Does Covering With Foil Cook Faster? ( What Experts Say)

Using aluminum foil to cover food items is not a new thing for chefs. Wrapping food items with foil is one of the most common practices professional chefs follow. Why is it so? Does covering with foil cook faster?

No, covering with foil doesn’t seem to cook the food faster. But it surely helps evenly distribute the heat all over the surface of the food. This helps in making delicious yet crispy dishes, especially meat. Additionally, aluminum foil keeps the heat and moisture inside the food fresh.

Using aluminum foil doesn’t make much difference, but it does have a set of benefits. Most professional chefs prefer using it to cover the meat to achieve crispier and evenly cooked food. Among many cooking hacks, people consider covering food with foil is another hack. So, if you don’t put aluminum foil in your grocery cart, you probably should consider putting it in. 

Does covering food with foil help in any way? What are the benefits of using foil while cooking? Such questions must be answered to improve the cooking experience. Let’s not wait any longer and get into the detailed answer.

Does Covering with Foil Cook Faster?

To put it simply, covering the food with foil doesn’t help in cooking faster. Aluminum foil does distribute heat evenly while cooking meaty dishes such as steak, roast, or turkey. Evenly dispersed heat can cook the meat better and perfectly from all sides while making it flavorful. 

Well, aluminum foil isn’t completely useless when it comes to cooking fast. The shinier side of the aluminum foil does have the ability to reduce cooking time. How? By keeping the shiny side inward. It does make a little difference in cooking time. But remember, it will not drastically reduce the cooking time. You can try this technique for cooking a chicken roast.

How Does Covering With Foil Affect Cooking? 

To understand it better, a thin layer of aluminum foil has two sides. One is a bit shiny while another one has a rough texture. The shiny side has to be outward for wrapping the food. This will keep the food fresh and edible for a longer time. Not to forget, the shiny side of the aluminum foil can slow down the cooking process as it will reflect the heat comparatively more. 

On the other hand, if you wrap the foil upside down, the shiny side facing the food, it does make a little bit of difference in cooking the food faster. This will turn the meat brown faster and eventually help in fast cooking.

What are the benefits of Covering Food With Foil? 

Aluminum foil might not help cook faster but it can offer a set of benefits. There are a lot of advantages to covering food with aluminum foil. 

• The foil-wrapped food will not become dry and withered after a few hours. Otherwise, it will be edible and fresh for more than a few hours. 
• As aluminum is a poor insulator, it kind of traps the heat inside while not letting it go outside. This character of aluminum foil will keep the food warm for a longer run. 
• Not only great for keeping food warm, but it does let cold food get warm too soon. The aluminum sheet acts as an obstacle to air which helps in maintaining the temperature of food. 
• Using aluminum foil for food storage is another benefit. You can wrap food with foil and store it in the fridge. But don’t keep the foil-wrapped food in the fridge for more than one or two days. Otherwise, the food can become contagious to health. 
• All kinds of germs and bacteria won’t get into the food when wrapped in aluminum foil. This will keep the food fresh for more than two days.

Conclusions

Aluminum foil has a certain spot in the kitchen by offering various benefits. Although, it doesn’t help much in cooking faster but certainly locks the moisture in the food, all thanks to the poor insulating character of aluminum. There are a lot of reasons for keeping foil in the kitchen drawer. 

To cook faster, you must be a bit careful with the sides of the foil. Keep in mind, it won’t drastically reduce the cooking time. Getting a package of aluminum foil isn’t a bad deal either. If you’re still skeptical about the question, does covering with foil cook faster, read the blog post again. 

That’s it for this blog. I hope this blog post helped you better understand whether covering the food with foil helps in cooking or not.