Getting to Know Your Oven. What Fresh Hell Is This?

When I first moved into my current apartment, I was like, "I'm going to learn to cook."

I had some old standby recipes (lol, we're talking two) that I've actually done before and felt okay about, and I was just cooking for me, so I could start with those and build from there.

Anyway, the oven didn't work. Well, it worked, but it was too hot. As in 500 million degrees too hot, give or take a few million.

I didn't figure this out right away.

I cooked one of my baked chicken dishes, which is always stressful because of the dead-fowl-possibly-tainted-with-salmonella thing. I never trust that I've cooked chicken long enough. Yes, even with a meat thermometer BECAUSE I DON'T TRUST THEM EITHER.

Anyhow.

I put the chicken dish in the oven, grabbed my glass of pinot gris, and felt cocky in my new, clean apartment. It was Memorial Day weekend, sun shining, balcony door open, cat (RIP) not coughing up hairballs, my depression at bay.

The timer went off. I whipped out my potholders, looking forward to my tasty meal and…the chicken had turned into a thick, brown, inedible brick that I had to place on my balcony because the charred smell was starting to stink up the joint. Weird.

I hadn't cooked in a while (hello, YEARS), so I naturally blamed the user, not the device and probably ended up eating saltines with peanut butter while standing over the kitchen sink.

But! I'm like a dog with a bone once I get something in my head, and I was determined to cook a nice meal in my new apartment. So I tried some other dish a few days later. Then another. Same thing: everything was burned to a crisp. By this point, I'm onto the oven and its fuckery. I started checking things halfway through the cooking time and things were ALREADY OVERCOOKED.

That's when it occurred to me: "I think my oven's not working. I think it's too hot."

And, here's the thing. I know ovens can run hot or cool. It all depends on the oven. I have NO IDEA where I would have picked up this insight, considering I didn't know—until a few weeks ago—that the long rod in my butcher block is called a "steel" and actually has a function.

I half wondered if I was making up the "my oven is too hot" excuse, but a quick look on Google confirmed my theory: You have to get to know your oven.

It's like freaking dating, and I historically suck at that. But this is the process: You have to date your oven and get to know it before you can get intimate and do fun things.

Here was the problem: I suspected that I was dating the serial killer of ovens.

So I bought a thermometer to test my theory and I was right. The oven was hotter than 500 degrees. I told the maintenance people and, at first, I don't think they believed me, but then they saw the thermometer and they realized that the oven was broken.

They gave me a new oven. That's a picture of it below. I store stuff inside. But hey—at least it's cooking-related stuff and not sweaters like Carrie on Sex and The City.

By this point, my desire to cook had gone away. I felt defeated. I made slice-and-bake cookies once (which was how I knew the new oven actually worked), and that was it. This was a little over two years ago. BUT WE'RE CHANGING THAT NOW, AREN'T WE?

The moral of this story: get to know your oven.

Need help? Here are a couple of links.

•  Kitchen Basics: Know Your Oven – The Joy of Cooking
•  Basics and Tips: Getting to Know your Oven – from Tough Cookie