22-Quart Roaster Oven with Self-Basting Lid

The good and the bad:* The outside of this unit does get extremely hot and you must be careful or you will burn yourself.* It is not too heavy but that is a plus for me.* It smells when you first plug it in as do many appliances with a heating element. Just heat water in the unit before you use it and then clean it. When you are ready to cook your turkey, it won't smell.* If the turkey touches the sides, it will burn. Simply put tin foil between the turkey and the side of the pan and your problem is solved.* The self basting lid is awesome. Put the turkey in and forget it and comes out moist and cooked to perfection.* Clean up is easy enough. I sprayed the roaster and rack with PAM and clean up was no worse than any other pan.In spite of of a few negatives, I am very glad I bought this roaster. It isn't expensive and it works very well.

I just did our Thanksgiving turkey in the roaster yesterday and it turned out amazing. First and foremost you need a thermometer with a probe/wire attachment because you don't want to lift the lid during the cooking process. I bought a 15.5 lb turkey and it took two hours to cook (unstuffed). I started with a 450 degree setting added the turkey with stock in the bottom and cooked to 20 minutes. I then turned the oven down to 325 and finished roasting the bird. I turned off the roaster once the turkey was done, removed the lid until the roaster cooled, put the lid back on and let the bird rest inside roaster for a hour while I did the rest of my sides in the oven. The turkey was AMAZING it white meat was so moist and the dark was cooked to perfection. I have never had a turkey turn out this well and juicy in a conventional oven. The only thing is my bird did not brown like it does in the oven, but I will take a lighter colored bird any day that tasted that good and that moist.I have also made apple butter in my roaster. I wanted a big batch of butter to can and with all the methods out there the roaster over gave me the best volume. I got 21 half pint jars from about 20 lbs of apples and rave reviews on the apple butter. It didn't take as long as I thought it would, I think it was about 6 or 7 hours before it was done.I am pleased with my purchase

I purchased this on rush order because once I brought my chosen turkey home for Thanksgiving, I realized that 25 lb monstrosity wasn't going to fit into my old electric roaster--and it was a very large roaster (or so I thought.) This Oster 22-Quart Roaster far surpassed my expectations, and I cannot stop gushing about it. After washing the roaster, I did a dry-run a few days before Thanksgiving to burn off the manufacturing smell. It only lasted about 5 minutes and wasn't too bad, so I was happy about that.3 days before t-day, I began brining the turkey in the roaster (without power), refilling the ice every 12 hours. It was able to keep the brine at or below 40 degrees, even sitting a mere 5 feet from my roaring wood stove; the insulation on this thing is quite impressive.On t-day, we washed the roaster, then put the turkey on the rack inside with a little water, onions, apples, and celery, and set it to 350. Standard turkey roasting is 20 minutes per pound of bird, which should have given us about 5 hours of cooking time. The roaster finished the job, including a CRISPY brown skin, in 3.5 hours. It heated the bird evenly, leaving all the skin just beautiful and delicious and the meat moist and tasty. No need for a foil cover to protect the breast from drying out, though I did wad up a couple foil balls to hold the wings away from the sides of the pan.After we ate, I left the carcass in the roaster, filled it with 15 quarts of water, and let it simmer for 24 hours. I then used that stock to make 20 quarts of incredible turkey soup... all of this IN the roaster.With such a long period of constant usage (almost 48 hours), I expected this thing to break down or struggle, but it absolutely has not. It's running smoothly, heating evenly, and keeping a constant temp (as checked with my food thermometer). I've not been a huge fan of Oster products, due to their low-quality and tendency to break under pressure, but I couldn't be happier with this product. This was a heck of a maiden voyage for my new roaster, and it performed above and beyond what I was expecting.

I've used this just one time. I had a smallish turkey-- 13 1/5 pounds-- plus potatoes, carrots, and celery. I threw some chicken broth in as well as white wine, set it to 350 (according to the instruction booklet), and let it go. It took 2 1/2 hours but I opened the lid to flip the turkey breast side down. Once it was done, I set the temp to warm and just let it go until I was ready to pull it out and let it sit 15 minutes.This was the easiest turkey I've ever done. I've spatchcocked a turkey before and I like that method but it's work cutting the spine out of the turkey. The spatchcocked turkey takes a big oven which I know longer have.What I really like about this is my oven was FREE for whatever I needed.What isn't as good is the turkey doesn't brown the same way as it will in the oven. I considered putting it in a pan and popping it into the oven to brown but my husband said not to bother. I ended up slicing what we needed, and put the rest of the turkey in a very large (1 gallon) storage bag to pop into the refrigerator.It did have a funky smell the first time it heated up. I think a small piece of styrofoam was stuck between the pan and the heating element. The smell was short lived and had no impact on the turkey.This thing is HUGE. The wings touched the sides a little so they were browned some. I had a potato or two that also touched the side and was very well done. Very minor issues, but I would be concerned about an 18-20 pound turkey getting a little dark if they touched the sides.