An oven bag, cooking bag or roasting bag is a bag used for the

roasting Roasting is a cooking method that uses dry heat where hot air covers the food, cooking it evenly on all sides with temperatures of at least from an open flame, oven, or other heat source. Roasting can enhance the flavor through caramelization ...

meat Meat is animal flesh that is eaten as food. Humans have hunted, farmed, and scavenged animals for meat since prehistoric times. The establishment of settlements in the Neolithic Revolution allowed the domestication of animals such as chic ...

or other

food Food is any substance consumed by an organism for nutritional support. Food is usually of plant, animal, or fungal origin, and contains essential nutrients, such as carbohydrates, fats, proteins, vitamins, or minerals. The substance is inge ...

in an

oven upA double oven A ceramic oven An oven is a tool which is used to expose materials to a hot environment. Ovens contain a hollow chamber and provide a means of heating the chamber in a controlled way. In use since antiquity, they have been us ...

. They may be made of heatproof

nylon Nylon is a generic designation for a family of synthetic polymers composed of polyamides ( repeating units linked by amide links).The polyamides may be aliphatic or semi-aromatic. Nylon is a silk-like thermoplastic, generally made from petro ...

or sometimes with food grade

polyethylene terephthalate Polyethylene terephthalate (or poly(ethylene terephthalate), PET, PETE, or the obsolete PETP or PET-P), is the most common thermoplastic polymer resin of the polyester family and is used in fibres for clothing, containers for liquids and foods ...

(PET). A bag helps to keep the food being cooked moist by trapping the moisture in the bag and preventing it from escaping into the oven; as such, it serves a similar purpose to basting. An oven bag must be chosen so that it will not melt at the temperature during cooking. Oven bags are made of a heat-resistant nylon. Oven bags should be carefully placed so that the bag does not come in contact with any hot surfaces in the oven, such as heating elements or oven racks. These may cause the bag to melt, smoke, or catch fire.

Effects on health

In 1998, a study measured the migration of non-volatile and volatile compounds from oven bags to chicken. As much as 16% of the nylon from microwave and roasting bags were observed in the chicken after roasting at 200°C (392°F) for 2 hours and as much as .08% of the total 2-cyclopentyl cyclopentanone content in the bags were observed. In a 2007 study which researched roasting bags and ready-made products in PET, found that half of the products prepared at a 180°C (356°F) temperature, exceeded the specific migration limit (SML) for

antimony Antimony is a chemical element with the symbol Sb (from la, stibium) and atomic number 51. A lustrous gray metalloid, it is found in nature mainly as the sulfide mineral stibnite (Sb2S3). Antimony compounds have been known since ancient time ...

set for food contact material by the

European Commission The European Commission (EC) is the executive of the European Union (EU). It operates as a cabinet government, with 27 members of the Commission (informally known as "Commissioners") headed by a President. It includes an administrative body o ...

. The migrated amounts of antimony did not exceed the accepted

tolerable daily intake Tolerable daily intake (TDI) refers to the daily amount of a chemical that has been assessed safe for human being on long-term basis (usually whole lifetime). Originally acceptable daily intake (ADI) was introduced in 1961 to define the daily intake ...

(TDI) which showed that exposure from this type of food at that time did not have a toxicological concern.

References

Food preparation utensils {{Kitchenware-stub