I like to bake food regardless of whether it is meat, fish, vegetables or fruits. But for me personally, using the oven is complicated by the fact that the "set and forget" principle does not work here - although I want to, and I say so out of habit.
In fact, baking in the oven is a dance next to it, with a periodic check of the surface of the product: is it dry? Has it burned out?
It is impossible to be completely clear about what will happen to the food in the oven in ten minutes. This is influenced by many factors, not just temperature.
How wet is the product? What was its temperature at the edges and in the depth of the piece? How was the salt absorbed into it and how is the juice excreted? How well does the oven keep the temperature? How much does the temperature drop when we open the door to check the doneness or grease the surface with juice (sauce)?
However, temperature is, of course, one of the main factors. It is very high - remember, meat is usually cooked at 200-220 degrees, fish - 160-180 degrees.
This temperature exceeds the boiling point of water, and with this heating on the surface of the product, moisture begins to rapidly evaporate. As a result, the surface both burns and dries, and this must be fought.
We cover the bulging parts of the poultry carcasses with foil; we cover the product with lids, we grease the product with sauce and juice to prevent this effect. There are also ovens that partially compensate for this problem by adding steam when cooking. Steam allows you to get a crust and at the same time does not dry out the pulp.
However, there is a way to avoid overdrying (well, almost completely avoiding, since moisture will still evaporate) - low-temperature baking.
He is rarely remembered (for some reason), but if you recall the experience of ancestors, to whom they so love to refer, low-temperature baking was used often - when meat was cured into a heated oven and baked or steamed in pots for several hours - as cooling the oven.
Now, repeating this trick is not at all difficult: you just need to set the oven thermostat to a temperature of one hundred degrees or even less. True, I have not tested less than a hundred degrees, it will take too long to cook, but a hundred is already good.
Yes, this temperature in the oven increases the cooking time by two or three times.
However, the taste of the final product is improved as well as the consistency. tough meat can be turned into surprisingly soft meat in a similar way, and the chicken is baked so that it lags behind the bones. And at the same time it retains an attractive appearance with an unburnt crust, while it will have to be lubricated only a couple of times.
The only caveat: at this temperature, the crust forms poorly. Therefore, at the very end, it is good to raise the temperature a little - just for the blush of the finished product.
That is, look: first, when cooking poultry or meat, we set the temperature to no more than a hundred degrees for one and a half to two hours (depending on the size of the poultry or piece of meat). Then we increase it to 150-180 for ten minutes, bringing everything to a crust.
Readiness is best checked by the temperature in the middle of the piece, but if there is no thermometer, then with a knife. The main thing to remember: with this method, the poultry breast, for example, turns out to be many times juicier than with high-temperature baking, and the meat too, so a lot of juice will stand out, but it will be light.
Bon Appetit!