mike gregory - Posted - 01/12/2011:  09:20:36

The chicken wasn't cooking fast enough, so I wondered if my oven temp dial was giving me the right setting.
Only way I could know, was with an oven thermometer, which I have now purchased.

Then I put it in the oven, set the dial to 400, and checked back.
Thermometer read four hundred and FIFTY.

So, I'm trying to see if the oven thermometer is accurate.

Only thing I can think of is,
float it in a small metal bowl, in a pot of water.
When the water is boiling, the thermometer SHOULD be at 212degF.

And if it's accurate there, it MIGHT be accurate all the way up and down.
Any other suggestions?

pandjlocke - Posted - 01/12/2011:  09:23:27

Yep.

ehow.com/how_5616112_calibrate...eter.html

dflowers - Posted - 01/12/2011:  09:31:02

Heay, Mike, If the oven is electronic, you should not have a swing in temperature like that. It can be recalculated by a technician.. If it is a manual dial oven, it is very common for the temperature to swing twenty to thirty degrees. The thermometer is probably ok, so if you just preheat to it, you should be ok. Good luck, Don.

dawgdoc - Posted - 01/12/2011:  09:32:46

Assuming you're not at low or high elevations. The boiling point will change relative to altitude. However, seeing as how Wisconsin is apparently the center of the Universe, you should be pretty close.

Mainechowder - Posted - 01/12/2011:  10:46:14

Mike,

In the Food production industry, we calibrated our thermometers every weak. We did each thermometer twice. Once in boiling water, which the thermometer should read 212. Then we would check the low setting by sticking it in ice water, which should read 32. Sometimes we had to throw out a thermometer because it just couldn't be calibrated to both temps.

Since you are using the thermometer primarily for higher temps, you may not need to worry about the lower temp settings.

I don't know what kind of thermometer you are using, but ours had a small adjuster behind the dial (shaped like a hexagon) that we could turn, and adjust the dial to the correct temperature.

You then of course run into the issue of calibrating your oven to the correct temp. I just had to do this with ours. A quick "Google" search showed me how to adjust it and it was quite easy. We are now baking much closer to what the recipes call for.

Hope that helps.

Don

nmcguff - Posted - 01/14/2011:  09:23:14

Don't trust the thermometers you buy to hang in you oven to set the temperature. They are all over the place in their readings depending upon where you place it in the oven, what the load in the oven is, etc.

I work in the cooking appliance industry and have for 28 years. The proper way to check the oven temperature is to get the thermometer in the geometric center of the oven and monitor the temperature for about an hour with no food load in the oven. The temperature in most ovens cycle 20°F around the set point. Some manufacturers set the oven temp higher than the knob setting to get better baking performance. The most accurate way to monitor the temperature is with a thermocouple and digital temperature meter and average the temperature over a 30 minute period of time after the oven has heated to operating temperature.

The older mechanical thermostats (non electronic) will drift over time.