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Poor Man's "Warming Cabinet" for holding meat after cooking... (at the cost of Free.99)

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dward51

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I've used warming cabinets and proofing cabinets to hold brisket and pork butts at 150* after cooking to be served the next day. This is the way the resturaunts do it also. Smoke them ahead of time and hold in a warmer, wrapped, until needed. The commercial models also have steam or moisture control options, but they cost thousands. When I cooked for the office, we had a commercial kitchen and I "borrowed" the one in there when we did functions. No pressure and questions of "when it the meat going to be done". It was already "done" but no one knew it except for the few of us on the cooking team.

Now that I'm retired I don't have that option. I even bought a non-working one from a school system at an auction for $75, but it was just too big and I did not have anywhere to put it so I gave it away to a friend (who is yet to do anything with it).

But I've found a hack that should work for most of us who have electric home ovens. Like most appliances, there are like 3 factories who actually make them, and the "brand" is just a label with some programing changes for different options. This hack will work for any Haier sub-brand such as GE, Monogram, Cafe', Hotpoint, etc....

My GE only goes down to 170*, but we want the 150*ish range for holding cooked food overnight. Fortunately there is a built in hack anyone can do. It's called the temperature offset. This is a calibration option so if your over is actually cooking hotter or colder than the target temp, you can adjust it to match what it should be. We can also take advantage of this to offset the oven cooler than the lowest set-point to get a "poor man's warming cabinet".

So by using a simple combination of button pushes on the control panel, I can tell my oven's brain/computer that it is really cooking 20* hotter than what the set temp is. So when my display says 170*, I've dialed the actual temp from the heating element down to 150*. Perfect for a warming cabinet.

And when done, it takes about 10 seconds to change it back. The GE models can be modded to +/- 35 degrees from what the display says. The Haier/GE lines have 3 different control panels but the concept is the same. All 3 models have video's on YouTube that show just how easy this is to do.

 
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My hack is a large cooler (like an Igloo/Yeti ice chest cooler). I'll prep it by boiling some water and pouring it in first to heat up, like you would a thermos. After I dump out the water, I line it with some beach towels to insulate and then put the wrapped meat inside. It'll stay warm for hours.
 
Wow, perfect solution! Don't know why I never thought to check if my oven had a calibration setting. It does, and I just tested it. It only goes down to 170º but after setting the calibration to -20º a 3rd party thermometer read 150º despite the oven being set to 170º. Thanks for pointing this out Dave!
 
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Clever hack
Whirlpool here. Press and hole the "Time/Temp" down arrow for 5 seconds.
Can be adjusted to +/- 30°. Press "Start" button to set.
 
I've used warming cabinets and proofing cabinets to hold brisket and pork butts at 150* after cooking to be served the next day. This is the way the resturaunts do it also. Smoke them ahead of time and hold in a warmer, wrapped, until needed. The commercial models also have steam or moisture control options, but they cost thousands. When I cooked for the office, we had a commercial kitchen and I "borrowed" the one in there when we did functions. No pressure and questions of "when it the meat going to be done". It was already "done" but no one knew it except for the few of us on the cooking team.

Now that I'm retired I don't have that option. I even bought a non-working one from a school system at an auction for $75, but it was just too big and I did not have anywhere to put it so I gave it away to a friend (who is yet to do anything with it).

But I've found a hack that should work for most of us who have electric home ovens. Like most appliances, there are like 3 factories who actually make them, and the "brand" is just a label with some programing changes for different options. This hack will work for any Haier sub-brand such as GE, Monogram, Cafe', Hotpoint, etc....

My GE only goes down to 170*, but we want the 150*ish range for holding cooked food overnight. Fortunately there is a built in hack anyone can do. It's called the temperature offset. This is a calibration option so if your over is actually cooking hotter or colder than the target temp, you can adjust it to match what it should be. We can also take advantage of this to offset the oven cooler than the lowest set-point to get a "poor man's warming cabinet".

So by using a simple combination of button pushes on the control panel, I can tell my oven's brain/computer that it is really cooking 20* hotter than what the set temp is. So when my display says 170*, I've dialed the actual temp from the heating element down to 150*. Perfect for a warming cabinet.

And when done, it takes about 10 seconds to change it back. The GE models can be modded to +/- 35 degrees from what the display says. The Haier/GE lines have 3 different control panels but the concept is the same. All 3 models have video's on YouTube that show just how easy this is to do.


Thanks for posting this! We have a GE that came with the house. My control panel looks a lot different than the one in the video but the process worked exactly as described. I've complained for years that it only went down to 170. Not any more!
 
Wow, pretty cool. Never looked in my owners manual to see if they divulge that info.
If you are like me, pouring over all of the stored manuals to find the right one can be quite an effort. Thankfully youtube can be your friend here.
 
If you have a Wolf or many other commercial gas ovens, you pull the oven temp knob off and use a small screwdriver and insert it into the knob handle stem, and turn the small screw in the stem. Count how many turns you go so you can get it back to the set temp when you're done.

This works for getting the oven 30 to 40 degrees hotter for baking pizza and bread as well.
Most Wolf stoves are set lower than the actual temp on the knob, so this little trick will get your oven up to the same temp as the knobs printed temp. You have no idea how many Chefs in San Francisco cooked me a killer meal for getting their Wolf stoves up to the actual temp on the knob, in seconds, with just a small slotted screwdriver. :emoji_laughing: :emoji_sunglasses:
 
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