How to Broil With a Convection Oven

Preheat the oven on the broil setting. Selecting the broil setting turns on the top heating element and leaves it on. The normal bake setting cooks chiefly with heated air, but broiling cooks with radiant heat from above. While not strictly necessary, because of radiant heat, preheating minimizes cooking times.

Prepare the food for broiling. Broiling is chiefly used for cooking meats, which benefit from the high likelihood of surface charring. Season the meat to taste, using your preferred herbs and spices. Place the meat in a high-rimmed baking pan to catch all drips and splatter from the meat.

Adjust the oven racks. Set them according to your preferred rareness of the meat. Use the bottom-most rack to cook thinner cuts of meat or for rare meat. Cook meat on the top oven rack for fastest and most thorough cooking.

Place the baking pan into the heated oven. Convection ovens purport to cut cooking times by 30 percent; keep this time reduction in mind when applying a recipe's given cook time. Remove meat from the oven at the halfway point in its cooking time. Flip the meat over and replace it into the oven.

Use a meat thermometer to ensure the food is completely cooked. The speedier cooking time that convection ovens take to cook the same amount can be a difficult adjustment for inexperienced convection oven users. When the cooking time is up, remove the food from the oven and insert a meat thermometer into the center of the food, checking a common food safety guide for appropriate meat temperatures.