How to Test Your Oven Temperature Without a Thermometer
"Based on the method in Cooking For Geeks."
photo by Dreamer in Ontario
- Ready In:
- 15mins
- Ingredients:
- 2
- Serves:
-
1
ingredients
- granulated sugar
- aluminum foil (optional)
directions
-
To test if your oven is running cold:
- Preheat oven to 375°. (186° C.).
- Place a small amount of granulated sugar in an oven-proof dish or on a cookie sheet lined with aluminum foil.
- Place in oven for 15 minutes.
- If your oven is calibrated correctly, the sugar will melt.
- If your oven is running cold, the sugar will not melt.
-
To test if your oven is running hot:
- Preheat oven to 350°. (177° C.).
- Follow the same procedure as above.
- If your oven is calibrated correctly, the sugar will not melt (although it may brown a little).
- If your oven is running hot, the sugar will melt.
- Note: ovens do not maintain a constant temperature, but cycle above and below it, so it is possible that the sugar may melt at 350° if your oven is correctly calibrated but has an extreme cycle (15° F, 8° C.).
Questions & Replies
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I think my oven is accurate at 350 degrees but when I raise temperature to 450 or higher the oven thermometers don’t register that. I want to start a prime rib at 500 degrees for 20 minutes but don’t know what to do. -
i need to test my oven. Do i have to preheat it first or should i just put sugar inside n see at what temperture it starts to melt. please do reply
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My oven is electric and bakes at 5' intervals. How would you rate this as far as the calibration goes? 350' - Nothing Melted 355' - partial mealting 360' - half melting 365' - totally melted
Reviews
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Well, am surprised b/c my oven is calibrated correctly-thought it ran cold. For first test, the sugar melted. For second test, it barely browned around the edges. Thank you Chocolatl for a very interesting "recipe". -
It really works!! Knew my oven was a little off so started with the test for running hot and the sugar melted. Then just for fun did the test for running cold and the sugar burnt. So what I knew before has now been proven my oven is running a little on the hot side. But given the age of my oven guessing I would be a little hot about still having to work also. Thanks so much for the post. -
Found out that my oven runs cold and my toaster oven runs hot. -
Well, my oven runs a bit cold and, though you can't tell in the photo, the sugar browned a bit but didn't melt. This was interesting as I wasn't certain, before, which was wrong, the external oven thermometer or the internal oven thermometer.
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Thank you! I have a new RV oven, and it is my first ever gas oven. Something seemed really wrong the first time I cooked a frozen pizza. A new oven thermometer says that the oven is running 56° cold. So what do I trust? This is a pretty meaningful test and has let me know that the $6 gadget is calibrated properly and this $900 appliance is not.
see 4 more reviews
Tweaks
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I set OTG at 186 it did not melt and then i set it at 200 it melted and again i tried at 220 it did not melt, i think my OTG is acting funny. It should be in Bake mode rite
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I preheated my oven to 177 C and the sugar was completely melted in 11 minutes. I guess, my oven is running too hot
