In case I didn’t already know, I got a lesson on Thanksgiving Day on the curse of computerized appliances. It was the first time that I roasted a turkey in the stove I bought when I moved here in 2016. I always cook a turkey by the Adelle Davis cookbook, and she favors the slow roasting method. I have had a reverse shoulder replacement, so I needed an assistant to heave the turkey in the sink and wash it out, then put it on the roasting pan and shove it in the oven. This was done at 8PM. The oven was turned on to 300 degrees while the washing took place, and as soon as the temperature registered 300, my helper and guest for the dinner put the turkey in the oven. You do NOT put any stuffing in the turkey. You make stuffing on top of the stove so that the 300 degree temperature will kill all surface germs, both inside the cavity and on the exterior. After one hour, you turn the temperature back to 200 degrees, and leave it there for hours. You go to bed, and the house smells like turkey, and when you get up in the morning, the house smells like turkey. Yum! It makes Thanksgiving last for more than just the meal but for a day more!
Adelle’s slow roasting method takes approximately three times that of moderate temperature roasting. You look at her chart for various kinds of meat roasted at 300 degrees to figure how long it would take to cook a roast of that meat and weight at 300 and then multiply that by 3 and add one hour of pre-heating. In other words, for my 13.2 pound turkey it would be 13.2 X 20 minutes = 264 minutes divided by 60 = 4.4 hours X 3=13.2hours + 1=14.2 hours to be done. The next morning when I was getting dressed for the day, I heard a song coming from the stove that I never heard before. The stove has a silly song it sings to me when I set a timer for 5 minutes, and the 5 minutes is up. It was not that song; it was an alarmist song. I ran out to the kitchen and looked at the stove. It had a message for me typed on the stove screen just below the clock. The message said, “your cycle is done”. I said to the stove, what are you talking about, I am already through menopause. It kept singing to me and showing me the typed message. I then noticed that the temperature in the oven had dipped from the 200 it was set at to 185. I panicked. Oh no, I thought the oven had turned itself off, and I won’t be able to cook the turkey till done. After calming down a bit I thought of trying to hit clear/off on the oven. That stopped the song and the message. So I turned the oven on again to 200 degrees, and the interior temperature went up to 200 degrees in just a few minutes. By the way, the turkey was done at noon, and the meat was so tender and juicy, it fell off the bone as my guest sliced it.
I discussed the stove event with a number of friends, and we all decided there was some new safety feature on stoves with ovens turning off after 12 hours all by themselves, just in case you forgot you left the oven on and left the house for a trip somewhere.
Frankly, the only thing I like about my new stove is that the glass top is easier to clean when you accidentally slop food on it. The old stove had metal ring burners with a metal dish underneath where slopped food fell and burned onto that dish. That was very hard to clean. My husband had stiffness in his hands and hated turning on burners with the new stove because you have to poke at the stove panel to do that, whereas with the old stove, you turned the dial to the temperature wanted.
The stove is not the only computerized appliance. I had to get a new dryer when I moved here because the old dryer got injured in the move. The first time I used the new dryer we nearly fainted. We were each elsewhere in the house, nowhere near the dryer, when it let off a loud screech. I ran to the dryer. It had finished its cycle, and the clothes were dry. I learned you could turn that screech off, but it’s kind of practical when you’re doing more than one load of laundry to know when you can empty the dryer and put the new load in. I still haven’t forgiven the oven for its song and confusing message, but that doesn’t mean I won’t cook a turkey the slow way again, and it doesn’t mean that the oven won’t scare me with a new tune and message. By the way, two friends borrowed my slow roasting method for their turkeys, and they had fantastic results, with fully cooked, moist meat just falling off as the bird was carved. And their ovens didn’t sing at them! I forgot to ask how old their ovens are.
RECIPE FOR STOVETOP DRESSING
I got this recipe from a farm wife friend in South Killingly 50 years ago. By the way, that doesn’t mean I’m old, because I was a child bride.
Ingredients:
half a loaf of 100% whole wheat bread, diced
1 lb. of ground pork
several tangy apples, peeled and diced
handful of raisins
handful of cashews
1 medium onion, chopped
1/2 tsp. powered mustard
5 fresh sage leaves, ripped in pieces (or 1 tsp. ground sage leaves)
1 tbs. olive oil
container of chicken stock.
(self-control, so you don’t eat the raisins and nuts when you’re supposed to put them in the dressing)
Cook the ground pork fully, separating the pieces, in a frying pan with tall sides and a lid. Remove with slotted utensil and place on layers of paper towels to absorb grease. Remove the fat from the pan, but do not wipe the pan clean. The tiny pieces of pork and remaining fat will help the flavor. Add the olive oil and sprinkle with the powered mustard and sage. Keeping temperature low, stir in the chopped onions. Add a little bit of chicken stock and stir in the raisins, then the cashews, the pork, and the chopped apples. Add chicken stock to keep the mixture moist. Add the diced bread a little at a time, folding in and adding chicken stock to moisten the bread cubes. Cover the mixture and cook on low. Continue to turn the mixture so the flavors are distributed.
Guests will ask for seconds!
Angela Hawkins Fichter