Damn and I just got an oven thermometer too!|Check your oven temp

***************UPDATE******************

Cook’s made this video into a “members only” thing, so here’s the skinny on how to test your oven temperature:

Put your oven rack in the middle of the oven. Heat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit for at least a half hour. Put a half cup of 70 degree tap water in your 2 cup Pyrex measuring cup. Place the measuring cup in the oven and close the door. After 15 minutes, take the measuring cup out of the oven and take the water’s temperature with your thermometer. Swirl the water around to make sure the temperature is even. The thermometer should read 150 degrees Fahrenheit.

***************END UPDATE******************

Leave it to Cook’s Illustrated…I was just looking over their latest email newsletter and found this!

It’s a video on how to check your oven temperature with an instant read thermometer and a glass of water. Much cheaper than buying a damn oven thermometer for twenty bucks (who just did that? Oh, why me of course!).

Not sure about that whole “if your oven is off by more than a couple of degrees, it should be calibrated by a professional” thing, but this is still an outstanding (and if you already have a candy thermometer* essentially free) way of checking your oven temperature.

Cheers.

*You don’t need that fancy digital thermometer in the video to do this – it would be more accurate, but if you have a simple candy thermometer, you should be able to do this test accurately enough. I don’t think a meat thermometer, however, will work. If you’re ever inclined to make candy or cooked frosting, a candy thermometer is a nice cheap tool to have around, so think about investing in one for a few bucks. (Note – this particular candy thermometer costs as much an an oven thermometer and you can get them for much less money, but this is the one I have and I didn’t want to link to something I hadn’t used. Even if you get this one for $20, it’s still way more useful than an oven thermometer, so you save having to have two tools to do the same thing!)