Nesco 18-Quart Professional Roaster Oven, Stainless Steel Base, Aluminum Lid, and Prcelain Cookwell

Customer Reviews

Most helpful customer reviews

35 of 36 people found the following review helpful.
Stay Away!
By atexchad
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....

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful.
Just as good as old roaster
By B. L. Huffman
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.

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful.
Terrible product
By JP
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.