Temperatures & Conversions
Temperature
Depending on where you live you may use varying measurements for temperature and ingredients. Although I live in Canada, my recipes reference Fahrenheit for cooking temperatures; however if you live some other beautiful place where ovens display Celsius (or you’re fancy and your oven has both temps measurements on it), check out this conversion chart.
Another aspect of temperature that’s important to understand in cooking, is how it relates to time. You will always find in a recipe the length of time something needs to be cooked for and at which temperature - because both of those two constructs need to be taken into consideration together to create the best end product.
There are several temperature/time combinations that lead to different results depending on the outcome you are looking to achieve. I’ve outlined some examples below to help provide a mental picture:
Low & Slow
Cooking low (temp) and slow (long time) is great for recipes where you want a tender meat, or require a longer cook time to allow flavours to blend together. The two examples I outline below are for pork roast and soup:
Slow cookers are an awesome appliance because they allow you to cook, for example, a pork roast at a low temperature over a long period of time (sometimes up to 8 hours), and this combination of low heat and long cook time creates a very tender roast which can be easily shredded for something like tacos or pulled pork on a bun.
Another example of when you might want to cook low and slow is for soups/stews/chilis, for two reasons:
It’s hella easy and saves you time, as you don’t have to be stirring and watching the pot (just throw the ingredients in your slow cooker, put the slow cooker on low heat and allow the soup to cook itself either over night or throughout the day while you are at work - you’ll either wake up or come home to the smell of home made soup).
The longer you allow the ingredients of the soup to meld together in the heat the more flavourful your soup becomes!
One important note for slow cooking something like soup is that there might be certain ingredients you want to maintain a certain level of crunchiness, or rice/lentils/quinoa that you don’t want to get too big and absorbed with broth. In those cases, you can always add those ingredients a little bit later in the cook time so that they are not overcooked. Be sure to take note of the ingredients in your recipe and have an understanding of what kind of texture you are looking to achieve with them - not every soup recipe is suitable for slow cooking.
If you don’t have a slow cooker, technically you could cook low and slow in an oven or on a stovetop, but it’s a little safer if you aren’t going to be in the kitchen the whole time the meal is cooking to use a slow cooker - many of which have timers or automatic turn-off settings, and precise temperature settings. However, if I am home for an afternoon I will cook a soup low and slow in a big soup pot on the stove, stirring occasionally, and adding in my quinoa/rice about thirty minutes before it’s ready.
Medium/Medium
Many recipes you utilize will employ a strategy (for at least most of the cooking portion) where you are cooking at a somewhat average heat of 350 degrees Fahrenheit and for a moderate amount of time (anywhere from 20 minutes to 3 hours) depending on whether you’re cooking a chicken breast or a turkey. You will find most of the recipes I provide have a cook time of under an hour and usually at the standard temp of 350 degrees Fahrenheit.
Quick & Hot
On the far end of the spectrum, the strategy used to create a crispy texture or a browned effect on food, is a short cook time at a higher temperature.
Let’s use my favourite guilty pleasure snack as an example for both medium/medium and quick & hot time-temp strategies, as I use both methods to achieve different results when cooking NACHOS.
I start with my oven at 350 degrees Fahrenheit, convection setting if you have that in your oven (heat is circulated throughout the oven chamber), and I put my baking sheet filled with chips, cheese, and veggies in the oven for about 10 minutes. This stage allows all the internal cheese to melt nicely and provides time for the vegetables to cook. After that time, I ramp the oven up to 425 degrees Fahrenheit and change my oven to the broil setting (direct heat from the top coils) for 2-4 minutes which crisps up the top veggies and browns the top cheese.
The result: a mountain of nachos where the centre is still gooey and warm with cheese, and the veggies are cooked and crisped up a bit, and the top cheese is browned and delicious.
The combination of medium/medium and quick & hot time-temp strategies provides you with the perfect nachos - and if you are going to indulge you want it done right, dammnit!
You can also do the quick & hot method on a frying pan/saucepan when you’re looking to quickly brown meats or sauté veggies. If I cook a chicken breast in the oven for 30 minutes at 350 degrees Fahrenheit it comes out juicy and tender; however if I want the meat a little bit browned, I will sometimes chop it up and throw it on a frying pan on med-high heat for just a minute or so to get that grilled effect.
Cooking Meat & Internal Temperatures
One area where time can be a little abstract, is when it comes to how long you should cook varying meats for. The reason it is hard to provide an accurate time/temperature description in a recipe for meats - is because the level of thickness of the meat is variable, and people have different preferences for how cooked they like their meats. Additionally it is dangerous in some circumstances to eat undercooked meat; it is not guaranteed when providing a time and cooking temperature that the internal temperature of the cut of meat will reach its necessary heat level. That’s why many recipes provide an internal temperature end goal instead, ie. cook chicken until it reaches an internal temperature of 75 degrees Celsius or 165 degrees Fahrenheit, see this cooking temperature guide as a reference for various meats, or this one in Fahrenheit.
Measurements
Ingredients can be measured in various ways - and depending which measurement system you use or which tools you own it may not be the same as what’s posted in a certain recipe. Depending on whether or not you subscribe to the metric or imperial measurement system, you may need to convert between the two depending on which country the recipe post is coming from, check out this metric - imperial conversion chart.
Many recipes utilize pre-measured tools when doling out ingredient amounts, such as:
Tsp - Teaspoon
Tbsp - Tablespoon
Cups
Which translate into these measurements.
If you don’t own measuring supplies (measuring cups, tablespoon set), you may require a food scale to measure out the appropriate amount of ingredient by weight.
When starting out, it’s worth the investment to get a food scale and a measurement set - especially for baking which typically requires more accuracy in its measurements. Although my recipes are primarily based around cooking, I do have some baking recipes where having more accurate measurement tools might come in handy.