning your dishes or spitting them out undercooked, even when you dutifully follow the recipe.
Precise as can be
That’s because virtually all ovens, once they’ve made it from the factory to your home — and certainly after some time — simply stop doing precisely what they claim to do on the outside. So if you neatly set the dial to 180º C, you might think you’re going to take a perfect golden-brown pear cake out of it, but in practice the temperature inside is often a few degrees off, sometimes as many as ten. In some cases that doesn’t matter all that much, for example when you’re roasting cauliflower florets right to the edge of burning (I think they taste best that way), but when precision really matters, as it does in baking, you’ll be in real trouble.
Kitchen goals
So set aside a few bucks for one. It doesn’t have to be anything fancy, and hang one of these cheerful little devices from the rack in the middle of your oven, or wherever the rack belongs for a specific recipe, as soon as possible. Tip: of course, do this before you preheat the oven. Pat yourself on the back for this display of maturity, and enjoy the perfect dishes and cakes that will come out of your oven from now on whenever you faithfully follow a recipe!
Read also:
- Ask away: do you really need to preheat the oven before using it?
- You can hardly mess this up: the easiest (and most beautiful) salmon from the oven
- Recipe: how to make perfect oven fries
