Turkey Roaster? Ronco Rotisserie?

A couple of years ago my oven died the weekend before Thanksgiving. Good luck getting a repairman out! LOL!

So in desperation I went out and bought one of those NuWave countertop cookers. It’s basically a small convection oven. Best turkey and chicken I’ve ever had, anwhere, bar none, and it takes less time than the larger oven. In fact, the next time I thought about fixing the oven was the next year when I was ready to start making Christmas cookies.

It doesn’t do very well on roast beef, unless you like it black and blue, in which case it’s a dream come true.

For turkey it tops out at about 16 pounds though, and you need the extender ring to manage that. I also haven’t tried stuffing the turkey, I don’t think the stuffing would have time to heat up.

It’s also see-through, so the guests wandering through can see Tom Turkey in all his amazing goodness getting brown and delicious - it becomes the centerpiece of the day. LOL!

If it helps to have a solution without adding an extra appliance, what I did the last time I cooked a many-dish meal was stage the items that needed to be baked/browned in the oven, on the stovetop, while the turkey was cooking in the oven. The temperature I was using to slow-roast the turkey (225F) wasn’t appropriate for the other dishes, anyway. So I got those cooking/warming up on the stove. Cranberry sauce I made the day before. Bourbon carrots didn’t need the oven. Candied yams and the bean casserole were easily started on the stove.

The turkey was brought up to a higher temp (400F) for the last 20 minutes for browning and then pulled from the oven. During those 20 minutes, I transferred the yams and beans to casserole dishes and added the toppings that needed to be browned, and mixed together the cornbread ingredients. The turkey was pulled and tented with foil and set aside for 30 minutes. During those 30 minutes, everything that needed oven browning/cooking (extra stuffing not soaked in turkey for the vegetarians, the bean casserole, the yams, and cornbread) then went into the oven at 350 or so (whatever the cornbread needed, I don’t remember exactly!) By the time the turkey was carved, everything in the oven was ready.

A written plan and a timer is recommended, but this is totally doable, unless the oven is too small for two racks with the number of casseroles you need after the bird is removed. Anyway, if that doesn’t help you, maybe it will help someone who reads this. Where there’s a will, there’s a way!

For $20 more you can get a Weber one touch gold grill which will get used a lot more than the Ronco unit.