Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff from how stuff works dot com
Speaker 1: where smart Happens. Hi, I'm Marshall Brain with today's question.
Speaker 1: In a kitchen oven, what's the difference between the bake
Speaker 1: setting and the broil setting? Baking and broiling are completely
Speaker 1: different ways to cook food. In baking, you're trying to
Speaker 1: heat food by surrounding the food with hot air. In broiling,
Speaker 1: you're trying to heat food using infrared radiation. Infrared radiation,
Speaker 1: especially at close range, has a tendency to char things,
Speaker 1: which is great when you're trying to cook steaks, while
Speaker 1: hot air does not have that tendency, which is great
Speaker 1: for cakes. In a normal kitchen oven, what most people
Speaker 1: are interested in is baking things like cakes or biscuits.
Speaker 1: In the ideal case, what baking means is immersing the
Speaker 1: object to be cooked in an environment of still hot air.
Speaker 1: So if you're baking a cake in the direction say
Speaker 1: bake at three fifty degrees for twenty minutes, then ideally
Speaker 1: you would place the cake in a box or an
Speaker 1: oven that contains still air at a constant temperature of
Speaker 1: three fifty degrees. There would be little or no infrared
Speaker 1: radiation to brown or char at the top of the cake. This,
Speaker 1: by the way, is why you preheat an oven. The
Speaker 1: idea is to get all of the air in the
Speaker 1: oven up to the proper temperature so the burner doesn't
Speaker 1: have to come on very often or for very long.
Speaker 1: That keeps the infrared radiation from the burner to a minimum.
Speaker 1: That also explains why only the lower burner comes on
Speaker 1: during baking. The radiation that does get generated by the
Speaker 1: burner hits the pan rather than the top of the cake.
Speaker 1: When you want to grill a steak, what you should
Speaker 1: use is a barbecue grill outside. A barbecue grill cooks
Speaker 1: with infrared radiation je rated by hot coals beneath the food.
Speaker 1: If you don't have a barbecue, or if it's raining outside,
Speaker 1: you can broil the steak in your oven. When you
Speaker 1: set the oven on its broil setting, the oven turns
Speaker 1: on its top burner and leaves it on. This creates
Speaker 1: lots of infrared radiation above the food, so you put
Speaker 1: your steak in a broiling pan to catch the juice,
Speaker 1: and then place the steak very close to the top burner. Normally,
Speaker 1: you'll leave the door of the oven slightly open while
Speaker 1: you're broiling. The broiling burner is an upside down barbecue
Speaker 1: with the burner replacing the coals. Broiling generally creates a
Speaker 1: huge mess inside the oven from all the splattering, as
Speaker 1: well as tons of smoke outside the oven and therefore
Speaker 1: in your kitchen, which is why most people use the
Speaker 1: grill outside instead of the ovens broiler. Be sure to
Speaker 1: check out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future.
Speaker 1: Join how Stuff Work staff as we explore them promising
Speaker 1: and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow. The houstaff Works iPhone app
Speaker 1: has arrived. Download it today on iTunes.