How to reheat leftovers in the oven?

The oven is a very common kitchen appliance in our life, and the uses of the oven are very many. The oven can not only be used to make delicious food, but also to make cakes. However, some people want to use the oven to heat up leftovers. In fact, the oven cannot replace the microwave to heat up leftovers. It will directly dry the rice because the oven will evaporate the moisture in the food during the baking process. It is best not to heat leftovers in the oven.

Six reasons why you must have an oven

1. Liberate yourself: The biggest advantage of the oven is that once you adjust the taste, set the temperature and time, it will work hard and you basically don’t have to take care of it every minute and every second. When I prepare family banquets, I never have an assistant. I can prepare eight or nine dishes for ten people by myself and even chat and drink with the guests, all with the help of the oven. Appetizers can certainly be prepared in advance, but the main course must be served hot. If they were all Chinese stir-fries, I would probably be stuck to the stove all night, and it would take every second to keep an eye on the heat. How could I possibly be chatting and laughing with others? Using an oven saves trouble. Once the ingredients are cooked to taste, you can free yourself to the maximum extent. Drinking a cup of coffee or preparing the next dish can all be a leisurely thing.

2. Increase aroma: Chemists have discovered that the Maillard reaction not only affects the color of food, but also plays an important role in its aroma. The Maillard reaction in Chinese food mainly relies on stir-frying or frying over high heat. Other methods such as stewing, steaming and boiling are not easy to achieve the moisture and temperature conditions required for the Maillard reaction. There is no limit to my cooking, so I dare to mix Chinese and Western cooking methods. For example, I can bake the half-dry pork elbow with preserved vegetables in the oven for 15 minutes. Not only will the skin be crispy and the meat be tender, but it will also be more fragrant than just stewing it.

3. Improve appearance: Chinese food is not easy to have structure. For stir-frying, all the ingredients need to be chopped into pieces, dices, or shreds to facilitate stir-frying and heating, but when served on a plate, it will be a mess. Stewing uses water as the heat transfer medium, and the food becomes soft but loses its shape. Because the four walls of the oven are heated evenly, larger items can be made. Compared with the finely chopped ingredients used in stir-frying, the products produced by the oven have a more three-dimensional structure and are naturally easier to shape.

4. Healthy and low in oil: The reason why Chinese stir-frying is prone to using too much oil is because stir-frying requires oil as a heat transfer medium. Even if you are steaming fish, you should drizzle a spoonful of hot oil if you want it to taste good. Use the oven to cook, especially for meat, as the high temperature can force out the fat inside. Sometimes you only need to apply a little bit of oil on the surface. Even some vegetarian dishes, such as grilled mushrooms, do not require any oil at all. Even because of the Maillard reaction, the aroma of the food is stimulated and even the amount of salt can be greatly reduced.

5. Perfect Resurrection: I really like French croissants, but when I lived in Guangzhou, it was difficult to find particularly crispy ones. The reason was that the air was too humid. If they were not freshly baked, they would become limp after just a while. Don’t be afraid if you have an oven. Just put it in the oven and it will be as beautiful as new in just three or two minutes. The donkey meat BBQ that we packed back tasted even better when it was roasted than when it was just out of the oven. Not only croissants, but many snacks can be restored to their crispy texture by simply putting them in the oven to warm up. The increased temperature also makes it easier to bring out the aroma. However, when reheating snacks, you must not be lazy or greedy and raise the temperature too high. Because most dim sum are dry in nature and easily burnt.

6. Have fun with baking: When you see the word "fire" on the side of the word "baking", you know that this activity is directly related to the oven. I don’t really bake because I feel constrained. Especially for Western pastries, they often measure to the gram, but I prefer to grab them casually. But then again, the advantage of Western pastry baking is that as long as you follow the recipe strictly, it is difficult to fail. It is said that nowadays is the era of competitive women. Even if you can bake the simplest butter cookies, you can get a lot of extra points.