What is the difference between Bake and Broil when it comes to my oven?
2006-11-01 12:40:16 · 13 answers · asked by trafficer21 4 in Food & Drink ➔ Cooking & Recipes
Bake: Heat comes from the bottom.
Broil: Heat comes from the top.
2006-11-01 12:41:53 · answer #1 · answered by Scott F 5 · 2⤊ 1⤋
In baking, you are trying to heat food by surrounding the food with hot air.
In broiling, you are trying to heat food using infrared radiation.
Infrared radiation, especially at close range, has a tendency to char things (which is great when you are trying to cook steaks), while hot air does not have that tendency (which is great for cakes).
In a normal kitchen oven, what most people are interested in is baking things like cakes or biscuits. In the ideal case, what baking means is "immersing the object to be cooked in an environment of still, hot air." So if you are baking a cake and the directions say, "Bake at 350 degrees F for 20 minutes," then ideally you would place the cake in a box (an oven) that contains still air at a constant temperature of 350 degrees F. There would be little or no infrared radiation to brown or char the top of the cake.
This, by the way, is why you pre-heat an oven. The idea is to get all of the air in the oven up to the proper temperature so that the burner does not have to come on very often or for very long. That keeps the infrared radiation from the burner to a minimum. That also explains why only the lower burner comes on during baking -- the radiation that does get generated by the burner hits the pan rather than the top of the cake.
When you want to grill a steak, what you should use is a barbecue grill outside. A barbecue grill cooks with infrared radiation generated by hot coals beneath the food. If you don't have a barbecue (or if it is raining outside), you can broil the steak in your oven. When you set the oven to its broil setting, the oven turns on its top burner and leaves it on. This creates lots of infrared radiation above the food. So you put the steak in a broiling pan to catch the juice, and then place the steak very close to the top burner. Normally, you leave the door of the oven slightly open when broiling.
The broiling burner is an upside-down barbecue, with the burner replacing the coals. Broiling generally creates a huge mess inside the oven from all the splattering, as well as tons of smoke outside the oven (and therefore in the kitchen), which is why most people use the grill instead of the oven's broiler.
2006-11-01 12:42:54 · answer #2 · answered by CK 4 · 1⤊ 0⤋
Bake is when you put it in the middle of the oven, and it gets heat from all around, broil is when it goes in the tiny little bottom part on some ovens, or at the very very top of your big oven, and gets heat only from the top...happy cooking!
2006-11-01 12:42:55 · answer #3 · answered by kat k 5 · 0⤊ 0⤋
When you Bake, the oven heats evenly to a temperature that you set (allowing food to bake evenly).
When you Broil, the upper elements of the stove or broiler are used to cook the food. Like cooking on a BBQ grill.
I once BROILED a cheesecake - big mistake!
2006-11-01 12:51:15 · answer #4 · answered by Paige2 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋
In a conventional oven, "bake" uses the bottom heating element to heat the whole oven to a specific temperature. "Broil" uses the top heating element which uses direct heating of the food similarly to an outdoor grill.
2006-11-01 12:45:49 · answer #5 · answered by lunatic 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Bake - heat comes from underneath
Broil - heat comes from above (very hot, only for quick browning or flash cooking with very high heat)
If youre not that adept with your oven yet, master baking before you graduate to broiling.
2006-11-01 12:43:32 · answer #6 · answered by texasfilmsnob 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Broil turns the top oven element on and cooks the top of the item and usually browns it - it causes the oven to heat more and brown the top.
Bake...it at a lower consistent temperature which cooks the item evenly.
2006-11-01 12:42:37 · answer #7 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
broil it a quick method of heating something up or melting something, like chips and chese. Bake, actually keeps the oven at the proper temperature. Broil has no temp. gage.
2006-11-01 12:42:17 · answer #8 · answered by D S 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
To bake you use the oven - it cooks all AROUND the food -- to broil you use the broiler - and that only cooks from the top (the broiler is the drawer just below the oven)
2006-11-01 12:42:44 · answer #9 · answered by noway983 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Bake generally means that the bottom element is on, whereas broil means that the top element is on. Just a quick answer though.
2006-11-01 12:42:08 · answer #10 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
Broil is a constant flame or heat source over or under the food directly.
Bake is indirectly heating at a constant temperature.
2006-11-01 12:44:03 · answer #11 · answered by ©2009 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋