I grew up with a Kenmore like this one. My sister has it to this day. It was given to me and I cherished it with the memories of all the great meals my mother made with it. After borrowing it about 10-15 years ago, I never got it back! Actually it's OK because I don't need one that big. I bought a 4 qt and a 6 qt Nesco and am very happy with them. I think an electric roaster should be in every home. Many take them with camping or in their RV. There's a lot of different brands out there. I can't understand people buying slow cookers with the small roasters available. The roasters are workhorses and functional. I'm wondering if there's anything wrong with your unit other than the power cord. Do you have another to try? I doubt you can repair it. This time of year you can buy them new quite cheap. Granted, they're not as heavy as the old ones, but I've seen 18-20 qt units as cheap as $17 on clearance. Target has one right now for about $40. I'm certain that many places will put them on sale during the holidays. Menards almost always has (an off-brand) one in the $25-$30 range on sale. Regular price on the 18 qt Nesco at Menards was about $58. And that's cheaper than a LOT of slow cookers! I haven't seen the Westinghouse brand lately but if you're not dead-set on the same brand, you'll find a roaster easy enough and at a decent price.

I always use a thermometer probe with the alarm and set it for 150ð. Once it hits 150ð I turn the temp way down and start getting ready because residual heat will continue to cook. I call a turkey breast done at 160ð. The unit keeps so much moisture it's a moist heat, rather than a dry heat, which they claim will prevent cheesecake cracking but I don't eat cheesecake so I don't know about that. To brown the skin more you have to keep the skin dry. Dry it well when you put it in there, pull out juices as you're cooking, pat it with a towel or paper towels a you go, and Kitchen Bouquet, soy sauce or the like are tricks to brown it but I don't eat the skin anymore so I don't really care. I do occasionally put the RoastAir fan on and THAT will crisp it up! I used to cook the turkey breast to 180ð per some recommendations and it was fine in my Nesco. Not dried out like in an oven. But there's no need to cook it that much but it doesn't matter if it goes a little over. Use a thermometer and turn it down to 150ð and it'll stay hot and moist. Don't limit your use to just turkey or ham. Soups, stews, meatloaf, pot roast, chicken, ribs, casseroles, sausage, and virtually anything you'd put in a regular oven, since that's what it is! :) Great for baking potatoes, au-gratin, roasting cauliflower, steaming veggies and the like too. I've baked bread in mine and some of the best lasagna I've ever made came out of that Nesco.

I misplaced the new IRIS COLLECTION OFFERS there are three all together The RAINBOW IRIS COLLECTION, the TWICE AS NICE REB LOOMING IRIS COLLECTION, and the BATIK IRIS COLLECTION. One of the outgoing sale envelopes offer them for 19.99 and the other for 29.99. However one or two of the irises in the different offers are not the same. CAN SOMEONE PLEASE POST/email me THE KEY CODE AND IRIS NAMES IN EACH collection'scollection's for 19.99!!!! Pretty please!!! I actually used to work for the parent company Gardens alive that takes orders 4 brecks. For that reason I'm not going to be able to call and get it for myself however if someone can help me out I can give you some Insider information that will save you at least 50% off every time you order and believe me it will be worth your while expecially since as you guys found out with that roses collection it is normally priced at $150!!!!!

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.