3 of My Top Tips for Using a RV Oven, Without Burning Your Food.
It seems as if every day someone is posting in a RV Facebook group that they can’t get their RV oven to operate effectively. Some people have even went so far as ripping their ovens out and purchasing toaster ovens instead. I mean if that is what makes their lives easier, ok, but why?
Why would I want one more kitchen gadget cluttering up my tiny RV counters when I have an oven just sitting there waiting to be used.
And let me tell you, I use it. EVERY. SINGLE. DAY.
I cook absolutely everything in my oven.
What do I mean by everything?
I make bread, biscuits, brownies, casserole, meatloaf, tater tots, etc. all in my tiny RV oven.
So, what do I do that makes this possible?
First, I use a heat distribution method.
RV ovens are tiny and have a heating element that puts out heat from small point only. This creates a hotspot in your cooking that tends to burn some of the food and leave other parts of the food raw. I don’t know why RV manufacturers do not develop a better way to distribute the heat, but until they finally get their acts together I have developed my own method of heat distribution.
Pizza Stone + Cookie Sheet = Perfectly Distributed Heat
A pizza stone is singularly the most recommended piece of baking equipment for new RVers. Every Facebook RV post about ovens has people yelling at the top of their lungs for those complaining to purchase a pizza stone.
When purchasing a pizza stone, you will want to know what size your RV oven is. You want a stone that fits in your oven. Look on the metal shelf directly above the heating element. Do you see those holes around the border? Those holes allow for air flow get down to the propane area and allow hot air to come up to the cooking area. You do not want to cover these holes, but you want to take up as much room as you can. So break out a tape measure and get an idea of what size pizza stone you need before ordering.
You can find the pizza stone I used HERE.
It is also listed in our blog post RV Living. What works, what kind of works, and what doesn’t work at all.
The second part of my equation is the cookie sheet.
Now, I know this is going to sound redundant, but it makes a huge improvement for us. We put the pizza stone on top of the cookie sheet, which is on top of the metal shelf above the heating element. I am not sure why the cookie sheet makes such a drastic improvement over the pizza stone, but it does. All I can assume is that it goes that one step further in decreasing hotspots created by gas heat.
Either way, you should give it a try.
Remember to follow the same sizing guidelines as with the pizza stone. You want the pizza stone to be able to sit directly on top of the cookie sheet without covering any air flow holes on the metal shelf.
After you have your pizza stone, cookie sheet combo you need to put it in the right place for it to be the most effective. I am serious, placement is EVERYTHING.
Think about it.
The job of the pizza stone & cookie sheet is to diffuse the heat and allow the oven to cook more evenly. It would then make sense that you put them between the heat and the object you are cooking. Therefor the pizza stone should go on the cookie sheet, which is then placed on top of the metal shelf directly above the heating element and under the wire baking rack.
Now don’t judge my oven. The baking stone never really comes clean again after it gets dirty and the silver flakes are actually paint chips off of the oven knobs. It does not matter what I do I can not seem to get it to come off completely.
Second, I use a thermometer.
Now, I began to use a thermometer after all the writing on my oven knobs rubbed off while being cleaned. I had no idea what temperature my oven was at and I was constantly opening the oven to check.
I don’t know if you know this, but every time you open that oven door heat escapes and the temperature plummets. It slows down the cooking process and can lead to food being cooked improperly.
After having enough of the frustrations, I purchased a thermometer to help guide me. I can’t remember exactly where I got mine, but it is similar to this one shown HERE.
It sits directly on the wire baking rack, so I know exactly what temperature my food is cooking at.
It takes all of the guessing work out of oven temperatures and helps you to know everything is cooking at a safe temperature.
After purchasing this thermometer, I realized exactly how off the temperature was inside of my oven compared with what the knobs had previously read. Again, I wonder why the RV manufacturers can’t just fix the problem, but until that day use a thermometer to accurately determine the temperature of your oven.
Third, I preheat my oven
Preheating your oven seems like a no-brainer thing. Read a recipe and the very first step you will always see is preheat your oven. There is a reason that is the first step, it is a pretty important thing to do.
I know that, but still I am the world’s worst at not doing this. I get impatient. I feel like I am wasting valuable propane and valuable time. It was even worse in my sticks and bricks. I NEVER preheated my oven then.
However, part of living this fulltime lifestyle for me is taking the time to slow down and actually enjoy what I am doing. I try to take that extra few minutes and preheat my oven. It is just a few minutes, but it makes all of the difference.
The tops of my bread, biscuits, and muffins actually get brown on top. I am not sure if you know this, but brown food tastes better. The sugars caramelize and the flavors just get better.
Preheating the oven is a very important step.
