engineer101 wrote: Mon Jul 08, 2024 12:15 pm
I'm planning to retire sometime in Q1 2025, although actual date is TBD. Age 58.
Welcome to the Retirement Roll Call engineer101! You're in this Marvelous Class of 2025
engineer101 wrote:After 35+ years of engineering, I'm ready for something else! Time to catch up on years of books not read and movies not watched, plus some sleeping in, home cooking, cycling, traveling, etc. And I will spend some time between now and the big day doing more specific planning.
Sounds great! There's nothing like an engineer for detailed planning. We wish you all the best in planning and enjoying a long wonderful retirement full of exciting new adventures.
And since you have "cooking" on your list of important things to do once you punch out of the rat race, read this forum thread
"Beef Roast" where several Boglehead engineers tried to cook roast beef - complete with graph paper, colored pencils & pens, spreadsheets, stop watches, a variety of meat thermometers and several cookbooks with detailed directions, all arrayed out on their kitchen counters, trying to cook the perfect beef roast as scientifically perfectly as possible according to precise plans
Note - these are actual quotes, no one could possibly make this up
All equipment tested with engineering precision for all systems go -
Will check the external display thermometer and internal-read thermometer in warm water sometime to see if I still see the 3-5 degree difference.
Checked today, and they were spot on (same temp reading on each) from about 90 deg F to about 125 deg F. Then checked in my tea, and at first the instant-read displayed about 5 degrees higher (say 145 vs. 140), but then I noticed that that displayed temp on the instant-read thermometer changed when I moved it slightly, and it was within 1 or 2 degrees when I put the tips of the thermometers right next to each other.
So I'm happy with my thermometers.
So, now your thermometers are cross-calibrated, do you have a sufficient supply of graph paper?
Of course I'm doing a spreadsheet to plan our cooking/baking, and I use the average of min and max times to plan.
Also, I've also read that temp rises less while resting if cooked at low temp, which makes sense. My notes for recipe I think I used last time indicate with 325 temp to remove at 128-130 for target temp of 135, and I'm pretty sure that's what I did, and it worked great. Most common recommendation seems to be to remove at 125 for target temp of 130, but especially with lower temp (say 200-250), I'm leaning toward removing at 128-130.
Next time, try cooking it at the lowest temp. your oven will do. Mine is 170F. With lower temperatures you will get less overshoot. Also, I am an engineer. I have a piece of graph paper on the counter top where I plot temp. vs. time as we're going along. That makes it easy to extrapolate the time when the roast will be done.
So for the first 40 minutes or so, temp increased by only about 0.2 degrees/minute, then 0.5 deg/minute over next hour, then 0.65 deg/minute for next 40 minutes, then 0.61 deg/minute for 20 minutes, then about 0.5 deg/minute for the last 20 minutes before removing from oven. Temp continued increasing at 0.5 deg/min for first few minutes, then 0.4 deg/min for about 15 minutes, then continued to slow from there.
Also an engineer by training, and did same, but entered times and temps into my spreadsheet as I went. Used a formula to extrapolate temp, but of course the curve is not linear, so predictions get better after the first hour or so. Here is the plot shown earlier with calculated temps added:
We can see that at the 42 minute mark, the prediction for the 102 minute mark was way low (19 degrees), due to the slow heat increase rate during first 40 minutes. The prediction at 102 minutes for 142 minutes was 7 degrees low, but after that all predictions were +/- 2 degrees from actual. By 142 minutes I could see that the oven would reach target temp of 125 before target time, since I had guessed 20-30 minutes per lb, and used the average of 25 minutes for planning (whereas actual turned out to be 23.25, and of course I should have taken it out even sooner, so about 20-21 minutes per lb--at low end of my guesstimated range).
As I've said before, I'll admit, engineers make me feel inadequate - all I do is mix a Lipton's Onion Soup packet with ketchup and pour it over a large roast, put it in the oven, covered, for 3 hours, 350 degrees, and it's done
