Why Cooking Too Many Things In The Oven At Once Is A Big No-No

Every year around the holidays, you may start to see ideas about how to host Thanksgiving dinner or any other large, multi-course meal. These often involve kitchen tips, such as baking your pies in an air fryer, cooking candied yams in a crockpot, or even deep-frying your turkey out in the yard, all to save oven space. Why is this such a concern for so many people when the average oven might be able to fit four or more pans on its shelves? Stephanie Loaiza, who blogs about food at Six Sisters' Stuff, has an answer for that. An overcrowded oven, she says, won't do an adequate job of cooking your food.

"Cooking food in an oven requires a certain amount of airflow around each item to make sure it is cooked to completion. When ovens are overcrowded, it doesn't allow for adequate airflow, resulting in spotty or undercooked foods," Loaiza tells The Takeout. That's not going to be your only problem, though. As she went on to say, "Adding in foods at different times, and opening the oven door to do so, can significantly lower the oven temperature, resulting in uneven or undercooked food."

However, it may not be reasonable or energy-efficient to bake just one item at a time. If you do choose to cook two items together — which should still allow for adequate airflow — Stephanie Loaiza feels you need to put a little thought into choosing which ones will work for simultaneous cooking. "When deciding what types of foods can be cooked together, keep in mind pairing foods with complementary aromas, such as stuffing and green beans, will work better. Be wary of cooking food with a strong aroma and baked goods, as baked goods tend to absorb more aromatic flavors."

It's best to cook foods that require the same oven temperature, of course, although Loaiza notes that you should also be aware of your oven's hot spots and put them to good use: "If you want something more roasted, like a vegetable or crust, and something else more soft-baked, positioning the food where you know hot spots will be can turn out better results." If the recipes specify a rack on which to cook an item, then you'll also need to pair a high-rack one with a low-rack one.

Yet another factor is cooking time. Even though you can obviously remove a dish that only needs 30 minutes and leave in a longer-cooking one for a full hour, each time you open the oven, you'll lose some heat. As the presence of another dish in the oven may also impact the temperature, Loaiza advises, "Cooking foods together also requires keeping a closer eye on doneness cues that are particular to each recipe (like brownness, reaching a certain temperature, etc.) to know when to pull each one from the oven versus going off of time alone."