Kitchen (mis)adventures

The Screw-up Fairy graced us with yet another visit yesterday.  When I started writing this entry, it was after 7 p.m. and Thanksgiving dinner was still an hour or more away from being ready.  I suppose we shouldn't have been surprised; I can't recall when (if ever) we've managed to serve a turkey dinner that's not hours off schedule.  That's one "family tradition" I could do without, you know?  Anything but turkey, and we're at least within a half-hour of the projected time.  Roast beef, rinderrouladen, duck, chicken, pork roast, you name it.  I just don't know what it is about that big frickin' bird that does us in every time.

The day had been a comedy of errors from the start.  I'd decided to try a new dessert recipe, and unfortunately the folks who market the specific brand of pre-made graham cracker crust called for didn't bother to say which size crust to use, the 9 oz. or the 6 oz.  So, silly me, I assumed the product pictured on the recipe card was the correct one.  I should have known better.  First there was too much filling for the crust, and then it tried to climb out of its shell in the oven before it set up.  I dunno, maybe I over-whipped the filling or something, but it just seemed odd.  And it took about 15 minutes longer to cook than the recipe indicated; it's not a good thing when you have to increase baking time by another 50%.  It tasted great, though, so I guess it wasn't a complete FAIL.

Athos had decided to follow a recipe he'd found in Cook's Illustrated for the turkey.  So far, every recipe of theirs that we've tried has been a keeper.  He prepped all the veggies for the seasoning mixture, cut the turkey into the requisite parts (leg quarters and breasts are best cooked for different lengths of time, after all), set them on a rack over the veggie mix, basted the bird with butter, and popped everything into a slow oven per the recipe.

Four hours later, the leg quarters were barely done, and the breast meat was still reading much too low to be anywhere near table-ready.  So he put everything back in for another 20 minutes or so.  OK, better results that time: Legs and thighs had passed the magic number on the thermometer, so they were ready . . . but the breast was still underdone.  So back into the oven with the white meat.  Twenty minutes or so later he checked internal temps, pulled it out, said screw it and just nuked the breast to finish it off.

That's when we finally got to turn the oven temp up and cook the damned dressing.

We'd both been thinking something isn't right here for awhile, so Athos dug one of our old, everybody's-got-one, inexpensive bimetal thermometers out of storage and stuck it into the oven.  Damned if it didn't tell us we were running a good 50°F below what the set-point thermometer in the oven claimed!  Well, that explains everything.

Problem now is, what went wrong?  It was just over a month ago that the entire oven unit*, along with all the sensors, heating elements and convection fans, was replaced.  The repair guys checked it post-installation and it was working just fine.  We double-checked the temp readings; no problems.  We've used the oven in the meantime without unexpected difficulties. So WTF?!? 

* That's what the manufacturer recommends for the heating element failure we had, and it was still under warranty, so the 2-guys-for-four-hours labor charge was on their tab, thank gods.  We have it on good authority that the mfg. had received a short run of not-quite-to-spec parts from one of their suppliers, and it took awhile for problems to show up. Some components from that run have developed problems, some haven't, and likely won't. To the mfg.'s credit, they've been repairing the affected units as soon they receive notification, pretty much without question.

Bonus: Our repair guys left us the here's-how-you-take-it-apart-and put-it-back-together manual from the mfg. (but not the instructional DVD, dammit), as well as the old oven unit, with all the still-working goodies attached.  So now we have two spare convection fans, the halogen lighting units, probe thermocouples, two top and one bottom non-defective heating elements, etc. on hand should we need spare parts in the future.  That adds up to several hundred dollars' worth of stuff we won't have to buy later on.   And we know we'll need them eventually; lights burn out and fan motors fail, given time.  Sometimes heating elements burn through.  That's just how it is.