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This is one of my pages on cooking times, specifically for meat.
This page refers to conventional cooking. In June 2014 we bought a sous-vide cooker, and I'm still trying to understand it.
Caveat coquus: much of this is specific to my ingredients and my equipment.
On hot plate of barbecue, 7 minutes.
I believe that roast beef should be very rare in the middle, and that's what I'm basing these times on. I've had a lot of difficulty deciding the times. There's more in the roast beef recipe, but currently it boils down to: cook in a fan oven at 180° for 45 to 50 minutes per kg, and take out when the temperature in the middle is about 52°.
These instructions are current; they have been different in the past. The reflect my own experience on the one hand and a change in oven on the other.
This is based on a chicken of about 2 kg. Cover the breast with aluminium foil and place on the back in a fan oven at 170°. Cook for 30 to 40 minutes per kg and measure the temperature in the middle of the breast, with the temperature probe touching the breastbone. Take out when the temperature is 78°. Leave for at least 30 minutes before serving; during this time the leg joints finish cooking. Serve it too early and they're bloody.
Many people measure at the top joint of the leg, where the temperature will be much lower, but I've found this to be unreliable: it's very easy to misplace the sensor, and that results in over or (usually) undercooking.
For some reason the breast temperature of an unstuffed chicken rises quickly at the start, and then slows down. The last 5° can take 15 to 20 minutes. This also means that the cooking time is very dependent on the final temperature.
Since 18 May 2015 I have been recording the results. Here's a summary which shows how things have changed.
| Min/ | Oven | Meat | ||||||||||
| Date | Weight | Time | kg | temperature | temperature | |||||||
| 18 May 2015 | 2.2 kg | 125 | 57 | 180° | 80° | with foil over breast | ||||||
| 20 June 2015 | 2.222 kg | 110 | 50 | 180/170° | 88° | with foil over breast | ||||||
| 21 January 2017 | 2.225 kg | 110 | 50 | 170° | 85° | partially foil over breast | ||||||
| 16 July 2017 | 2.075 kg | 118 | 57 | 180° | 82° | with foil, deep cooking dish | ||||||
| 24 June 2018 | 2.1 kg | 94 | 45 | 180° | 80° | with foil, deep cooking dish, less cooked | ||||||
| 2 February 2019 | 2.0 kg | 80 | 40 | 180° | 82° | with foil, breast marginally overcooked | ||||||
| 3 August 2019 | 1.7 kg | 75 | 44 | 180° | 80° | no foil, breast marginally overcooked | ||||||
| 12 February 2022 | 1.925 | 66 | 34 | 180° | 78° | |||||||
| 28 May 2022 | 1.875 | 71 | 38 | 180° | 72° | didn't reach temperature; see diary |
In the past my guideline was to cook at 180° until the breast was at 82°, but gradually I've been reducing it. Now I have decided that it should be 78°.
From 11 November 2021: fry 6 minutes on each side.
I'm still working on this one. On 1 February 2024 I cooked them:
I came to the conclusion that they should be cooked in an “air fryer” at 210° until the inside temperature near the bone reaches 82°, about 25 minutes.
I have more information about turkey.
Similar considerations as for chicken. To ensure that the breast doesn't overcook, I cover it in aluminium foil. 4.2 kg stuffed turkey take about 180 minutes at 175° to reach a breast temperature of 80°. Allow to rest for at least 20 minutes before serving. During this time, it seems, any rawness in the thigh joints goes away.
On 28 March 2015 we cooked a 3.8 kg turkey at 180°, and the breast reached 78° in 125 minutes. I think that's still too hot; the breast meat was good, but a little on the dry side. I planned to 76° next time.
Next time was on 24 December 2016, and in the end I tried it differently: a 4 kg turkey at 175°, which took 110 minutes to reach 74°. This is a better temperature; I left it standing in the oven for an hour, during which the breast temperature rose to a relatively constant 78°. And it tasted “right”: neither half-raw nor too dry. The only thing I need to add is to remove the foil from the breast after 80 minutes.
At Christmas ALDI have turkey breast roasts that are easy to handle and provide a source of food for Abendbrot for the rest of the year:
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It weighs 1 kg. The instructions are (in my case, with thawing and convection oven): thaw, cook in foil at 170° for 40 minutes, turn over. After 60 minutes remove the foil and brush with oil to brown. Cook for another 30 minutes (total 90 minutes). End temperature should be 82°.
Surprisingly, the time is exactly correct in my experience. But:
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On 24 December 2020 I worked around this problem by allowing it to rest, so that more heating wouldn't cook it any further, and then grilling the surface. But I think for next time I'll have:
Cook to 55° in a 200° fan-forced oven, about 30 minutes.
I've had quite a history of second-rate legs of lamb. My most recent one was a 2 kg boned leg, which according to previous experience should be cooked at 180° to a meat temperature of 55°, which should have taken about 100 minutes (50 minutes/kg). But it was long and relatively thin. Shouldn't that make a difference? Indeed, it only took 65 minutes. I don't think that a 1 kg cut would have taken 33 minutes. So my guess is that a leg should take between 50 minutes and an hour, almost regardless of weight. It's a good think we have meat thermometers.
The following is historical and inaccurate:
A previous attempt was a 1 kg boneless leg cooked to 58° meat temperature, which took 54 minutes in a 180° oven:
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I still think that's too much, so next time it will be 55°.
My previous attempt at cooking a leg, on 12 June 2022, wasn't a complete success: following the instructions below, I cooked it to 63°, which was too high. Next time I'll go for 55° at 180° oven temperature, which should take about 50 to 55 minutes per kilogram.
I'm pretty sure that 63° is the right temperature, but last time I tried it was with a deboned
leg in a net, and I suspect I put the temperature probe into an air pocket: at any rate, it
took nearly two hours and was overcooked. For next time I'll still guess 50 minutes per kg
at 180°.
Where do you put the thermometer? In the middle, theoretically. But we seldom get through a whole leg at once, so it might make more sense to put the probe in the area we're going to eat. If the middle is then underdone, that's a problem we can address when we prepare the rest.
On 29 March 2018 I tried again, somewhat hampered by the incredible weight of the joint—2.6 kg! So I cut it in two. Result: cooking time about 75 minutes, and maybe 63° is too warm after all.
The next times were on 21 April 2019 and 19 April 2022. On the latter occasion the leg (1.4 kg) had a bone in it, and that makes temperature measurement almost impossible. Depending on the position of the sensor, it reached 60° by 50 minutes or only 55° or so after 75 minutes. Next time:
We don't eat much roast pork, and it has taken me a while to come to any conclusions on how to cook it. In previous revisions, I had written:
Conventional wisdom is that pork should be cooked to 80° to 85°, though Stephanie Alexander recommends 65° to 71°. Clearly there's not much consensus.
Depending on the cut 75° to 78° is probably most appropriate.Cooking times are equally uncertain. Stephanie Alexander suggests (after conversion) 60 minutes per kilogram, and “Joy of Cooking” suggests (after conversion) 55 to 77 minutes per kg. For a large roast, like the 2.7 kg loin that we cooked on 4 June 2016, 45 minutes per kg seem to be enough. Smaller cuts will need longer. On 19 February 2011 I roasted a piece of meat weighing 500 g, and it took nearly an hour. This was in a compact oven without recirculation, so I raised the temperature to 200°, but it still surprised me. More investigation needed. Given my experience with Kassler (below), 80 minutes per kg might be better for smaller cuts.
On 16 June 2014 I cooked a relatively thin pork loin roast weighing 600 g, and it took 45 minutes. That's still close to the 80 minutes per kg, but how much difference does the shape make? In addition, this roast suggested that conventional wisdom isn't that inaccurate after all: at 78°, there was still a hint that it could have been cooked longer.
On 28 April 2018 I tried again with a shoulder roast weighing 1.71 kg. Based on that experience, I'd say for the next attempt: oven at 210°, cook for about 50 minutes per kilogram until the meat temperature is 68°.
On 28 December 2021 I used a recipe, from Australian pork for a 1.5 kg roast with skin (and thus crackling):
That worked well, but the cooking method produced lots of smoke. The next time, on 27 March 2022, I used “hair dryer” “air fryer”. I had considered putting it outside, but in fact it generated almost no smoke, and it was relatively successful. But there's more to be done; there's more in my diary.
What about pork wrapped in pastry? That's what we made on 12 March 2022. Based on that, we had 330 g of pork filet, cooked to 80° internal temperature, which took 26 minutes. The results were not bad, so I'd consider the parameters to be correct. But how do you apply them to other sizes?
Kassler and ham have already been processed, and the general recommendation seems to be to cook them less hot than fresh meat. 74° seems to be the right internal temperature. So far I have
| Date | Weight | Oven | Start | End | Time | Time/kg | Comments | |||||||
| Temperature | Temperature | Temperature | (minutes) | (minutes) | ||||||||||
| 5 August 2012 | 880 g | 180°, no fan | 66 | 75 | ||||||||||
| 14 March 2015 | 280 g | 180°, no fan | 28 | 100 | ||||||||||
| 26 June 2015 | 510 g | 180°, no fan | 50 | 98 | ||||||||||
| 13 January 2018 | 506 g | 180°, no fan | 8° | 55 | 109 | |||||||||
| 10 September 2023 | 722 g | 170°, hair dryer | 16° | 74 | 82 | surface overdone | ||||||||
| 30 March 2024 | 560 g | 190°, bathtub | 16° | 74° | 54 | 96 |
Somehow air fryers and nets don't mix. After roasting, we've ended up with things like this:
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“Next time” we're planning to remove the net before cooking and hope that the thing doesn't fall apart.
It didn't occur to me to measure the start temperature for the first three times, and it's also possible that they were done with the fan on. I'll wait for more data points before trying to fit a curve.
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