How to Cook Your Holiday Dinner without an Oven

Two days before Thanksgiving my oven quit.  Definitely not good timing - as if any time is a good time for the oven to quit.

I had plans for Wednesday, plans that involved lots of baking.  I was going to cook the turkey in my roaster oven while I used the oven to bake pies and rolls.  Without a working oven, those plans changed.  Thankfully I had already baked a pie on Tuesday afternoon, before the oven quit, so I only had two more to bake.  And the rolls, and - well, the oven plays a very important part in fixing any big family dinner.  How do you cook everything without an oven?



Use the roaster oven!  Yep, that's right, those pies and rolls can be baked in the roaster oven.  It's not just for turkeys and big pots of chili.  Preheat the roaster with the rack, then place the unbaked pie on the rack and bake.  Do not remove the lid to check it, because that will let the heat out - at least until the designated baking time is up.  I found that my pies needed more time in the roaster than in the regular oven, so next time I will just bake them longer before I check on them. 

German Chocolate Pie

You may also need to adjust your baking times, but try the regular recipe time first.  An advantage to knowing you can bake in your roaster oven?  You can use it in the summer time when you want to bake, and you don't want to heat up your whole kitchen!

I baked my pies and my turkey in the roaster oven.  It took longer because I couldn't do it all at the same time - one pie at a time and then the turkey - but I did get it done.  Instead of baking the rolls on Wednesday like I'd planned, I mixed them up and formed them into rolls after letting them raise the first time, and then I covered them and refrigerated them overnight.  The next day I pulled them out of the fridge and let them warm up and raise (about 1-1/2 hours), and then I baked them in the roaster oven.


Use crock pots!  Another option for cooking that holiday dinner without an oven is to use crock pots - in addition to the roaster oven.  I bought a triple crock pot last year, and that thing really came in handy.  I mixed up my dressing, and instead of baking it in the oven like I would normally have done, I greased a crock pot (actually I needed 2 of them), spooned the uncooked dressing in, and cooked it on high for about 4 hours.  It turned out great.  Same thing with my sweet potatoes.  I boiled them first, then peeled and sliced them, and layered them into another greased crock with a butter and brown sugar syrup.  Again, normally I would have put the sweet potatoes into a casserole dish and baked them, but they turned out just fine in the crock pot.  Yummy!

The mashed potatoes were, of course, boiled on top of the stove, and I made the gravy on the stove, too - as usual.  I warmed the turkey in the roaster oven the same way I would have done it in the oven - put some of the sliced turkey in a 13x9 cake pan, add some broth to keep it moist, cover with foil.  The hardest part was getting the pan of turkey out of the roaster oven without burning myself when it was time to eat, but I managed.

Yes, it would have been easier to cook Thanksgiving dinner if I'd had the use of my oven, but everything still turned out great.  It just took a little extra planning and time.

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My Oven Works!

The repairman called this afternoon and said the part for the stove was in, and he had time to come right out and install it.  So he came, installed it, and my oven works now!  I turn the oven on, and there's heat!  The bottom element turns orange like it's supposed to.  This makes me very happy!!

I had to use it, so I made fish sticks and baked potatoes for dinner.  Not real exciting, except that my oven works! 

Tomorrow I am going to have to bake something for real - bread?  muffins?  cookies?  What do you think?

I Can't Buy a New Stove for $200

A couple weeks ago my oven started acting up.  It just didn't seem to be heating properly.  I put dinner in the oven one night and walked away.  About an hour later, I got back into the kitchen, figured dinner should be hot and ready to eat - and the oven was cold!  I turned it off and turned it back on, and it seemed to work OK then, but dinner was way behind schedule.  After that, sometimes it would work and sometimes not, but I'm not sure it ever got up to the correct temperature.  Then this week I noticed that the bottom element wasn't heating at all.  I would say you don't realize how much you use your oven until it doesn't work, but that's not true.  I know I use it.  A lot.  It has to be fixed.

So, I started calling about having someone come and check it, and hopefully get it fixed.  It's really hard to get an idea of how much it's going to cost for something like this, but it seems like they're all pretty much the same, so I finally scheduled one to come out and look at it.  We were thinking the element just went out, and we'd have to replace that.  Except that when he got here, he tested the element, and it tested just fine.  So he started testing things only to find out that it's the computer board that has the problem, or at least the part of the board that controls the bake element.  That part he did not have with him or know how much it would cost, or even if it was still available since my stove is about 12 years old, so he had to get back to me on that.

Well, he called back today, and the part is over $150.  Together with the labor to install it, it will cost us at least $200 to get it fixed - in addition to the money we already paid for him to come out yesterday and check it.  My first thought was, "Is it really worth putting the money into fixing a 12 year old stove?"   Or would it be better to put that money toward buying a new stove?  I didn't actually ask the question, but Dave, the owner/repairman said that he would recommend fixing our stove because it's in good shape, and the new ones aren't built to last like this. Jeffrey stopped at an appliance store on the way home from work yesterday, and the lady at the store had told him the exact same thing.  Besides that, even if a new one would probably last as well and as long, we certainly can't buy one for anywhere near $200.

So I talked to Jeffrey and called Dave back and told him to go ahead and order the part, and he'll call me when it comes in to schedule a time to come out and install it.  He said it shouldn't take too long to get it.  And then I'll be able to bake again!