| I have the Nesco 6 Qt. and use it several times a week. I cook for one -- and
this size is perfect for most of my 'daily' type cooking. The food I most
prepare are things like salmon steaks, steamed shrimp and veggies, roast chicken
(6 Qt holds about 5-6 pound), Cornish game hens, and roast beefs. Everything is
wonderful and so moist. It is very difficult to cook a small roast and have it
come out nice in a regular oven -- it's perfect in the Nesco. A couple of weeks
ago I made stuffed pork chops (4- 1" chops) and my company raved.
One of my friends, with several children at home, has the 18 Qt for big dinners
-- like huge turkeys or hams, the 12 Qt and 3 of the 4 Qts. She uses the 4 qts
for casseroles, lasagna, veggies. She lines up her Nesco's on the counter,
cooks the whole meal -- and has her two ovens free for baking bread, pies, etc.
The 12 and 18 quart convert to 'buffet' servers too, where you can put hot water
in them and these special trays hold the food. Which brings me to the one thing
I dislike -- the accessories like the above mentioned trays are *cheap*
aluminum. They could have been much nicer -- but since I don't have those sizes
who cares!
My family has always used the granite ware roasting pans for meats. For
example, we'd roast our turkey in the granite ware with the lid on, rather than
the big pan and aluminum tent method. The Nesco cooking well is granite ware.
One thing they advertise -- and it's true -- with the heat (circle of heat)
being generated from the SIDE and not the BOTTOM/TOP of the roaster the meats
are always done to taste each and every time -- wonderful consistency, and never
dry.
I have not tried slow cooking -- although my friend has and raves about it too.
Another thing that might be categorized as a draw back is the pre-heat time. On
average you pre-heat 20 minutes before adding your food. Cooking time is then
pretty much consistent with what-ever your recipe calls for.
Carel
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| We have the 18-quart that we bought this fall specifically to do our turkeys,
so that the regular oven would be free for other things. We were very pleased
with how the turkey came out at Thanksgiving. It had to be one of the
moistest turkeys that we've ever had. The buffet server mentioned in the
previous reply came with it, but we haven't used it yet. Since the turkey
came out so good, I'm looking forward to doing using the roaster for other
things, such as baking.
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