And from sixty-three to sixty-five minutes shall be the time of baking, and the time of baking shall be from sixty-three to sixty-five minutes. Thou shalt not bake for sixty-two minutes, unless thou then proceedest on to sixty-three. Sixty-six is right out…
And so to my question.
Tonight we had Marie Callender’s chicken pot pies for dinner. I’ve always found it rather odd that, for a product that is meant to be baked for over an hour, the instructions indicate such a narrow minimum to maximum period of time. After all, a range of two minutes divided by sixty-three is less than one-thirtieth, which seems patently ridiculous when there’s obviously considerable variation in the true baking time, such as differences in oven size, gas vs electric, placement of shelf, thickness of baking sheets, etc., etc… IIRC it doesn’t even matter what kind of meat and other ingredients the pie contains; they’re all supposed to be baked from sixty-three to sixty-five minutes.
So how do the manufacturers come up with the figure? Do they test their products in a battery of different ovens, then determine which ovens and which baking times produced properly baked pies, and then take the average? If so, is the two-minute spread basically an afterthought, given that merely specifying sixty-four minutes seems too arbitrary?
On April 2, 2014 Mrs. Sabrina Geisinger of Grand Forks, North Dakota left her Marie Callender chicken pot pie in the oven for 74 minutes, 36 seconds, upon which it exploded, reducing her kitchen and much of the surrounding neighborhood to a pile of smoking rubble. After that, company lawyers mandated a maximum cooking time of 65 minutes to be on the safe side, though you can probably get away with up to 67 minutes.
Or the Callender lab people did thousands of tests in which it was determined that crust and ingredients reached maximum flavor and consistency only within the 62-65 minute range.
Is there a strict recommended time period for letting the pie sit before breaking into and eating it?
I’ve wondered the same thing about Stouffer’s Lasagna, 19 oz size. The conventional oven baking instructions say to bake at 350F for 56 minutes. Not an hour, but 56 minutes. My guess is that they chose 56 minutes (and Marie Callender’s chefs chose 62-65 minutes) is if they just said a hour, too many people would just put it in and forget about it and either take it out after 45 minutes and wonder why it was still cold in the middle (or, what they are really worried about, get sick from undercooked food) or would leave it in for an hour and a half and wonder why they have a charcoal biscuit.
In short, because they believe their customers are idiots. Or, at least, they believe some of their customers are idiots.
They also say to leave the film on top, but I remove it so I can put some Parmesan cheese on top. I’ll let it cook for 65 minutes, maybe more, so the cheese on top melts and browns a bit, and the corners get a little crunchy (the corners are the best part).
I recall reading something by legendary sports agent Mark McCormack where he recommended starting meetings at odd times for odd lengths of time. Not 9 am for a 30 minute meeting but 9:03 for a 22 minute meeting. He felt that it made the time allocated seem more important and made it easier for people to remember. Maybe something along those lines?
It seems to me that if I follow cooking directions on products lately, the food will be over cooked!
My theory on this is that the cooking times are now determined by LAWYERS…
That is, the manufacturer wants to be darn sure every single possible germ is dead before anyone eats their product. Or that at least they instruct you to incinerate it - and then they can not be held responsible (sued) for anyone getting sick. (Just my little theory.)
Anyway I cook these things about 90% of the time they say to and also lower the temperature about 25 degrees F. Then it comes out perfect.
Note I have an oven thermometer, so my oven is the correct temperature.
I also ignore the cooking times, but usually do the opposite, especially with pizza:higher heat and done when it’s nice and browned. Not because I want to kill everything (it’s all likely to be dead, anyway), but for the flavor of the browning.
I think this may be part of the answer. If the instruction said “40 to 60 minutes”, they’d get countless phone calls saying “how do I know whether to cook for 40 minutes or 60??” It’s like when I first got a sous-vide cooker, the first recipe I tried said “cook for 1 to 2 hours”. My reaction was not “oh, it’s very forgiving” but “Useless recipe, need a more precise number!”
heh every thing cooked in a microwave says that like" cook 4-6 min open potatoes stir recover potatoes then cook another 1:30 to 3 min
and according to conagra they do that "because no one can be sure on how fast your microwave or traditional over will cook something "
supposedly no microwave will cook something the same way twice so you can make a bag of popcorn and not burn it and make a second bag the exact same way and it burns making it coal
Also they don’t know what condition the product your trying to cook is in … maybe the machine made the pie crust too thick that day and it needs more time to cook so they just estimate between the time it took for them to cook it and how long it took to burn (yes they make up a sample run for cooking )
Marketing. Oddly specific cook times like that make customers think the company knows what it’s doing, rather than simply avoiding liability. In fact, it probably says “cook for 62 to 65 minutes, or until the internal temperature is 165 degrees”. The 165 is all the lawyers care about. The “62-65” is marketing speak for “about an hour, but we want you to think we’re all food scientists here instead of mass comm interns, so we’re going to make it look extra precise”.
A lot of sous-vide cooking (but not all) doesn’t actually finish a meal, it just gets the piece of food to the exact temperature desired, and you finish it after that by browning or other means. Many times the cooker/water bath is set to the actual temperature you want the food to be at and once the food gets to that temperature, you can leave it there and it won’t get any hotter, whereas if you leave something in a 400 degree oven too long it climbs way above the 170 degree temperature you’re shooting for.
So those types of sous-vide cooking times can actually be quite forgiving; you can leave your medium rare steak in the cooker for an extra 45 minutes and it won’t overcook. Leave it under a broiler for an extra 2 minutes and it can get ruined.
I’m not exactly what you’d call a connoisseur of the finest cuisine, but I’ve been eating those small Marie Callender’s chicken pot pies for awhile now and I *always *cook them in the microwave. And even in different microwaves they always come out perfect in exactly 5 minutes. The wrappers have those ‘plutonium grids’ on the top of them which really does brown the crust.
I cannot imagine waiting over an hour just to eat one of those. They’re the modern (and significantly better) version of a TV dinner…
I suggest trying it sometime. They’re noticeably better when cooked in the oven. Just don’t wait until you’re hungry to start them. But if you have nothing else to do and you think you will be hungry in an hour or so, throw them in the oven and give it a try.
