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Stay away from this unit. First the description is wrong. It does NOT come with a porcelain cookwell it is teflon metal. Second there is no insulation b/t the heating element and the outside stainless housing of the cooker. So as hot as it gets inside it gets outside. No matter what the temperature is set on. Grab the plastic handles and come to close to the exterior stainless -BURN! Try to adjust the temperature, grab the knob with two fingers, slip or come to close to the outside of the cookers body, BURN! I am not talking about the black cooking pot that is inside or the black outer ring the lid sits on, I am talking about the stainless body that the handles, temperature knob and markings are on. How can the handles hold up to that much heat w/out melting. Can you imagine the handle on the lid?!? Further more, I had a hard time keeping the cord away from the body of the unit. I give it one cook and the cord would melt.
I am not making this up. I called Nesco, they answered immediately, 5 stars! However, the woman that was on the phone knew NOTHING! She put me on hold 5 times and never once addressed the issue. She kept telling me I needed to put it in the garage and cook with it there and asking if I had completed the burn off period and this was normal during burn off. No matter how many times I told her the burn off had been done, she kept harping on the burn off and how it "BURNED" (exact wording) the insulation off of the housing during the burn off period. I finally got snippy and said "please just answer my one and only question. Is the unit going to be this hot every time it is used with the housing so hot it can not be touched?" Hold yet again! 2 minutes later YES! The unit gets that hot every time it is used, but wait for it..... "people don't normally cook that hot, 350 degrees is too high, if you cook at a lower temperature you should be fine". Interesting answer to a unit with a temperature setting of 450 degrees......
Luckily Amazon is the greatest online market place in the world! They took it back no questions asked! BUYER BEWARE!!!!!!!! There are other units that do the exact same thing and actually have insulation between the heating element and the housing. If you are ok with the heat on the housing, just remember the item description is WRONG....
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We gave our old Nesco roaster to our son. Bought the Stainless steel model 4818-24PR.
Worked just like our 20 year old Nesco. Some reviews' claimed cover was very light weight. It is, as was our old cover. This cover had an extra fold around the edge of the cover which makes it a little stiffer. Don't see any problem with the lightness of the cover. As noted in the burn-in instructions. Do not leave the cover on the roaster when heating the first time at high heat and do this outside as this burns off any oil film and the roaster does smoke some. The sides of the roaster WILL get hot no matter how much insulation is in it. 500 degrees for over an hour? DA? There were some concerns about the roaster pan not be porcelain. This model has sprayed on porcelain enamel as described in the booklet. All said and done--Cooked an very good turkey with our Nesco roaster.
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I have owned 3 other Nesco roasters in the last 12 years, and this is by far the worst. The unit wasn't level which made one end burn more than the other. I say burn "more" than the other end because this unit cooked so hot, that it burned both ends of the roaster, the food, the cooking well and even blackened the cooking rack! The cooking well looked warped and the unit itself looked warped in the inside from the heat. And I had turned the temperature way down to cook my meat, but it was still too hot.
The lid was disappointingly thin and flimsy, and the cooking well was made out of thin metal also. Needless to say, I returned the roaster.
I have to say that with each model that I have purchased, in my opinion, the quality has declined. My last unit died within the first month after a couple of uses, and I had to pay to ship it back to Nesco to be fixed. Then, the unit died again within a year. My previous model also died within a year and had to be replaced.
After being a loyal Nesco customer for the last 12+ years, I am done. I have bought another brand of roaster figuring it couldn't be any worse than the Nesco. I have contacted the Nesco customer service about my complaints, but they made it clear they weren't concerned.
Honest reviews on Nesco 18-Quart Professional Roaster Oven, Stainless Steel Base
I looked at the various Nesco roasters. I was originally looking at the more sophisticated slow cookers like the ninja and the cuisinart multi 3 in 1. By studying the reviews (and I mean study as some with low reviews not only have axes to grind, but some are also addicted to getting 'you helped someone' remarks.
Anyway, several talked about the problems of the non stick material chipping, peeling, etc on many items.
Plus, with these high tech slow cookers, they are small. They cannot handle a big bird or ham, for instance.
I started looking into these roasters and see that not only can they roast a who ville who beast, they can also slow cook, steam, bake bread and do all sorts of stuff.
So, I started to study these guys in detail. I read about how people complained about the breaking in process with the Nesco roasters. This turned me away. I looked at every other makers products and read their reviews. People talked about uneven legs, warping of cheap metal, severely inaccurate heating, and so on.
On one website, a reviewer said, some thing like ' If you want a disposable one or two time use roaster, this will do (referring to whatever brand I was reading about), but if you want something that will last, get the Nesco with the stainless steel cookwell.
So, basically, I went in a big circle back to the Nesco.
Now, check this out. He was recommending the more expensive model that has the stainless steel cookwell. They advertise that model as going to 450 degrees and this one as 425 degrees. The other model also has a thin layer of some kind of coating over the stainles for easy clean.
Two things. While on the web they say this model goes only to 425, probaably to get us to buy the more expensive one, This model goes to 450, and from what i've read, the thin layer of enamel cracks on the more expensive one and you can imagine how crappy that will look when the grease gets in those cracks.
Check this out. At the moment I bought things. this model, at about $65.00 and the stainless steel cookwell at $58.+ came to a total of about $3.22 or so above the price of $122.+ they wanted for the other model.
So, what I am trying to say is that for about $3.00 I got not only the roaster with the stainless steel cookwell, but the porcelain cookwell for about three dollars.
So, here is my plan. I can use the porcelain cookwell for my slow cooking, gooey sticky stuff, and have the stainless steel for the high temp cooking that may cause the cracking and peeling of the supposed non stick type products.
I can now spend the time slow cooking, say beans in the porcelain pot, and then removing it to put in the stainless cookwell for a big ham.
The three serve wells fit nicely in either cookwell and hold a mess o grub in each for the occasion.
Enjoy!
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I ordered this because I wanted the porcelain cookwell, but they sent the Teflon coated model. The 4818-25PR is the model with the TEFLON coating. I told amazon about this but I doubt they will fix it.(And now 5 months later I see they have not). These are nice roasters, but I Don't enjoy eating teflon. The Teflon coated model also has the incorrect model number listed.
