Print the instruction card! wonder oven cooking meat
Quick little detour today from long term cooking to show you a low fuel cooking option involving one of my favorite wonders of the world…my Wonder Oven! One thing I just love using it for is cooking meat. It’s simple to do, cooks the meat perfectly tender and I don’t ever have to worry about it burning. Just wait until you taste meat cooked in a Wonder Oven — it’ll quickly become your favorite too!
What you’ll need:
Either a Ziploc steamer bag –or– a breakfast cereal bag.
Instructions:
Start a pot of water to boil on the stove with it’s lid on. In a skillet, brown seasoned meat. Transfer browned meat to either a Ziploc steamer bag or a breakfast cereal bag and add to the boiling pot of water. Cover pot with it’s lid. If you are using a breakfast cereal bag, allow some of the bag to hang over the side of the pot and place the lid over top of the bag. Place pot into the Wonder Oven, cover with top pillow and container lid and “cook” a minimum of 30 minutes to 1 hour for small amounts of meat. For larger amounts of meat (a pot roast for example) cook atleast 2 hours.
Cooking Meat Using a Ziploc Steamer Bag
Season and brown the meat.
Transfer meat into Ziploc Steamer Bag
Place bag in boiling pot of water and boil (with the lid on) for 10 minutes.
Replace pot lid
Put pot into Wonder Oven, cover with top pillow and container lid.
One hour later, removing the bag from the pot, the meat is cooked and ready to serve.
Cooking Meat Using a Cereal Bag
Place browned seasoned meat in plastic cereal bag and add to boiling pot of water.
Replace pot lid with cereal bag overhanging between the lid and pot and boil for 10 minutes. Put pot into Wonder Oven, cover with top pillow and container lid.
One hour later, removing the bag from the pot, the meat is cooked and ready to serve.
The finished product. Tender delicious meat and plenty of broth to use in whatever meal I’m making.
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Notes:
- In case you weren’t able to tell, the chicken breasts I cooked in the Ziploc bag were large bone in breasts . They cooked for about an hour and a half — I could have taken them out earlier but I got busy. The great thing about using a Wonder Oven is that my food is ready when I am, much like a crockpot. I don’t even think about it, I just pull it out and serve whenever I’m ready.
- With bigger pieces of meat (pot roast for example) it’s best to cut the meat into manageable pieces before browning and cooking it to shorten cooking time. It will cook as a whole, if you have 3-4 hours to leave it, it just depends on how long you have to let it cook.
- Adding raw small red potatoes, onions and carrots to the bag before placing into the Wonder Oven is also a great idea. The vegetables cook together with the meat’s juices (…heavenly!) and once cooked everything is ready to serve at once.
- You can use multiple bags in a pot at a time. If using more than one bag I would personally use the Ziploc bags rather than the cereal bags to skip having to hang part of the bag over the side of the pot.
- The most important thing to make sure of (for any type of Wonder Oven cooking) is that you’re using the smallest pot necessary for the amount of food you are cooking. You don’t want a big pot with only a small amount of food being cooked in it or you’ll risk losing heat and it won’t cook as effectively.
To help illustrate the Wonder Oven and what it can do (and how much HEAT it really retains) here’s a video from the wonderful woman who originally introduced it to me — enjoy!
I am concerned about safe cooking temperatures. If the food’s temperature dips below 160°F any bacteria in the food can start to multiplying to unsafe levels. How can you ensure that the temperature of the chicken does not get below 160°F?
Thanks for the comment and question. To put it simply, I know it’s safe and stays above 160°F because I’ve tested it myself. It’s hard to believe it until you try it, but the insulating properties of the pillows really do keep the temperatures up. For reassurance, I’d recommend checking out this chart from a post on Prepared Housewives.
Jamie (who’s a friend of mine) got it from Angela Paskett over at Food Storage and Survival.com. It was originally shared (and the experiment was conducted) by ThermalCooker.wordpress.com. Now, on this test, you have to consider that the tester has opened up the pot to test the temperature hour by hour, so automatically you’re losing heat by doing that. For that reason, I’d believe the temps on the chart are lower than they’d usually be when cooking. And they are! I’ve done similar tests on boiled water and have found that the temperature stays between 170 – 180 °F even up to 12 hours later. I hope that helps you feel a little bit better about it. The only way you’ll really know though, is to test it yourself and I’d love to help you do that 🙂
Okay, so the better container I finally came up with (thanks for your patience)…drumroll…. a smaller sized Bain Marie pot. It works just great! Thank you so much for your question! I’m much happier with this now as the container for cooking meats myself as well. 🙂 Check it out here: http://myfoodstoragecookbook.com/2014/06/02/cooking-meat-in-a-wonder-oven-finding-a-better-container/
[…] you whether there was another way to cook meat in a wonder oven other than the plastic bag method I originally posted here. I’m SO glad to have gotten the question because it caused me to look at the method in a […]
I’m militantly reluctant to use plastic baggies in any of my cooking. Can this be done with double broiler method too?
Forgive me for taking so long on this comment! I have an idea of something that I think will work but I’ve been meaning to try it out first before telling you to do it. Give me just a couple more days (I’ll send you an email privately when I’ve got a “for sure” answer for you. Thanks so much for this question! It’s started me thinking!
First – I’m so glad I’ve found this blog; it’s wonderful. I have the same concern as Jenna, so would you mind posting on this or also emailing me? Thanks so much for your generosity in sharing all of your hard work.
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Meghan,
Can I put it in the wonder oven in the morning and will it be ok in the evening or will it dry out being in there that long? I hope to try this out tomorrow! Wish me luck!
I guess I should tell you that I’m cooking chicken and vegetables.
It should be just fine. There’s no worry about it drying out, that’s for sure and as long as you follow the directions, boiling it before putting it in to cook, it should hold it’s temperature through out the day without too much problem — even if it decreases a little bit by that time your meat will be cooked and the temp will still be hot enough to keep the meat hot. The only thing I’de consider is how cooked you like your vegetables. After a full day in the wonderoven they’re going to be ready to mash so you might want to cook them separately — putting them in a separate bag and then sneaking them in about an hour before you’re ready to eat. If you don’t mind really soft vegetables then don’t worry about it. Just for reference, hard winter squash cooks in the wonder oven between 1-2 hours, so others (not so hard) will cook faster than that.
I’m excited for you! Sounds like a yummy dinner tomorrow night!