Have you noticed that your electric oven isn't getting as hot as you need it to be? Is your food under-cooked even after the full recommended cooking period has elapsed? Does every meal you make 'needs a few more minutes' than expected?
If so, the root of the problem may be your oven's thermostat. If your oven thermostat is not reaching the set temperature it may be time to replace it, here's some information so you can work out if that is what is wrong:
What does an oven thermostat do?
You can think of the thermostat as the supervisor of your electric oven.
On its own, the oven element (i.e. the part of your cooker that actually heats up) doesn't know how hot to get - it just starts heating up when you turn the appliance on. The thermostat's job is to know what temperature you've asked for, measure the heat in the oven, and tell the element to switch off once the required temperature has been reached.
Of course, when the element stops heating up, the oven will gradually begin to cool, and so the thermostat is also responsible for recognising when the temperature drops - at which point it will wake up the element again.
What can go wrong with the oven thermostat?
If the thermostat stops working entirely, then in theory the element will just continue to heat up indefinitely, getting hotter and hotter until it burns itself out.
However, if you're experiencing the issues we mentioned earlier - thermostat not reaching the set temperature, food taking too long to cook - it's likely that your thermostat has a rather different problem. A thermostat that is improperly calibrated may misread the temperature in the oven, deducing that it is warmer (or cooler) than it actually is.
Here's how that plays out in practice:
- You set the oven to 220°C.
- The oven element starts heating up.
- Before the temperature in the oven reaches 220°C, the faulty thermostat mistakenly gets a 220°C reading and tells the oven element to switch off.
- Your cooker tells you that it's finished preheating, so you pop your food in...
- ...only to find at the end of the cooking period that your meal is only half-cooked because the actual temperature in the oven was lower than the temperature you set.
Can I fix this problem?
Depending on the type of cooker you own, If your oven thermostat is not reaching the set temperature it may be possible for you to recalibrate your oven thermostat by measuring the actual temperature in your oven manually (using an
oven thermometer) and adjusting the thermostat as needed.
If you need to replace your thermostat entirely, you can buy a new one using the following links:
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