Most cooks know that opening the oven releases heat which slows cooking. But on cooking competition shows, many skilled chefs check their oven often, resulting in undercooked food. Do these chefs know something we don’t know, or are they actually making this rookie mistake?
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Does that really result in undercooked food? It seems to me that undercooked food would only happen if the chef checked the food, found it to be undercooked, and then *removed it from the oven prematurely*.
They are used to commercial kitchen where the oven is being opened and closed all most constantly, so the temp is set much higher.
On cooking competition shows, there’s some range of cutting and editing going on depending on the show. If your only comparison is shows, you’re probably overestimating how often their ovens are being opened.
Professional ovens tend to be convection ovens. They have a fan that moves the air around which prevents uneven cooking (hot and cold apots) and will bring it up to temperature faster.
Standard home ovens have radiant heat, which will take longer to get back up to temp once it has dropped from the door being opened a lot.
Not an expert chef but I would say it’s not all about saving the heat like you say. Also consider that they don’t want to over cook what’s in the oven and the only way to check is to open it. So it’s a risk either way but they might still open it less than a rookie does?
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