Wow - the last of the few blisters I had from my first apple butter experience just healed! I was going thru the same thing - I was cooking and cooking and cooking and it just took hours! Then add in trying to use the cover of the pot as a shield to stop from being burned as I stirred and I was convinced I must have done something wrong lol!! I ended up digging out a mitt I bought for the bbq because I could not stop my hands from getting spattered every time I stirred. It was all over the stove, the walls, the floor, and me!!! One thing for sure - I'm not adding as much water as the Ball Blue Book suggested again! And I didn't think I was out of line thinking they should at least mention how long it will take to boil down in the instructions! I finished my other canning and still had a few hours to go until the apple butter was ready. Good thing I set the whole day aside for cooking! The stuff is delicious, tho! Lisa

My first thought was an expander ring too! There's times I put foil over the top of the roaster and the lid on to hold it in place when I want all moisture in there. But using it as the lid, well, essentially it'd be like putting foil over your oven door and leaving the oven door partly open. I think it could work but you'd lose a *lot* of heat and it'd affect the cooking. I'd try to cut off the bottom of the bird a bit or cut it into pieces and cook the pieces. Or maybe drop it on the floor a few times or sit on it to flatten it out a bit! ;) 22# is about the max for an 18 qt Nesco. One other thought is Rube Goldberg, jerry-rigged thought. You could take the cookwell out, use a large aluminum pan in it, top it with foil and invert the cookwell as a lid. You'd still probably lose a lot of heat & steam but not as bad. Another possibility is by removing the cookwell it might give the depth you need. I would not cook the food directly in the heatwell though, definitely use a pan or line it with several layers of heavy duty foil. Are you using a rack? Maybe eliminate the rack?

You've been won over to the wonder of electric roasters. Now you see why I threw away my slow cookers! I've made yeast breads, sweet breads, biscuits, rolls, meatloaves, burgers, pot roasts, baked potatoes, soups, stews, chilis, casseroles and much much more in my 4 qt and 6 qt Nescos. I use it to cook up ground meat (sometimes adding onion) to freeze. This saves mess when I need ground meat for a casserole, soup, chili, etc. I recently did about 18 pounds (in 3 batches) using my 6 quart unit. It's so nice, you don't have to constantly attend it like a frypan or stock pot. A few stirs and it's cooked up, drain it, bag it, freeze it and one ease pot to clean. I don't know of anything you can't bake in an electric roaster that you can bake in a conventional oven. And you can do a number of things in an electric roaster that you cannot do in a conventional oven. Because mine are smaller ones I've never tried a pie in there before although it would probably work fine. In the big one you have, pies would work well too, as would cakes, even cookies and bars. BTW, that cauliflower looks GREAT! I believe the Oster is similar to the Nesco in that the heating element is not in the bottom like a slow cooker, rather in the sides. You still will want to use the rack for a lot of things, not for fear of burning the bottom but for better air circulation. As for your romertopf , don't take this as gospel, but I'm guessing that as long as you don't have it ice cold you should be fine. If you're concerned, you could bring up the temperature of the roaster more slowly to condition and heat it. But I'm not sure you really need it. The electric roaster will probably do pretty much the same thing. I don't know what size you have so that could make a difference and you might want to have the romertopf in there while cooking something else along side of it, I don't know what you want to do so I can only speculate. Enjoy that roaster oven. I know you will love it more every time you use it. There's slight differences in using a roaster oven and you'll learn as you go. For one thing there's more moisture in a roaster oven than a conventional oven. This can impact things like browning birds and the like, but that's easy to work around, at least for me. One tip, you can do multi-level cooking if you have the rack like the one that comes with the Nescos. If you don't have one like it (the 2 tiered rack) you can still make your own or rig something. Using my mothers roaster I used Corningware covered dishes and the big glass raised knob worked fine to set another one on and it cooked fine. You need space between them for air circulation. So many times when I see these large roasters for $15-$25 I've thought about getting one, but just can't justify it. I don't cook for large groups anymore but it's such a bargain. Then I can't help but laugh seeing people buying slow cookers for $100 or more! They just don't know what they're missing! Happy cooking.

Yes, we put the pork right into the liner. I usually use the rack, Elery doesn't, it works both ways but his way has the pork sitting in the fat. We also roast whole chickens on the rack, and I use it for bean soup, I just toss everything in there and set it to about 350F, let it cook til it's done because it's faster than the crockpot (which I only use if I'm going to be out all day). it makes a fine pot roast, a glazed ham, just about anything I can do in the oven. I use the big Nesco to make stock, I toss all the backs/necks/feet/bones/etc into the Nesco with a couple of carrots, quartered onions, stalks of celery, salt, pepper, bay leaf. When that all gets nicely browned and roasted, I add the water and let it simmer 18 hours or so. Strain it out, give the carrots and chicken bits to the dogs, toss out the bones and other stuff, refrigerate until the fat rises to the top and skim that off. Then can or freeze the stock. Your small Nesco could do the same thing on a smaller batch/basis. But then comes the question as to what I should do with 2 pints of chicken fat in the fridge, besides fry potatoes? Annie