In a recent post, we talked about having to get a new stove. One thing that I hadn’t much considered was the timer features. It’s an important but often overlooked feature of a modern stove.
When you are cooking, timing can be the make or break point for whether or not your food is well-done (or burnt or raw!). Especially for baking, I like to keep a close watch on the recommended times. I usually set a timer for few minutes short of the minimum time listed in the recipe, then keep an eye on the food, checking it every couple of minutes until it is done.
Our old stove had a timer on it. The timer had a feature I didn’t like. If you hit start again after the timer had gone off, it would add a minute to the time. Even if you reset it to one minute, for instance, it would go to two minutes unless you turned the timer off completely. After 24 years, I was completely used to this and knew what to expect.
The new stove
Our new stove actually has two different timer features. One is a typical timer, running for a period of time then beeping to let you know. There are a couple of things that take some getting used to, at least for me. The first is how you set it. You hit the small “stopwatch” icon, enter the time you want, then hit the “stopwatch” again to start the timer. Almost every other feature has you hit “start” to begin using it.
This timer also will not stop beeping until you press the button, which clears the time on it. So you do have to reset the timer for each use.
The other timer feature on the oven is the cook time. I used this once without realizing how it worked. When it completes the time, it turns the oven off! This caught me off guard as, like I said above, I tend to set the time a little short and check on the food.
Old faithful
Now, I am well aware that I can set a timer or alarm on my phone. And I frequently do. I use it as reminders at work and at home. But when I am home all day, I rarely have my phone on my person. I tend to leave it sitting by my chair in the living room or next to the computer in the office.
So I have another timer that I use. Like many other things in my home, I got this timer many years ago. It came with us to this house from our apartment. So it’s more than 28 years old. It’s a small timer with a magnet on the back designed to hang on the refrigerator.
It’s a very simple design. There are no fancy timer features on this one. I like it because I can set it, start it and restart it over and over again with no fuss. When I am batch cooking things like bacon or Crackle Top Molasses Cookies, I don’t have to mess with it.
The bit of masking tape you can see at the top if the timer is to hold the battery cover on. At some point, the timer was dropped and the case broke, so masking tape to the rescue.
What is your preferred timer? How do you track your cooking time?
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