Pros: Better tasting meals;
Cooks evenly;
Easy cleaning;
Better than a Pocket Fisherman.
Cons: Not good for steaks;
Construction merely adequate;
Gets very hot;
Gloves suck.
The Bottom Line: Well worth the $160 cost. Easy to clean. Even easier to use. Cooks foods that a convention oven won't. No substitute for the barbeque. Quality of construction only adequate.
mcrodgers2's Full Review: Showtime Rotisserie & Bbq Ronco
I purchased my Ronco Rotisserie Oven over two years ago and this is one purchase I will never regret. This is one great kitchen appliance for the bachelor, or otherwise lazy chief.
Prior to THIS purchase, I've passed on many other Ronco products; the food dehydrator, and the spray on hair bald spot remover for example. Despite this, I've been pleasantly surprised and impressed by the Ronco Showtime Rotisserie Oven.
My favorite aspects of the oven are its ease of use and its ability to cook certain favorite foods better than I could otherwise without any extra hassle. I also like how easy it is to clean…most of the time.
WHAT DO YOU GET?
It comes with the basic oven, see thru glass door, a rotisserie spit plate assembly, a food basket, drip tray with grated cover and an oven top vegetable steamer tray.
Also included are six self rotating shish kabob skewers, elastic tie strings for roasts etc., and a flavor injector hypodermic type gismo for injecting sauces and seasonings into meats, etc. You also get two barbeque gloves and plastic spit assembly base for holding the rotating spit plate assembly.
I don't use the "flavor injector" that often but it does come in handy sometimes. It would be more useful for large roasts, etc as would the elastic tie strings.
WHAT'S IT GOOD FOR?
I love using this oven for fish, lobster tail, and chicken legs, thighs, and breasts.
All theses foods can be cooked in the provided food basket. Everything cooks very evenly, in it's own juices and any cooked fat drips right off into the drip tray.
It does a fantastic job with fish of any kind. I usually add lemon slices and dill to each side of the fish, lock it all into the basket, mount it onto the rotating spits and go.
All that is needed after that is to set the timer and wait. It really is as advertised, "Set it and forget it". Somehow fish and chicken comes out tasting better in the Rotisserie Oven than they do preparing then any other way.
The two-compartment vegetable steamer tray is a big plus. The veggies get cooked at the same time as the main course with only one extra dish to clean and the steamed result tastes far better than stove top cooking. The vegetables are firmer and have lost very little of their fresh flavor when done. The steamer is also excellent for preparing shrimp and cherry stone clams.
Oh man! I'm making myself hungry!
A side note on the vegetable steamer tray. It says right on the tray, "Use Only on Top of the Rotisserie". Heed these wise words! I tried steaming some foods by placing the tray on the stove top set to medium low. I actually got away with it a couple of times, until I burned the painted lower surface. Now the, so I thought, high temp coating is peeling off rapidly and the underlying metal is beginning to rust. I will eventually need to replace the tray with one of the extra accessory kits offered by Ronco. The moral of this story, "Heed the words of master ObiRon Kanobi.
The Ronco Rotisserie Oven can broil lobster tail and make shish kabob. These are foods I would not have attempted before owning the oven, not being much of a cook and more importantly, from being too lazy.
The shish kabob skewers are equipped with cog like gears that automatically rotate the food as it revolves on the larger spit wheel. This makes sure all sides of the meat get cooked evenly. Pretty slick!
I don't usually prepare large meals but the literature says the oven can handle up to a 15 lb turkey at 12 minutes per pound. I've got no reason to believe Ron Popeil would lie to me about that. ;-)
WHAT'S IT NOT SO GOOD FOR?
I have prepared steak in the Rotisserie Oven with less than optimal results. I prefer to sear the steak in a frying pan and cook it that way. Steak in the Rotisserie Oven just doesn't quit taste as good and is actually more of a hassle than just frying. You can pause the rotation of the spits to "sear" the food but this doesn't quite work that well for steak.
Of course the oven is not a substitute for an outdoor barbeque. The barbeque flavor of an open flame is just not reproduced. The Ronco Rotisserie Oven is the NEXT best thing and you can cook with it indoors with far less hassle, attention and clean up.
BIGGEST DRAWBACKS
The barbeque gloves are very important and are needed every time you use the oven to lift out the rotating spits holding the food. This sucker gets extremely hot! Too hot, in fact, for the rather unsubstantial barbecue gloves. The whole spit assembly and food lifts out very easily but, if you take too long to set the spit assembly onto the plastic split holder base, the whole thing will become too hot to handle in a short time and the rubber coating on the cloves will begin to melt. The plastic spit holder base, on occasion, has partially melted on me and has become stuck to the split plate assembly. These problems are the number one draw back of this oven. Fortunately they are entirely related to the poor thermal qualities of the GLOVES and PLASTIC BASE and nothing to do with the oven itself.
An annoying and loud squeak will often occur when the spits plate assembly is rotating. This isn't really a problem and can easily be solved with a little dab of cooking oil on the split plate and/or spit gears.
One other drawback of the oven is how hot the outside surfaces gets. You need to be careful and keep hands, counter top items, etc., away from the unit when it is running.
If you have kids, just like any other oven, keep them away from it when it's running. NO TOUCHY!
GENERAL QUALITY
The construction of the oven is adequate but not top of the line. The interior enamel will not stand up to the use of oven cleaners. Some parts of the plastic base have cracked on the unit, possibly when I recently moved.
It is a little difficult to clean the basket, but such would be the case with any basket used in this way. The drip pan and grated cover clean up easily and have a higher quality coating than does the oven itself.
The heat shield behind the heating elements lifts out and can withstand the use of chemical oven cleaners.
DOES IT FIT IN MY KITCHEN?
The oven fits nicely on the kitchen counter. Dimensions are:
Height: 13 inches
Depth: 14 inches
Width: 14 1/2 inches
You need to leave space around all sides of the unit when cooking due to the high temperatures of the outside surfaces of the oven.
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