Bring me your baked, your roasted, your long cooking favorites.

January 6, 2010 8:37 AM

I need recipes that will keep the oven on for an hour or more.

Due to the current cold snap and a furnace contractor from hell, I really need the extra heat from the oven in the house. Therefore, for the last couple of weeks I have been making casseroles and cakes and breads and roasts and spanakopita and etc., etc., etceterbakinga. Now I find I've used up all my standards and I'm burnt out. I need fresh inspiration. I like to cook, am pretty good at it, fairly well equipped in the kitchen tools department and omnivorous (except for lamb. Not a lamb fan.) Yes, I have cookbooks but I'm lazy and I want to know what mefites make in the oven. Bring on your casseroles, your exotic and mysterious 3 hour roasted squamous pecan encrusted eggplant moussaka, your - anything, really, as long as it has to be in there at 325 or above for a nice long time.

posted by mygothlaundry to Food & Drink (28 answers total)

roast a chicken - prep roaster however (I stuff cavity with a diced lemon and butter/pepper the skin). preheat oven to 375 and start chicken breast down for 35 min.
after 35 minutes, flip chicken breast up and turn heat up to 425. finish breast up for 45 min at 425.
so that's only an hour and 20 min, but it's better than nothing?

this recipe originally called for a pretty small chicken (like 3.5 - 4.5 lbs), so if you use a larger bird, obviously you get to have the oven on longer, assuming like 20 min/lb, right?
posted by toodleydoodley at 8:43 AM on January 6, 2010

Best answer: Just got a dutch oven and really want to make this. 2-2.5hrs at 325:
http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/alton-brown/coq-au-vin-recipe/index.html

Or how about carnitas:
http://www.boston.com/lifestyle/food/articles/2009/04/15/tacos_con_carnitas/
4 Hours.
posted by WickedPissah at 8:45 AM on January 6, 2010

Pot roast takes 3 to 4 hours. I use the recipe from America's Test Kitchen Family cookbook, and it's on their website, but you have to sign up for one of those free 14 day trial memberships, which is annoying.

Pretty much any covered fruit pie will have to bake for around an hour.
posted by fancyoats at 8:47 AM on January 6, 2010

Braise big hunks of cheap meat. Besides giving you an excuse to keep the oven on, it's also very pleasant to eat when you're chilled.

Brown meat on all sides in a heavy ovenproof pot. Add wine or stock until meat is nearly covered. Bring to a boil, cover and move to oven for a few hours.
posted by jon1270 at 8:48 AM on January 6, 2010 [1 favorite]

I combine a bunch of root vegetables--sweet potato, brussels sprouts, carrots, golden beets--plus a red onion, an apple, and pour on some olive oil. Toss that in the oven for an hour at about 350 and then top it off with a bit of balsamic vinegar.

You can keep them in the fridge and reheat later for meals.
posted by divka at 8:51 AM on January 6, 2010 [3 favorites]

Best answer: Porketta. Basically it's a pork roast covered in a dry spice rub (fennel, anise, salt, pepper, oregano, paprika, onion flakes) and cooked at about 325 - time depends upon the size of the roast.

Mmmmm . . . porketta.
posted by Sassyfras at 8:51 AM on January 6, 2010

If carnivorous dishes are ok, meatloaf and country-style pork ribs take a while. A butternut squash can take a good long time to bake, too.
posted by usonian at 8:52 AM on January 6, 2010

A massive turkey.

I know when Thanksgiving comes around my mother will put a gigantic turkey in the oven around noon and we all don't eat it until around 5.
posted by Nyarlathotep at 8:53 AM on January 6, 2010

Slowly baked potatoes are excellent baked potatoes, and I made this ratatouille with even more oven time than recommended, and it was just right.
posted by kmennie at 8:57 AM on January 6, 2010

Try your favorite stew recipe: put all ingredients in oven-proof pot, cover, and bake at 250 for anywhere from 4 - 8 hours, till done. Stir occasionally. I know this temperature is lower than you asked for, but since the oven will be running all bloody day you'll get a goodly amount of heat anyway. Or you could set the temperature higher and cook for less time, but you'll have to stir more often and keep a closer eye on it.

Baked beans are another standby. Being a former New Yorker who's old enough to remember the Automat, I love the recipe for Horn & Hardart Baked Beans in Molly O'Neill's The New York Cookbook. They're a lot less sweet than Heinz canned beans and just a little bit on the spicy side (yes, you do really use a whole tablespoon of dry mustard powder!). Serve with Southern-style skillet corn bread from Pam Anderson's The Perfect Recipe, hot from the oven, for a light but luscious supper. (Memail me if you want the recipes.)

One thing I've noticed is that it always takes about twice as long to cook things in my oven. Like 8 hours instead of 4 - not a problem since my oven is my furnace and my house is chilly, but puzzling. I have a little thermometer in the oven that says the temperature is right, and my pots are ordinary size/shape/materials, so I don't know what's going on here but I just wanted to warn you that maybe some recipes are overly optimistic for cooking times. Which is a great reason to fire up the oven even earlier in the day! (Oven-baked dishes seem to reheat well, so if they finish cooking too early, just reheat them at dinnertime. Just make the cornbread at the last minute.)
posted by Quietgal at 8:59 AM on January 6, 2010 [1 favorite]

Overnight cheesecake.
posted by availablelight at 9:27 AM on January 6, 2010

Alton Brown's No Backyard Babyback Ribs
posted by Comrade_robot at 9:28 AM on January 6, 2010

also, if you just don't want to cook anymore, is your over self-cleaning? Does it need to be cleaned after your recent baking spree?

It's a great source of heat, especially if you open the door after it's done/unlocked.
posted by mercredi at 9:30 AM on January 6, 2010

Rice pudding, baked from scratch: Queen Delia's really just passing on something that has gone through generations of families.
posted by holgate at 9:42 AM on January 6, 2010

Best answer: Brisket, also on the green here and here.

This chicken sausage bake will keep things warm.
posted by knile at 9:43 AM on January 6, 2010 [1 favorite]

Best answer: My mom used to make beef jerky in the oven. She set it at the lowest possible heat setting(160-180), left the door cracked open 4-6 inches and cooked it overnight. You could do it during the day. It's a pretty low heat, but with the door open, a lot of it would get out into your house.

Also, Ropa Vieja is a slow-cooked Cuban meat dish. It can be baked in the oven or simmered on the stove.
posted by CathyG at 9:58 AM on January 6, 2010 [1 favorite]

Scalloped potatoes take about an hour and a half in the oven. We just made these last week. I did have to drag out a cookbook, but only for the roux.
posted by chocolatetiara at 10:44 AM on January 6, 2010

The only major dish my boyfriend knows how to make, and he learned it from a Robert Rodriguez movie DVD: pibil. NOM!
posted by bitter-girl.com at 10:46 AM on January 6, 2010

Best answer: Long cooking times and winter mean beef stew:

Carbonnade of beef (Doesn't have to be Guinness - in fact a lighter but still dark ale is probably more Belgian)

Beef Bourguignon

Sorry for UK measures but these were the links I found! You don't like lamb so I won't tell you about my favourite stew at the moment
posted by calico at 10:53 AM on January 6, 2010

Somewhere I've got a recipe for 7-hour leg of lamb--i'll look for it, but I think it was basically "brown lamb in skillet. place in dutch oven with 1 bottle malbec. set oven to 250f. go to bed. eat lamb for breakfast." What you don't eat you can use to bribe your furnace contractor.
posted by Mngo at 11:06 AM on January 6, 2010

I also vote for the roast chicken, but I do mine much slower. I put it in the roasting pan in the oven at 325 and cook it 20 minutes per lb. So for a 6 lb chicken that's 2 hours. I have to rotate the pan every hour because my oven cooks unevenly, so that's a great way to let the heat escape. I never turn up the heat, and my chickens always come out crisp on the outside and juicy on the inside. I put a little melted butter or margarine on the top, and sprinkle it with a mixture of herbs (whatever I feel like or just an Italian blend if I feel lazy.)

One bit of advice, with any of these roast meats make sure you let the meat 'rest' for 20 minutes. That means when you pull it out of the oven, don't slice into it for at least 20 minutes. All the great juices will come out and the meat will be dry. Let it rest and the juices will stay in the slices. It makes a huge difference.

Also, anything that you would make in your crock pot can be made in your oven instead. Just put it in a covered ovenproof dish and stick it in your oven at the lower temps for the same amount of time.

Another thing you might want to try is having a baking day. If you make bread, you need to get the oven going on low with a bowl of water in it so that you have the humid environment for the bread to rise. And if you make lots of different kinds of bread and treats (say to last you all week) you could easily spend a 3-4 hours in your kitchen with the oven on.
posted by TooFewShoes at 11:20 AM on January 6, 2010

Three-hour potatoes
posted by Gortuk at 11:52 AM on January 6, 2010

Crackers.
posted by contrarian at 11:58 AM on January 6, 2010

Best answer: Heat water on the stove for a bath. It will make the house warm & steamy, and you get a bath, displacing some load on the water heater.

I have a diverter on the clothes dryer vent pipe. The 1st 20 minutes, it vents outside cause it's lots of moisture, then I change it to vent warm damp air into the house.

roasted veggies. Chop and 1/2 cook some bacon, in the oven is okay. Drain most of the fat, add butternut squash, peeled and chunked, toss. Bake @ 350 for 1 hour, tossing every 15 minutes. You can do this with any combination of cauliflower, onions, brussel sprouts, white and/or sweet potatoes, broccoli, and many other veg. Instead of bacon, you can use olive oil. Garlic can be added - roast garlic is amazing. Various combinations of herbs can be used.

Pie. cherry, apple, blueberry, pumpkin, etc.

Bread pudding is like a french toast casserole. with whisky sauce. I recently made bread pudding with leftover gingerbread, topped w/ whipped cream, and it was so delicious I asked me to marry myself.

Jerky. Many recipes are out there. I've had homemade beef, and turkey jerky, and YUMM. Long slow cooking at well below 300, but looooong cooking warms the house.

Candied bacon. mmmmm, bacon, with caramelized brown sugar. Salty, smoky, sweet, fat and bacon-y.
posted by theora55 at 12:27 PM on January 6, 2010 [1 favorite]

What about Butterflied Chicken with Lemon and Rosemary from Nigella Lawson? It goes really well with hasselback potatoes.
posted by Coyote at the Dog Show at 1:05 PM on January 6, 2010

This is a copy/paste from an earlier post of mine:


Cubed squash, tossed with a couple tablespoons of flour, some parsley, three or four chopped cloves of garlic, a few tablespoons olive oil, in a 325 degree oven for a couple of hours, coupled with a spinach salad with sunflower seeds, gorgonzola cheese, an apple or pear, red onion. Crusty bread. Pinot noir.

Cut the cubes on the larger size. It'll take forever.
posted by A Terrible Llama at 1:35 PM on January 6, 2010

Best answer: HOW TO MAKE THE BEST THING TO PUT IN YOUR MOUTH:

1: What you do is you take some beef short ribs, like two of them maybe an inch and a half thick. Also take a couple onions, couple carrots, couple celery stalks and chop em. Oil. Red wine. Salt, pepper. Some broth. If you've got parsley, thyme, or bay leaf, also get those out.

2: Heat an oven-proof pan to 'very fucking hot' on the stove. Turn the oven up to 350.

3: Salt and pepper the ribs very liberally on all sides. Sear the ribs. This means putting some oil in the hot pan and cooking the ribs on each side, essentially burning them until they're around the colour of a copper penny on the outside all over. Then take them out.

4: Sear the vegetables in the oil in the hot pan and throw some salt on them when they're in there. Do it until the onions are translucent and the celery is a little browned. Keep the stuff moving around, shake the pan a lot, so it doesn't become a black burnt tarry mess.

5: Put the ribs on the little nest of seared vegetables in there. Pour in roughly equal parts wine and broth, maybe a little less wine than broth, enough to almost cover the ribs (but not completely). Throw in the herbs now if you have some.

6: Cover. Put in oven. Wait 2 1/2 hours. As your home fills with the smell of dissolving beef fat, evaporating wine, onions, and herbs, inhale a lot and think about how it is good to be alive.

7: Take the pot out. Uncover. Holy God that smell. Take the ribs out and cover them in a dish, or like with foil, in order to keep them hot while you boil down the rib liquid a little.

8: Ribs with rib juice.

Oh and a good step 6.5 is to slice and oil and salt some potatoes and throw them in like ~40 minutes before the ribs are done, and a good 7.5 is to put potatoes on the plate and then put the ribs on top and pour the rib juice over it all. One woman I made these ribs for said that they "taste like God".
posted by voronoi at 1:58 PM on January 6, 2010 [8 favorites]

Got this rib recipe from one of those 'cooking for engineers' sites: five or six pounds of beef ribs, a bottle of smoky barbeque sauce, half a cup of OJ. Into a Dutch oven or roasting trays covered with foil (stack the ribs in the pan, doesn't matter) at 325oF for 3 hrs. Great with mashed potatoes, coleslaw and corn on the cob.

Dice shin / gravy / chuck beef into 1-inch pieces. Throw in a couple of cans of tomatoes, some curry paste, a couple of cans of chickpeas and some veges - large pieces of eggplant, cauliflower, pumpkin, whatever. You can do this in a Dutch oven, or just a Pyrex bowl with a disc of wet baking paper resting on top of the ingredients. Cook as per the ribs - you can even go four hours.

Puerco pibil.
posted by obiwanwasabi at 3:06 PM on January 6, 2010