Settle an argument for me. Do you do this...

[PinkBalloon123]

When cooking frozen food, chips or a birds eye breaded chicken etc. I just whack it in the oven for half an hour job done. But...

do you heat the oven up first?

Yes I do. Mil doesn't and then serves us half cooked food declaring "but it said 20 minutes and it's been in 20 minutes!".

If I'm using the fan oven, it can go straight in. The other oven will heat unevenly if it is left to heat with a tray inside and need turning midway.

The exception would be something very thin which is cooked at a high temperature like a thin pizza. That would always be preheated.

I wouldn't want to put a raw chicken into an oven that wasn't preheated. Or pastry or any kind of baking, or anything that needs to be crisp.

I do both depending on time. I use the timer and switch off function a lot as per manufacturers instructions and my oven wouldn't be preheated in those instances.

I don't, DH does. I just add an extra 5 mins on to the cooking time.

I only preheat the oven when baking, as in, wait for the preheat light to actually go off. With frozen stuff I just put the oven on before I go to the freezer - it isn't quite up to temp by the time the trays are ready to go in, but it never seems to make a huge difference. I don't trust the packet timings anyway so I just look at them and see if they look/feel done. Anything bigger than a fish finger, if in doubt I will cut into it to make sure it's hot all the way through.

I have an Aga. One of its great benefits is that you don't have to wait for it to heat up.

When we had a house without an Aga, I always pre-heated the oven (empty). I'm astonished to hear that people wouldn't.

Preheat here. The cooking instructions say that the oven should be preheated. If you put frozen meat into a cold oven then it will spend at least the first ten minutes just warming up and not actually cooking.

I usually also allow an extra few minutes at the end of the cooking time to be on the safe side. Everything is always ready by the time my lot have responded to the call to come to the table anyway.

No, I just add five minutes or so to the cooking time. it's always been fine.

I never pre-heat the oven.

I don’t think this has helped much in settling the argument.

I always preheat as I think not doing so makes food less crispy.

I think the food (especially oven chips ,pies ,fish fingers etc ) tastes better if it goes into a hot oven .Comes out more crispy and browns better too

On my old oven the "ready" lights were broken, so I never knew if it was hot enough and just bunged an extra five mins on the time.

Got a new, swanky, oven - not a scooby how to use it! It has no "ready" light. And it doesn't have any knobs! I guess I'll work it out.

90% of the time no i just whack it in. DP religiously preheats he loves instructions.

I always pre-heat the oven, or do what the cooking instructions say. Wouldn't think of not doing that. This probably says a lot about me ...maybe I should learn to live a little! 😂

I always pre-heat the oven but DH doesn't. He gets quite stressed out that I won't put a frozen pizza in a stone cold oven

Not unless I'm baking cakes.

Oven - always preheat. Never occurred to me not to.

Air fryer - pot luck anyway!

Unless I'm baking, nope. Just add on an extra few minutes. Oven chips are never cooked in the allotted time anyway!

Not sure why not pre heating the oven would make anyone feel sick

Without preheating everything comes out crispy and brown anyway so I'll carry on not pre heating.

I preheat but I never look at advised temperature and just whack it in.

Yeah, the oven does it automatically and beeps to let me know when it’s at the right temperature. Seems the safest way to cook, surely? I assumed it’s to do with not having food slowly heating up and allowing bacteria to multiply.

The element broke in the oven and I had absolutely no idea until it just didn’t beep anymore to say it was the correct temperature. If I didn’t bother with the pre-heating I would only have realised when I bit into undercooked food.

No, I don't preheat the oven. At a push, I might if I was trying to make really crispy roast potatoes, but everything else is fine.

I don't pre heat the oven

I turn it on and put the food straight in

I don't tend to stick to cooking times on the box with meat I always make sure the centre is piping hot with a sharp knife, and with things like pizza it's just pretty obvious when it's 'done'.

Depends what I'm cooking. For those type of items then yes always pre-heat the oven to temperature.

If it was something like a roast, stew etc which will be in there for a few hours then I probably wouldn't bother as it would have plenty of time at the correct temperature.

MIL doesn't - and it shows.

I do a bit, in the main oven, but not the full amount, just turn it on while I get stuff out of the freezer. I do for more important things.

Having said that, we got one of those philips airfryers, and I use that now for everything that fits (nuggets, sausages, roast chicken) - and that doesn't need warming up at all. If only it was big enough to fit a pizza.