A rump roast is a tougher cut of meat...too tough to dry roast or grill. Best is to braise it. Smear it all around with some ground garlic and coarse salt - not thick. Brown it on all sides on top of the stove, to create a crust, then add water to the bottom of the pan and put in a hot oven (450) for about 10 minutes. Then, put heat down to 325, add more liquid, maybe some onions and carrots, and cover with a lid. Cook until almost well done(150 degrees by meat thermometer). Remove it and let it set for 15-20 minutes until slicing. If you add a little red wine or cranberry juice(I stir in a tbsp of jellied cranberry sauce) to the gravy, it really makes for a nice taste.

"While water won't get hotter than 212 (at standard temperature and pressure) I don't believe there's anything preventing steam from getting hotter. Using a similar roasting pan and a cucumber to approximate the chicken, oil in a pan easily got hotter than 212: Even taking it to the extreme and "steaming" the oil, it got hotter than 212" Here's how I believe if works. Sorry if I'm overlapping w/ dcarch's posts, or repeating myself. - Steam can get hotter than 212F if it is under pressure higher than standard sea-level atmospheric (14.7PSI). The link gives the temp-pressure relationship. - Since the pot is not a pressure cooker, the pressure inside is not much above 14.7PSI and the steam in the covered pot is not much above 212F. - The atmosphere in the covered pot is a combination of steam and air. Unlike steam, air can be hotter than 212F even at 14.7PSI. Since the steam and the air are mixing, the atmosphere's temperature will be somewhere between the steam temperature (appx 212F) and the air temp (hotter). - Early in the cooking process, there is lots of steam in the covered pot, so the pot's atmosphere's temperature is close to 212F. During this time, the chicken is being moist-cooked at low temperature. - If you keep cooking and boiling off the liquid in the pot, turning it into steam that escapes through the vent or around the lid, the atmosphere inside the pot will beome drier (less steam) and hotter (closer to the air temperature). Eventually, if you boil the pot dry enough, the atmosphere in the pot can come close enough to the oven's temperature (400F, let's say), and the chicken will start to roast and brown. - But the chicken has lots of internal liquid. If that liquid is dripping and boiling into steam, as is pretty much bound to happen, it has to be dried out too. So if you did want to get a chicken in a covered pot to the same degree of all-over brown as an uncovered chicken, the covered chicken could be a bit more dried out. I'm not sure, have never compared them side-by-side. - Using oil as a comparison doesn't work because oil does not boil at 212F like water, so it can be heated up way past 212F. Vegetable oil starts to smoke around 500F (soybean, safflower, etc - olive is much lower, like 375F). The oil's boiling point is well above that (around 570F for soybean). And above that, somewhere around 600F, is the oil's flash point and around 700F the oil will ignite. Most of us have never seen ''boiling'' oil, and hopefully we never will because it is dangerous. - I believe this is why it took laurie_2008 so long to roast the turkey. The liquid in the turkey and whatever else was in the pot (veg? stuffing?) had to boil off. Until that happened, the turkey was cooking at not much above 212F, which is of course an awfully low temperature. Here is a link that might be useful: Steam Temp-Pressure

Hi mistihayes, A roast can be cooked in another type of pan in the oven, though I don't think I would use a cake pan - they are thin compared to roasting pans. You could use another type of metal pan OR a glass/Pyrex dish (grease/spray it liberally with shortening or cooking spray,) OR an enamel over cast-iron, OR a cast iron pot OR even a disposable aluminum pan from the grocery store. A Dutch oven is very versatile & is useful for many cooking techniques such as stewing, slow cooking, & even roasting. It's worth the purchase. What type of electric roaster do you have? From what I have read, most are able to handle any type of roasting. I have the impression that they are comparable to "regular" ovens. Yes, I agree - this form is wonderful. I'm doing a brunch for 12 people on the 28th & am relying pretty much on the recipes I have found here. Kathleen

Hens and chicks sempervivum (houseleeks) would be content there, even outdoors all winter. :-) Or you likely could sow microgreens in it indoors if you have a small light set-up and harvest regularly, replenishing the soil from time to time and/or supplementing it with a liquid organic fertilizer. Young cress (sold in small trays in Europe as cressonette) makes a nice addition to winter salads and is harvested even before the first set of true leaves. Of course, in that case you do not even need to sow the seeds in soil, just a water-retaining substrate since plants do not require fertilizer before the second set of leaves. Or you could use the pan to start onion seedlings at the time appropriate for your growing zone - or any other type of seedlings for that matter as long as it is holey enough to drain well. Again, using a modest light set-up. Let us know what you decide to grow!