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Stove Top Oven


ZenKimchi

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Ovens in Korea are an afterthought -- like an indoor grill in America. I haven't lived in an apartment with an oven here. I'll finally be buying one later this year, but many ex-pats are in my situation. I never realized how much we depend on ovens in Western cooking. I have all these great recipes, but I skip to the next recipe as soon as I see "Preheat oven to 350."

I've been experimenting a bit with mimicking an oven on the stove top. I know that the Dutch oven was originally just that -- an oven. So I'm working on how to reliably make oven recipes.

I've been using a large stock pot with a grill on the bottom to suspend the food. Last year, I roasted a chicken in there. It tasted great, but it was more steamed than roasted.

Has anyone done this successfully? Any food science junkies have recommendations to improve on this?

I'd like to do more successful experiments to put on my web site.

<a href='http://www.zenkimchi.com/FoodJournal' target='_blank'>ZenKimchi Korean Food Journal</a> - The longest running Korean food blog

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What about a toaster oven? It may not roast a whole chicken, though most can do a half or quarter quite nicely. It can handle small cakes and small breads with a little experimentation. Also works as a broiler for pretty good steaks and chops.

They don't take up much counter space and can be put in a cupboard when not in use. They are also fairly cheap, and don't heat up the entire kitchen when in use.

The problem with using a dutch oven as an oven is that they were designed to have hot coals placed on top as well, providing heat all around. By using them with heat just on the bottom, they are simply a large pot and will not quite mimic the oven, and give you the steamer effect you described. If you have an outdoor charcoal grill, however, they will do a dandy job if you place it on coals, and have some on top as well.

Edited to add: I just noticed you were using a stock pit to mimic a dutch oven to mimic an oven. The dutch oven technique needs the top that has an upper lip, if that makes sense, to hold the coals on the top of the pot. It should also be cast metal, either iron or aluminum, to hold the heat for best results. A thinner pot will just lose the heat too fast to have any kind of reliable results, I think. The rack keeping the food from touching the bottom of the pot kind of defeats the purpose.

Long story short, either get a cast iron dutch oven and a charcoal grill, or a toaster oven. I don't really see a way to do any "real" baking with existing recipes without them. The heat just won't be delivered properly any other way. Unless you have a heating element that could be suspended at the top of the uncovered pot somehow, but it would be extremely dangerous to to that methinks.

Edited again: I recently saw Alton Brown use a dutch oven without coals on a gas grill, lid closed, for a quickbread recipe. That may be an option as well.

Edited by FistFullaRoux (log)
Screw it. It's a Butterball.
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I haven't lived in an apartment with an oven here.  I'll finally be buying one later this year, but many ex-pats are in my situation.

From the above, I assume you're buying an oven later this year? If so, you're just looking to experiment until that time? Have fun!

But if you're looking to help out the ex-pats, I'd recommend either toaster ovens or small countertop convection ovens. Anything else is just goofin' around.

Some random links:

http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showtopic=18411

http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showtopic=58044

http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showtopic=59012

http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showtopic=73057

So we finish the eighteenth and he's gonna stiff me. And I say, "Hey, Lama, hey, how about a little something, you know, for the effort, you know." And he says, "Oh, uh, there won't be any money. But when you die, on your deathbed, you will receive total consciousness."

So I got that goin' for me, which is nice.

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Edited again: I recently saw Alton Brown use a dutch oven without coals on a gas grill, lid closed, for a quickbread recipe. That may be an option as well.

It was from watching that where I got the idea. Thanks, though. I guess it was a fool's errand. I thought that if Alton can smoke a salmon in a cardboard box, there had to be a way to roast a chicken on the stove top.

The trouble with toaster ovens in Korea is that it's hard to find one with a temperature setting. The most advanced thing I've found has been one that controls which element heats up.

And convection ovens -- kinda hard to find in a country where regular ovens are not common.

Edited by ZenKimchi (log)

<a href='http://www.zenkimchi.com/FoodJournal' target='_blank'>ZenKimchi Korean Food Journal</a> - The longest running Korean food blog

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The trouble with toaster ovens in Korea is that it's hard to find one with a temperature setting.  The most advanced thing I've found has been one that controls which element heats up. 

And convection ovens -- kinda hard to find in a country where regular ovens are not common.

I don't speak or read Korean, so tell me if this isn't what you're looking for:

http://www.wbizmall.com/Mall/goods_view.htm?goods_no=72406

http://www.wbizmall.com/Mall/goods_view.htm?goods_no=64468

http://www.lotte.com/lotte/sitemap/goods/L...10003&curDepth=

The pictures are pretty weak, so I can't tell if there's a temp gauge on the front panels.

FWIW, I know what it's like to live in an Asian country that is so rigidly set in its ways... :rolleyes:

So we finish the eighteenth and he's gonna stiff me. And I say, "Hey, Lama, hey, how about a little something, you know, for the effort, you know." And he says, "Oh, uh, there won't be any money. But when you die, on your deathbed, you will receive total consciousness."

So I got that goin' for me, which is nice.

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I lived in Israel for a long time, and it was quite common then (not so much now) for people to not have ovens, only stovetops. We used this thing called a Wonder Pot. It was shaped sort of like a fairly large bundt pan, and it was placed not directly on top of the burner but on top of a metal plate which sat directly on the burner, I guess it diffused the heat. You couldn't do anything fancy in it, but it did bake some decent cakes. I can remember making quiches in it as well, which came out decent albeit strangely shaped. (With a hole in the middle!!)

There was a very popular cookbook called "Wonders of a Wonder Pot" which just about everyone English-speaking immigrant in Israel owned (I still have my copy.) It wasn't particularly good, but if this link works you can see a sketch of a wonder pot on the book cover. (And maybe you can even buy the book.)

http://www.cookbkjj.com/bookhtml/022596.html

Edited by cakewalk (log)
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One of the many annoying things about living in Korea was that foreigners could not shop online because they didn't have the necessary numbers to register for websites; Koreans use their national ID numbers as required registration; foreigners are given different numbers that most korean websites are not set up to accept. (Some wag dubbed it "cyber-apartheid") Also, they require the use of Korean credit cards; which most foreigners aren't able to acquire without a Korean co-signee. But Zenkimchi has a Korean girlfriend so perhaps she could sort this out for him. I know my friend living in Seoul had a convection oven; his girlfriend bought it for him, although I'm afraid I can't recall where. I had a proper oven, and it was lovely. Friends of mine bought a toaster oven from Costco that had temperature controls and such. Have you tried looking there?

Living in a country so set in its ways and so hostile to foreign influence was unbearable for me; it's what drove me out in the end.

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Small portable ovens, intended to be used on a stovetop, are commonly sold in camping equipment stores in the USA. REI.com or campmor.com would be websites that I would check for this. I have actually used one in a basecamp situation, and was surprised at how well they worked on a gas-fueled camping stove. I see no reason why they could not be used on a gas or electric stovetop.

Regards,

Michael Lloyd

Mill Creek, Washington USA

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Lot's of good ideas, folks. I've never seen that chicken (game hen) roasting toaster oven at the store, but it would be cool if it was sold at a brick-and-mortar place. I try to avoid using Costco in my blog because most foreigners that I target as my audience do not have convenient access to it (it's cheating).

I like that camp oven. There's a camping supply market in Namdaemun. There may be an off chance of finding it there.

Again, I'm trying to figure out the thermodynamic difference between using an oven with the element on the bottom and using something like, yeah, a stock pot on a stove with dry heat. I still want to do my experimentation with this.

And I guess I have too much time on my hands.

<a href='http://www.zenkimchi.com/FoodJournal' target='_blank'>ZenKimchi Korean Food Journal</a> - The longest running Korean food blog

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