Does it matter what the temperature of the food that will be cooked from (frozen or refrigerated)?
In: Physics
Heat transfers based on the difference of temperature between the two objects.
When cooking, you want to put food in, and pull it out when it reaches another specific temperature. If you have the oven at a specific temperature, you can get a pretty good measure of how much time it will take to reach the target temperature.
If instead you put your food in a cold oven, you now need to consider how quickly your oven heats up. While it’s still cool, it’s not transferring heat as quickly. Moreover, since every oven is different, even if you managed to find a time that worked for your oven, you would not necessarily be able to transfer this knowledge to another oven, since it heats up at a different rate.
In addition, there are some recipes that are very carefully developed because you may want different parts of the final food at different temperatures. For instance, Beef Wellington has a puff pastry layer that finishes at a different temperature than the beef it wraps around. The amount of time for cooking also matters with this, since time is what allows heat to penetrate. Changing the temperature also changes the time.
Yes! The difference is the process of vaporizing water and extracting it from the food will be accelerated if you start at a higher temperature. The things that make food crispy/brown/caramalized are the removal of water to reduce overall moisture, and the application of heat to make the Maillard process work. That’s why you pre heat pans and oil before you put things in them.
Edit: cold meat right from the fridge will be more tough and chewy. Cover it and let it sit for 30 minutes to warm up a little, and you’ll get a much better sear/brown. Frozen meats should never be cooks from frozen. Always thaw in a container with cold running water. Alternatively, let the water sit with the meat under it for 10 minutes then change until thawed.
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