Low and Slow Roasting

[David Ross]

The technique of cooking foods low and slow in the oven is often over-shadowed by the more popular association with the term--"low and slow" is usually a definition applied to championship barbecue. But low and slow cooking in the oven produces juicy meat that literally falls off the bone and is every bit as tender and delicious as a barbecued brisket.

The technique for low and slow oven cooking is very easy. Once you've decided on the meat and the cooking vessel, (tagines, claypots and French enamel-ware casseroles are just a few), you basically add liquid, herbs, spices and vegetables and let time to do the work. I suppose the biggest challenge for me when I cook a dish "low and slow" in the oven is the anticipation of waiting upwards of 8 hours for dinner to arrive at the table.

As the low temperatures dipped into the upper teens last week, I decided to cover the barbecue smoker on the patio and go indoors for some "low and slow" cooking in the oven. I had been holding onto a French recipe for a seven-hour roasted leg of lamb that I knew would be perfect for this cooking method.

The recipe called for white wine as the base of the braising liquid, but I was looking for heartier flavors so I chose a blend of Cabernet Sauvignon and veal stock for my dish. To accent the rich flavors of the lamb and red wine, I added the spicy perfume of black peppercorns and fresh juniper berries to the mix of herbs that would flavor my lamb.

It's impossible to find a whole, bone-in leg of lamb in my local supermarkets this time of year. The leg of lamb I found was boneless or butterflied--not a cut that I would recommend for low and slow cooking. I needed the whole haunch of lamb for my dish. The bone gives the meat flavor and acts as the clothes pin to keep the meat held together during the long, arduous cooking time.

I decided upon a free-range Australian leg of lamb that I ordered through D'Artagnan. I appreciated the fact that the leg of lamb was left with a decent outer layer of fat--not as thick of a layer as I would have preferred had I butchered the lamb myself, but certainly more fat than I would have found on a supermarket "super-trimmed" leg of lamb.

The leg weighed about 7 1/2 pounds-

I seared the leg of lamb in olive oil in a large roasting pan-

The flavors for the lamb came from fresh sage, thyme, rosemary, black peppercorns and juniper berries-

I liberally seasoned the lamb with salt, pepper and crushed juniper berries. The braising liquid was a blend of one bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon, a cup of veal stock and about 3 cloves of whole, peeled garlic-

I covered the lamb with foil and let it roast at 275 for 6 hours, basting the lamb with the pan juices every 30 minutes during the cooking time. I then uncovered the leg of lamb for the last hour of roasting.

To accompany the lamb I chose a traditional French side dish of stewed white beans--in this case, Great Northern beans. I stewed the beans in the oven during the last three hours of the lamb cooking time. The braising liquid for the beans included veal stock and water and a bouquet garni of bay leaf, thyme, sage, rosemary, and black peppercorns-

After seven hours of cooking "low and slow" in the oven, a thing of beauty emerged-

A quick sear and flash in the oven is certainly an accepted cooking technique that we all use on a regular basis, but the less popular "low and slow" oven cooking technique is the only method that will deliver this delicious result-

I've got a "Duck Civet" recipe from Daniel Boulud that I think would be quite good cooked "low and slow" in my oven and so that will be on the shopping list for next week.

What dishes do you like to cook "low and slow" in the oven? Do you have specific side dishes you serve with a meat cooked "low and slow?" Do you find a certain cooking vessel works better than another? Do you keep the dish covered for the entire "low and slow" cooking time? How do you keep the meat from becoming too dry?

Let's hear, and see, your best "low and slow" dishes cooked in the oven.

[snowangel]

Low and slow. Vension does not work particularly well that way, but a woman cannot live on venison alone!

One of my favorite low and slow cuts is a nice fatty chuck or oxtails. Always in the 7+Quart Le Cruset.

I also like chicken thighs slow roasted.

But, I'm recalling something in Paula Wolfert's newest Cooking of the SW France where she talks about roasting meat at an oven temp at which temp the meat will be done. My book is on lone, so if someone could provide more details, many would appreciate it. The idea was that if you were going to roast meat (and if memory serves me, I think she was not talking braising) to 180 degrees F, that's what the oven temp should be, and it's safe.

I do know that if I have a pork shoulder, bone on and skin on, and I don't feel like a braised item, I'm more than happy to follow Paula's advice.

And, if it's low and slow and meltingly tender, I want a crunchy side. Salad with croutons; a barely stir-fried green bean dish. Textural context.

The low and slow fills a window-closed house, and provides warmth -- in terms of physical warms and well as the aromatic warmth!

[mattsea]

I decided upon a free-range Australian leg of lamb that I ordered through D'Artagnan.

Glad to hear you enjoyed your Aussie lamb! This is the best time of year for Australian lamb. The spring lamb started coming in about a month ago, and I know the West Australian lamb (from my home state) is delicious.

Incidentally, I'm not aware of any non-free range Australian lamb. Lamb tends not to be intensively farmed in the same way as cattle, pork or poultry.

As to low-and-slow cooking, my personal favourite is oxtail. I braise it slowly at 140c or thereabouts for 4-5 hours in a mix of white wine, crushed tomatoes, juniper berries, cinnamon, bay and mirepoix, then shred the meat off the bone, strain and reduce the sauce and serve it on polenta or under pan-fried gnocchi or blend it up for ravioli filling. Delicious.

This is my gnocchi and oxtail:

[paulraphael]

There are a couple of fundamentally different low and slow approaches: one is basically a dry braise (or a smokeless barbecue). And one is a roast, typically of something large, that you're trying to cook evenly from edge to edge.

The difference is primarily the internal temperature. The former style requires breaking down the collagen, and depending on what you're after requires internal temps from 140 to 180 (at the low range, the temp has to be held for many many hours). The latter style is generally for meat that's rare to medium rare.

Obviously you'd choose different cuts and dishes for these approaches. Both approaches lend themselves to a high-heat sear, which I think works best at the end, right before serving.

[GreekCook]

I often do a much simpler version of lamb dish David, all I basically do is take a leg of lamb poke holes in it and stuff them with salt pepper and a garlic clove, rub the leg with a salt pepper mixture and cook it in an uncovered dish in a low low oven for 12-14 hours..the result is amazing...just before serving I pop under a hot grill to crisp the fat...I add no liquid at all while cooking and just make a gravy by deglazing the pan with some wine at the end.Using any juices the lamb has shed

[lesliec]

The seven-hour lamb recipe I use is based (supposedly) on Heston Blumental's. It's very similar in ingredients to the one David describes, but the biggest difference is the cooking temperature.

It's essential to start with a good browning, as David did. I then quickly cook some chopped-up onion and carrot, then put the meat in on top with 300ml of water, a halved, unpeeled head of garlic and a big bunch of thyme, then into the oven. I don't speak Fahrenheit any more, but with a little help from Excel's =CONVERT function I see David's 275 degrees is 135 Celsius, which is just about twice as hot as I do mine! I use a big cast-iron casserole which stays covered for the whole cooking time; I'll baste the meat several times when I remember but certainly not every 30 minutes, as the recipe specifies - no problems with drying out. And the 'seven hours' should be regarded as a minimum - I've had one go as long as 10 without a problem.

At some stage during the cooking time I'll reduce 300ml of wine (white is fine - no shortage of flavour when you do this to it) down to around 50ml, burning off the alcohol (mind your fingers!) when it first starts to boil. Just before serving I take the meat out, keep it covered and strain the cooking liquid into the reduced wine (squeeze the juice out of the vegetables too), then reduce this liquid still further to serve over the meat. Fantastic stuff.

But probably my favourite 'low and slow' is Heston's (again) 24-hour steak. Get the best bit of steak you can find (I use rib, still on the bone) and blast it all over with a blowtorch to annoy any bugs. Then into the oven at 50 degrees C (say 120 F) for - you guessed it - 24 hours. Over this time (you don't have to do anything to it, just wait and make sure the temperature doesn't stray too high) the meat develops a leathery crust - like beef jerky, maybe - which imparts a very 'meaty' flavour to the rest of the meat. After the 24 hours, take the meat out (here's a bonus of ultra-low cooking - you won't need oven gloves!), cut off the dried outside bits, take it off the bone and slice it into serving pieces. The slices then need to be quickly browned in a hot pan. VERY quickly - you'll be surprised how little time it takes to brown them.

If you like your steak to fall apart as soon as you think about picking up a knife, this is the way to do it.

I'll be doing another one of these next weekend and I'm salivating already ...

Have fun,

Leslie

[maggiethecat]

Nigella Lawson's 24 hour pork shoulder/butt is my favorite low and slow. Put said shoulder in a pan, covered, into a 200 oven as you finish the dishes from tonight's dinner. You'll wake up to an intoxicatingly porky scented house. Raise the foil, check it out, re-cover. Go about your business. Check at the 20 hour mark -- it may be done. If so, uncover it and turn the heat up to 400 hundred for half an hour. Remove from oven. Swoon.

Edited October 19, 2009 by maggiethecat (log)

[David Ross]

Nigella Lawson's 24 hour pork shoulder/butt is my favorite low and slow. Put said shoulder in a pan, covered, into a 200 oven as you finish the dishes from tonight's dinner. You'll wake up to an intoxicatingly porky scented house. Raise the foil, check it out, re-cover. Go about your business. Check at the 20 hour mark -- it may be done. If so, uncover it and turn the heat up to 400 hundred for half an hour. Remove from oven. Swoon.

I tried this on Friday/Saturday. I only got to the 12 hour mark though as I could not stand the "intoxicating" porcine aroma that filled my tiny little house. And following on that "I could not stand" statement, I was so focused on the pork roast that I didn't take any photos. Not a one, even though the camera was right on the table.

The end result of the "low and slow" cooking method was pork that was the closest to what I remember from my childhood, (in the days before pork became "the other white meat."). It was fatty, juicy, porky and delicious. No other cooking technique would have come close to this result.

This week I am still savoring the pork--in cold sandwiches, hot sandwiches, sliced and eaten cold, sliced and eaten hot, and with pinto beans. Low and slow is the way to go. Thanks Maggie for the recipe.

[OliverB]

I just found an episode with Heston Blumenthal where he cooks a whole chicken at 140 degree (60 C) for four hours! Comes out all juicy, but with hardly any color. He then fries the skin in a skillet and ends up with what seems to be ultra crunchy super juicy chicken! This is almost a hybrid sou vide w/o the vacuum I guess, I will definitely have to try this. It's a two day process, as he brines it too over night.

I was expecting he'd use a blow torch to crisp the skin, but he just used a skillet. I'd guess basting it with butter and using a torch might work too, but I'll try his version first. To him it's the best roast chicken, and that means something.

Part 1 of the video can be seen here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41AHxTR1MqQ

there'll be a link to part two and three at the end of each segment.

Lots more by him and many other great chefs on youtube. Pretty neat. Somewhere there's one of Marco Pierre White making stuffed trotters, an other recipe on my to do list, as the feet are already in the freezer :-)

[Dave Hatfield]

I'm surprised that nobody has mentioned belly pork as a low/slow roast. Its one of our favorites.

There's a pictorial over on my blog, but all you do is simply score the rind at about 1/4 inch intervals then place the belly rind side up into a 130 degree C. oven for anywhere up to 8 hours (4 is absolute minimum) I like to support the belly on peeled halves of big onions, but that's an add on.

At the end just turn on the grill and crisp up the rind into crackling. Watch it like a hawk as its easy to burn it.

We also like a very slow shoulder of lamb. No braising liquid, no boning just rosemary, garlic , salt & pepper. After 6-8 hours it just falls off the bone & the juices make a super gravy. This too is on the blog in detail.

[saturnbar]

I really wish someone would do a little more experimenting with all this, it all seems so arbitary. Reminds me of bbq. Should a cook that leg of lamb at 180 for 24 hours or 13 hrs at 220 or .....?

[OliverB]

I'd love to experiment more with this, but it takes so long! And how do you compare? Short of having two ovens and cutting one gigantic piece of meat in half, cooking on so hot and long, the other different and comparing, it's hard to do. Higher temp/shorter time might turn out wonderful but that might have just been the meat. Heston did a lot of experimenting with chicken to arrive at his "perfect" roast chicken, not something one can do at home all that easily. Unfortunately.

[lesliec]

I've tried Heston's chicken technique. The end result tasted great, but my main problem was browning the skin at the end - it stuck to the pan (good seasoned cast iron, which NOTHING sticks to normally) and, of course, was then no longer attached to its owner. I've tried the same recipe on a turkey, using the oven to do the browning at the end, but I think I left it a little long and it turned out drier than I think it should have.

OliverB might be on the right track with the blowtorch. Must try that (since my Mum bought me a new one for my birthday recently. Thanks, Mum).

Happy searing,

Leslie

[David Ross]

I really wish someone would do a little more experimenting with all this, it all seems so arbitary. Reminds me of bbq. Should a cook that leg of lamb at 180 for 24 hours or 13 hrs at 220 or .....?

I'd love to experiment more with this, but it takes so long! And how do you compare? Short of having two ovens and cutting one gigantic piece of meat in half, cooking on so hot and long, the other different and comparing, it's hard to do. Higher temp/shorter time might turn out wonderful but that might have just been the meat. Heston did a lot of experimenting with chicken to arrive at his "perfect" roast chicken, not something one can do at home all that easily. Unfortunately.

I think part of the intrique of this "low and slow" oven cooking method is that it is somewhat of an arbitrary process in terms of the length of cooking time. Unlike the saute/oven roast technique of searing meat for a few minutes on the stovetop and then finishing it for under 30 minutes in the oven, the boundaries of this "low and slow" oven process are much looser.

The basics of the method seem to be the same-meat and a pot with a cover. Salt, pepper and other seasonings appear to be optional. Unlike braises where additional liquid is added, the natural juices and fat in and around the meat serve as the cooking liquid for the "low and slow" technique.

Oven temperature is in the very low-ranges. The big variable seems to be cooking time-lamb anywhere from 6 or 7 hours up to 24. I won't venture to place hard parameters on cooking time, but I'm sure the scientists in our group can chime in on the chemical processes that take place with slow roasted meats at differing hours--the 6 hour, 12 hour, 18 hour and 24 hour marks.

In my little world of "low and slow," I've gotten wonderful results with lamb and pork at the 8 hour mark under a temperature of 250-275. I think it would be safe to say that lamb roasted at 250 for anything under 3 hours won't produce the results we're looking for.

[e_monster]

I just found an episode with Heston Blumenthal where he cooks a whole chicken at 140 degree (60 C) for four hours! Comes out all juicy, but with hardly any color. He then fries the skin in a skillet and ends up with what seems to be ultra crunchy super juicy chicken! This is almost a hybrid sou vide w/o the vacuum I guess, I will definitely have to try this. It's a two day process, as he brines it too over night.

I was expecting he'd use a blow torch to crisp the skin, but he just used a skillet. I'd guess basting it with butter and using a torch might work too, but I'll try his version first. To him it's the best roast chicken, and that means something.

I have used Blumenthal's method three times and they came out amazing. I didn't have any trouble with the skin sticking when frying -- but I didn't leave it in the pan long enough because I was afraid of overcooking it.

I had another problem though. I was using a very precise temperature controller to keep the oven at 140F -- and all three times, the bird's temperature stopped rising when the internal temperature hit 125F (which didn't happen until the bird had been in the oven for 6 hours). I eventually had to raise the oven temperature to 170F to coax the bird's internal temperature to 140F.

This has happened each time I have used this technique. I wonder if Blumenthal is relying on the temperature cycling that happens in normal ovens when he recommends 140F. (As a test, I let it go 12 hours once at 140F and the temperature still didn't go over 125F). (And, yes, I used several thermometers to ensure that it wasn't a failure on the part of the thermometer).

Thoughts anyone?

Any ideas on why the temperature would stall like that?

[Shalmanese]

I used to be a big convert of low & slow but one big deficiency of it is that fat does not render out while roasting. What I now do is hot & fast to begin with and then letting it coast low & slow. 2 nights ago, I did a rolled leg of lamb which I seared on the stovetop, then roasted at 350F until the internal temp hit 110F, turned off the oven and let it coast up to 140F and then turned the oven back on at 140F and let it sit for 2 hours. I got about an extra cup of fat out of the roast which I never would have gotten if I have roasted at 140F the entire time.

[JAZ]

I just found an episode with Heston Blumenthal where he cooks a whole chicken at 140 degree (60 C) for four hours! Comes out all juicy, but with hardly any color. He then fries the skin in a skillet and ends up with what seems to be ultra crunchy super juicy chicken! This is almost a hybrid sou vide w/o the vacuum I guess, I will definitely have to try this. It's a two day process, as he brines it too over night.

Is chicken flesh fully cooked at 140F? From my experience, it seems that a thigh at 140 would be unpleasantly undercooked.

[e_monster]

At 140F it is fully cooked, very juicy and very tender. If you are slow roasting a chicken it takes a long time getting there, so it is possible that the proteins or some other chemicals in the tissue set differently than if the temperature got to 140F quickly. If you search the web, you will find almost universally that people that execute the recipe as Blumenthal describes are skeptical before doing it and afterwards rave about it.

Is chicken flesh fully cooked at 140F? From my experience, it seems that a thigh at 140 would be unpleasantly undercooked.

[e_monster]

I used to be a big convert of low & slow but one big deficiency of it is that fat does not render out while roasting. What I now do is hot & fast to begin with and then letting it coast low & slow. 2 nights ago, I did a rolled leg of lamb which I seared on the stovetop, then roasted at 350F until the internal temp hit 110F, turned off the oven and let it coast up to 140F and then turned the oven back on at 140F and let it sit for 2 hours. I got about an extra cup of fat out of the roast which I never would have gotten if I have roasted at 140F the entire time.

Not all cuts of meat lend themselves to staying low and slow. Cuts that have a significant amount of fat that you want to render need to be cooked at temps above 170 or so for the fat to render. For prime rib, for instance, you would want to trim most of the fat, use a torch before cooking to start the browning and then go low and slow the whole way (Blumenthal does it at something like 130F for 22 hours -- Thomas Keller does it in the mid 200s (Fahrenheit). Cook's Illustrated did an article a long time ago in which they compared different methods and found low and slow was preferred by all their tasters. (You can then torch post cooking to get a crust without disturbing the interior flesh.)

For meat that has a lot of fat that needs to be rendered out -- like brisket -- then you need to cook above 170 until the fat renders out.

But these techniques don't lend themsselves well to everything -- and any method that gets you the result you want is valid.

Any that's just my thought.

[Smithy]

I just found an episode with Heston Blumenthal where he cooks a whole chicken at 140 degree (60 C) for four hours! Comes out all juicy, but with hardly any color. He then fries the skin in a skillet and ends up with what seems to be ultra crunchy super juicy chicken! This is almost a hybrid sou vide w/o the vacuum I guess, I will definitely have to try this. It's a two day process, as he brines it too over night.

I was expecting he'd use a blow torch to crisp the skin, but he just used a skillet. I'd guess basting it with butter and using a torch might work too, but I'll try his version first. To him it's the best roast chicken, and that means something.

I have used Blumenthal's method three times and they came out amazing. I didn't have any trouble with the skin sticking when frying -- but I didn't leave it in the pan long enough because I was afraid of overcooking it.

I had another problem though. I was using a very precise temperature controller to keep the oven at 140F -- and all three times, the bird's temperature stopped rising when the internal temperature hit 125F (which didn't happen until the bird had been in the oven for 6 hours). I eventually had to raise the oven temperature to 170F to coax the bird's internal temperature to 140F.

This has happened each time I have used this technique. I wonder if Blumenthal is relying on the temperature cycling that happens in normal ovens when he recommends 140F. (As a test, I let it go 12 hours once at 140F and the temperature still didn't go over 125F). (And, yes, I used several thermometers to ensure that it wasn't a failure on the part of the thermometer).

Thoughts anyone?

Any ideas on why the temperature would stall like that?

I can only think of 2 general reasons for the temperature to stall so firmly and so long:

(1) The oven temperature isn't what you think. Perhaps your equipment isn't calibrated properly? Otherwise I suspect uneven heating in your oven, so that the vicinity of the chicken is only reaching 125F (maybe 130) even though the vicinity of the thermocouple is being controlled to 140F.

(2) Something in the chicken that is rendering really, really slowly at 125F that's causing the stall. Does chicken collagen have a different melting point than beef collagen? What about chicken fat? Is something evaporating at those low temperatures and keeping the temperature down? (Where's my copy of McGee when I need it? Oh, that's right - it's several states away, waiting for me to reclaim it.)

Sooner or later that chicken has to come up to the temperature of the surrounding area, unless there's a chemical process absorbing the heat. That's what makes me wonder whether you have a cool spot in your oven.

Just my 2 bits' worth.

[onrushpam]

I got a little boneless/tied pork butt on sale for really cheap and decided to try this. Because it was small (3 lb) and had little fat on the exterior, I was afraid to try the 24 hour deal. So, after examining Nigella's original recipe, I smeared it with a slather of olive oil and garlic (had no ginger), then blasted it at 500 degrees for 30 minutes, let the oven cool and put it back in uncovered for another 8 hours at 225 degrees.

Yowza! It was the Sunday pork roast of my childhood! I've been craving that porky goodness.

I should've been braver and let it go another 3-4 hours... 8 hours wasn't enough to really melt all the fat and connective tissues, so we needed to leave a bit of all that on our plates. It was SO moist and juicy, I know it would've been better with a longer time in the oven.

That's okay. We have more than half the roast left and I have other plans for it, which will be fine and I won't need to worry about drying it out.

I'll be doing this again and improving on it next time.

Edited February 7, 2010 by onrushpam (log)

[e_monster]

I got a little boneless/tied pork butt on sale for really cheap and decided to try this. Because it was small (3 lb) and had little fat on the exterior, I was afraid to try the 24 hour deal. So, after examining Nigella's original recipe, I smeared it with a slather of olive oil and garlic (had no ginger), then blasted it at 500 degrees for 30 minutes, let the oven cool and put it back in uncovered for another 8 hours at 225 degrees.

Yowza! It was the Sunday pork roast of my childhood! I've been craving that porky goodness.

I should've been braver and let it go another 3-4 hours... 8 hours wasn't enough to really melt all the fat and connective tissues, so we needed to leave a bit of all that on our plates. It was SO moist and juicy, I know it would've been better with a longer time in the oven.

That's okay. We have more than half the roast left and I have other plans for it, which will be fine and I won't need to worry about drying it out.

I'll be doing this again and improving on it next time.

Something you might want to try. Instead of blasting at 500F to start off with. Try Thomas Keller's/Heston Blumenthal's trick of blowtorching the outside before sticking it in the 225F oven. According to Blumenthal (and Keller and Harold McGee concur) all you have to do is get things going -- only torching until the meat is gray -- and a nice browning will develop over the course of the cooking. I haven't yet done the blowtorch prime rib from the Ad Hoc cookbook -- but those that have done it rave. I would think that the same technique would work with the pork shoulder -- except that it will need to cook a lot longer than the beef.

[e_monster]

I have used Blumenthal's method three times and they came out amazing. I didn't have any trouble with the skin sticking when frying -- but I didn't leave it in the pan long enough because I was afraid of overcooking it.

I had another problem though. I was using a very precise temperature controller to keep the oven at 140F -- and all three times, the bird's temperature stopped rising when the internal temperature hit 125F (which didn't happen until the bird had been in the oven for 6 hours). I eventually had to raise the oven temperature to 170F to coax the bird's internal temperature to 140F.

This has happened each time I have used this technique. I wonder if Blumenthal is relying on the temperature cycling that happens in normal ovens when he recommends 140F. (As a test, I let it go 12 hours once at 140F and the temperature still didn't go over 125F). (And, yes, I used several thermometers to ensure that it wasn't a failure on the part of the thermometer).

Thoughts anyone?

Any ideas on why the temperature would stall like that?

I can only think of 2 general reasons for the temperature to stall so firmly and so long:

(1) The oven temperature isn't what you think. Perhaps your equipment isn't calibrated properly? Otherwise I suspect uneven heating in your oven, so that the vicinity of the chicken is only reaching 125F (maybe 130) even though the vicinity of the thermocouple is being controlled to 140F.

(2) Something in the chicken that is rendering really, really slowly at 125F that's causing the stall. Does chicken collagen have a different melting point than beef collagen? What about chicken fat? Is something evaporating at those low temperatures and keeping the temperature down? (Where's my copy of McGee when I need it? Oh, that's right - it's several states away, waiting for me to reclaim it.)

Sooner or later that chicken has to come up to the temperature of the surrounding area, unless there's a chemical process absorbing the heat. That's what makes me wonder whether you have a cool spot in your oven.

Just my 2 bits' worth.

Thanks Smithy. Those are questions I asked myself, too. But they seem not to be factors. But I might be wrong.

There is a little mystery here. This is probably more information that anyone wants to read but I post it just in case someone with a better understanding of heat transfer and other factors has any ideas.

Short version: many thermometers all of which are reliable and accurate within a few degrees were used. Temperature difference between hot spot and cold spot in empty oven far less than the difference between what I am calling the stall temperature and the oven temperature (which I was measuring near the cold spot).

I did some tests without a chicken (substituting either wet towels rolled up or a 2 qt pyrex container full of water) to see if the same stall was observable, and it was. I did an empty oven test with two temperature probes placed where the chicken would be and the PID probe where it was when the chicken was cooked. I had the rack and pan used to cook the chicken in place in case their position was relevant. When the oven was empty, the temperature equalize nicely with only a few degrees maximum temperature differential in the area where the chicken was cooked and where the PID probe was.

In all these tests, when there was something substantial in the oven other than the pan, the temperature rise slowed to less than 1 degree F per hour when the PID was set so that it kept a constant temperature. With the temperature set to 140F, the temperature rise would stall at around 125. At 150F, the stall was at about 131F. So, to get the temperature of the item to be heated to 140F the oven hat to be set at 160F.

In another test, I added poured about 1/2 quart water into the roaster oven and that made a dramatic difference. The temperature equalized as one would have expected without the water.

This leads me to wonder if the heat transfer between dry air and the chicken/wet towel/or pyrex is influenced by some combination of the dry air here OR if the stillness of the air in the oven is a factor. The PID keeps such a constant temperature that there is little or no convection circulating the air.

Does anyone know what role convection would play in this?

The next experiment was to set the PID so that the temperature cycled some like a regular oven. When I did that the maximum temperature reached by the item heated was much closer to the maximum temperature that the oven reached than if the PID were set to keep that same maximum temperature steady. I still had to set it so that the maximum was higher than 140F. Tomorrow night I will cook an actual chicken with the new settings and see how things go.

I would think that if evaporation or some chemical change in the chicken were the cause that Blumenthal and others would have the same problem. (It should be noted -- if it isn't clear -- that this roaster oven is small compared to a normal oven. That doesn't seem like it should be a factor. Like you I would think that the temperature should equalize and have no idea in still air what a graph of temperature rise would look like).

Ideas anyone?

Thanks for listening.

[Smithy]

Sorry I haven't had any insights to offer here. I'm still pondering, however, and perhaps if I bump this back up someone else will have an idea.

I don't understand the difference between your roaster oven and a standard oven. How much smaller is it? Is it more tightly sealed? More heavily insulated?

[e_monster]

Sorry I haven't had any insights to offer here. I'm still pondering, however, and perhaps if I bump this back up someone else will have an idea.

I don't understand the difference between your roaster oven and a standard oven. How much smaller is it? Is it more tightly sealed? More heavily insulated?

I have to say that this is a real mystery to me. The roaster is a Hamilton Beach tabletop roaster similar to this one. The oven is not better insulated or more tightly sealed.

I have done another chicken since I last posted and the temperature in the oven needed to be raised to 160F (this is as measured by a reasonably good oven thermometer and the temperature probe of my PID (which has proven to be accurate within 1 degree Fahrenheit). Again, the temperature in the chicken seemed to stall out (i.e. changing less than 1 degree in 30 minutes) at about 125 Fahrenheit after about 4 hours.

Has anyone actually succeeded in getting a whole chicken to 140F in less than 7 hours with an oven set to 140F (and verified to be at 140F).