Here’s a tasty recipe to cook in the NuWave.  I used all chicken thighs here, as they are not only less expensive than breasts, but have much more flavor.  You can use whatever mustard you have on hand, I used Grey Poupon Stone Ground.  But I bet it would be good even with that cheap yellow mustard that you put on hot dogs at the ballpark.  This can also be cooked in a conventional oven, but it will take twice as long.

Honey-Mustard Chicken

3 pounds or so chicken parts
1/2 cup honey
1/4 cup melted butter
1/4 cup mustard
salt & pepper to taste

In a large bowl, mix honey, melted butter, mustard, salt & pepper. Set the rack in your NuWave oven at the 4-inch level. Toss the chicken pieces in the honey-mustard mixture, coating all sides. Put the chicken on the rack, cook on HIGH for 15 minutes. Turn the chicken pieces, and cook for another 15 minutes.

To cook this in a conventional oven, pre-heat to 350°F.  Place the coated chicken parts skin-side up in a roasting pan, and bake for about an hour, or until juices run clear.

Very easy and tasty…even people who never made careers out of cooking, as I have, can do it! Enjoy!

But WAIT A MINUTE!  I’m not a kitchen appliance junkie for nothing!  I have all manner of cooking appliances, I really don’t have to use this piece of crap stove much, if I don’t want to!

So I cooked a chicken in my Rival Crock-Pot BBQ Pit (pictured here).  This is kind of a cross between a traditional slow cooker and an outdoor BBQ, it looks cook, and gives you the same slow-cooked goodness that you’d get from an outdoor BBQ, except for the smoke.  I hadn’t used this thing in a while, and I’d forgotten how good it is.  The machine comes with a stoneware insert with a well at the bottom, which is good for adding some sort of flavorful liquid with which to infuse whatever it is that I’m cooking.  Since I was doing a chicken with lemon, thyme and garlic, I chose to add a bottle of Sam Adams Coastal Wheat.  Since it’s brewed with lemon peel in it, I thought it would add good flavor and go well with the chicken, and I was right.

One thing good about the flat-top stove is that it makes a good countertop space for my NuWave Oven.  I use that more than I use the stupid burners these days.  The NuWave is really good for cooking a lot of things, including asparagus.  I had gotten some really nice asparagus at Stop & Shop, and the NuWave is my favorite way to cook it.  The booklet that comes with the appliance suggests tossing the asparagus in olive oil, and then sprinkling it with lemon pepper.  Place it on the 4-inch rack in the NuWave, and cook on HIGH for 5-7 minutes for nicely roasted asparagus.  If you don’t have a NuWave Oven (and why not, despite the fact that it’s an infomercial item, it really is a good product and does what it advertises that it does)…you can just roast the asparagus in a regular oven.  It’ll probably take a little longer, but watch it carefully so it doesn’t burn, and you’ll be okay.

The only thing I had to use the crappy stovetop for was the rice.  But rice and pasta are two things that are hard to screw up, even on this piece of crap stove.

So now I am rediscovering all of these cool cooking appliances I’ve bought over the years, and may not have used much.  Any time I can avoid using the stove reduces the chance that it will break and end up costing me a fortune!

As you may know, our landladies recently replaced our still-perfectly-good stove with a new one.  I did not ask for this, and was given no input as to what type of stove I wanted.  You’d think that after having lived here for something like 15 years now, I would have been asked first.  If I’d had the choice, frankly, I’d have just said that the old one was fine, no need to spend money on a new one.  Seriously, I don’t understand when people forever see the need to replace things that are still in perfect working order.  We’re the sort of people to use things until they die.

This is the stove we got.  If I were the one who was making the purchase, I would have read the reviews first.  For the most part, the reviews are good, but the few bad ones concern me enough, in that they would have made me NOT buy this particular stove.  For one thing, I’m concerned about the computers on the inside going on the fritz, it supposedly is something that would cost $400 to fix.  One person said they had this happen after using the self-clean feature for the first time, and was told by a Sears technician that this is a common problem.  Now I am afraid to use the self-cleaning feature.  I haven’t used it yet, because I’ve only had the stove for a few months, and the oven has not gotten dirty enough yet.

I also don’t like that there seem to be a million restrictions as to what you can and can’t use on it to cook in.  I had heard that cast iron is not recommended; however, I have been using mine anyway, because other people say they have used it on these kinds of cooktops, and have been okay.  You just have to be careful not to drop the heavy iron pan on the glass, or drag it on the surface, lest it get scratched.  So far, no problems.

Look at this, from the owner’s manual (you can click it for bigger, will open in new tab/window):

This is just a small part of the whole book.  It seems that I’m expected to jump through a zillion hoops to keep this cooktop from being scratched or broken.  What a wonderful way to kill my joy in cooking, huh?

Anyhoo, that leads to the stovetop smoker, which I definitely CAN’T use on this stove.  Not only does it break two rules of the cooktop (the bottom is not smooth, it’s ridged, and it’s big enough to overhang even the largest burner), but even Camerons, the manufacturer, warns against this.  This is from the manual from the smoker:

Well, since Camerons makes a big deal out of telling people this, I’d best heed their advice.  So I ordered the single burner hot plate seen above.  It’s mostly so I can use the smoker, but given the fact that this damned cooktop is supposedly so fragile and needs to be treated with kid gloves…it might end up being my ONLY cooktop.  Because if this stove breaks, it’s staying broken until we move out and the landladies opt to fix or replace it for the next tenant, and they can go and suck eggs if they expect US to pay for it.

Either they will blame me for breaking it, and refuse to pay for the repair…or they WILL pay for the repair, but cut corners by hiring one of their regular cast of skeevy workmen, rather than a Sears technician.  And I will NOT have the skeevy workmen in my house, not when I’m here alone (landladies often go out and allow skeevy workmen free reign of the basement and their own unit upstairs).  Even if Mike were here, I still might not want them in here, every single person they hire is a smoker, and none will respect our rule about no smoking in our apartment.  Mike is severely allergic to cigarette smoke.  If he is exposed to it for too long, his entire face puffs up to the point where he can hardly breathe, and then I’d have to call 911.

And I am NOT going to pay Sears to repair it myself, not when I don’t own it.  All the law says is that the landladies must fix the stove if it breaks, nothing about who they have to hire to fix it.  I just don’t like the skeevy workmen; I have seen cleaner, classier looking guys panhandling on the streets of Boston.

Mike is also severely allergic to whatever additives they put in supermarket smoked sausage; this is why I got into sausage making and bought the smoker in the first place.  I also enjoy using it for other things.  Why should I have to give that up, because of someone else’s stupid choice of a stove?

So if the cooktop breaks, I’m keeping quiet about it.  I’ll just use the hot plate, my George Foreman grill and rotisserie, my toaster oven, and my NuWave oven to cook.  I’ll do my best to be careful, but it just makes me nervous all the time, with all the warnings about the alleged fragility of this thing.  If I had my way, I’d never have agreed to this stove.  If we owned our own house, I’d want a gas/propane stove, but that is not possible here.  I’m not a huge fan of the electric coil stoves, but as a frequent cook who gives a stove a good workout, they are the lesser of two evils.  I am convinced now that these glass-top stoves are more for people who hardly ever cook anything, and want something that just sits in the kitchen and looks pretty.

It works just fine, I just don’t like the fact that it is too easy to break it, and very expensive to fix if it does break.  And that doesn’t even include the inner computers inside the thing.

Gack.

This can be done with either a boneless or bone-in lamb roast.  Interestingly, Julia says that it actually takes LONGER to cook a boneless roast than one that is bone-in.  I always thought that bone-in stuff took longer.  But I guess the big bone inside the leg of lamb absorbs enough heat to cook the roast faster.

Anyhoo, my lamb was a boneless, butterflied piece, which weighed about three pounds.  Something like this needs to be rolled and tied with butcher’s twine, to make a cylindrically-shaped roast.  You can also opt to stuff the roast before rolling and tying, Julia’s book contains several recipes for stuffings.

But I opted for the mustard coating that goes on the outside.  Here is the recipe, as done in the NuWave:

1/2 cup Dijon mustard
2 tablespoons soy sauce
1 clove mashed garlic
1 teaspoon ground rosemary or thyme
1/4 teaspoon powdered ginger
2 tablespoons olive oil

Mix then all together but for the oil, the slowly drizzle in the oil while whisking constantly.  These ingredients are for up to a 6 pound roast.  As I said, mine was only 3 pounds.

Roll and tie the lamb, then paint it all over with the coating.  Place on the 1-nch rack in the NuWave, fatty-side up.

Now, according to Julia, cooking this in a regular oven means about 25-30 minutes per pound for rare to medium-rare, longer for well-done.  I decided to try 20 minutes per pound, as the NuWave cooking chart doesn’t specify times for boneless and bone-in roasts.

So that would put the total cooking time at one hour.  I set the timer for 30 minutes, turned it on HIGH and let it rip.  When the timer went off, I carefully removed the dome of the NuWave, and used thick paper toweling to turn the roast over.  Then I set the timer for another 30 minutes.  Remember, all roasts cooked in the NuWave are stated fat/skin side (or breast side, in the case of birds) down, and turned halfway through.

After the cooking time was up, I stuck an instant-read thermometer into the roast, it registered 120ºF.  Seems to be underdone, but then the roast needs to rest for about ten minutes.  During that time, it will keep cooking.  When you are ready to slice and serve, it will be over 130ºF, and a perfect medium-rare.  And it cooked in about half the time that it would have in the regular oven!
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With the movie Julie & Julia coming out next month, no doubt that “Mastering the Art of French Cooking” will be a hot item yet again.  You can do a search of Amazon books to find a copy of that, as well as the two books that the film is based on – My Life in France, which is a memoir by Julia Child, and Julie & Julia.  The latter is the story of a woman named Julie Powell, who takes on a demanding projects…cooking every recipe in “Mastering”.

The two women have never met.  The movie goes back and forth between Julia’s life in France, and Julie’s in New York.  Amy Adams plays Julie Powell, and Meryl Streep portrays the late, great Julia Child.  From the trailers I’ve seen on the movie’s website, she does a great job, has the voice and the mannerisoms down pat.  I can’t wait to see it!

Boneless pork loin is a very healthy cut of meat, due to the fact that it has very little fat.  The problem with is is that for one thing, it can taste bland, and for another, it can easy dry out while cooking.

This can be very easily avoided with the NuWave Oven.  I promise you, as long as you follow the instructions, you will end up with the most succulent, flavorful boneless pork loin ever!

Here, I used a spice rub to *marinate* the loin for several hours.  This can be any spice blend you like.  I used Emeril’s *Rib Rub* here, as it has a robust flavor and adds a lot to the otherwise bland pork meat.  Another good choice would be Chef Paul Prudhomme’s Meat Magic Seasoning Blend.  Both the Emeril and Chef Paul spices can be found in most decent supermarkets.  Or just use your own favorite seasoning mix, either store-bought or homemade.

Pat the roast dry.  Then rub on as much or as little of your selected seasoning as you’d like.  I don’t measure, I just sprinkle it out of the container.  Rub it in really well, on all sides.  Then wrap it in aluminum foil, put in the fridge, and let marinate for about 3 hours, or more.

When it is time to cook, unwrap the pork roast and place it on the 1-inch rack in the NuWave, fat side up.  If your roast is 3 pounds or more, cook it on HIGH for 25 minutes per pound.  If it is a smaller roast, such as the 2-pound one that I had, cook for just 20 minutes per pound.  This is for roasts that are completely thawed.

Halfway into the cooking, remove the dome from the NuWave and turn the roast over.  This enables it to brown well on all sides.  Put the dome back on and resume cooking.

The internal temp should be 160° F.   It’s okay of it only measures at 140° when the time is up, because it will continue to cook as it rests.  All roasted meats need a resting time of 5-10 minutes before slicing.  Tent it with some foil, on a cutting board, to keep warm.

When sliced, the meat comes out with a very slight pinkness inside, not medium-rare, but not overcooked, either.  Remember that trichinosis has been bred out of today’s pork, so cooking it until it is tough and chewy is no longer necessary.  A very slight pinkness inside is perfectly safe.  Also, you cannot catch swine flu from eating pork…amazing how many people still believe that!

What’s next for the NuWave?  Maybe burgers.  A while back, I bought Hubert Keller’s Burger Bar cookbook.  Keller owns several restaurants, some that are in Las Vegas hotels, including Burger Bar, in the Mandalay Bay hotel, which is the subject of the book.  He has a TV show on PBS called Hubert Keller’s Secrets of A Chef, which I enjoy.  He demonstrates one of his yummie burgers at the end of each show, and the book gives even more detailed informations.

I bet burgers would cook up well in the NuWave.  We shall see!

Last night, I cooked a whole chicken in this thing.  I decided to use a recipe in the Steven Raichlen book that I talked about in my last post.  Not that you really need a recipe for roast chicken, but the caramelized onion sauce that went with it sounded tasty.

The recipe called for cooking the chicken in an indoor rotisserie…Steven uses the Showtime, another infomercial product.  I actually have the George Foreman rotisserie, and the recipe would have worked just as well in that.  But I wanted to see how it would turn out in the NuWave.

Steven’s recipe called for seasoning the bird with herbes de Provence.  But I was running low on the premade variety, Shaw’s didn’t have any more, and I didn’t want to spend money on a whole jar of lavender that I’d never use up.  So I gave Mike a choice in seasoning:  Italian seasoning, original Emeril’s Essence, or Chef Paul Prudhomme’s Poultry Magic.  All of which I already had on hand at home.

He chose the Paul Prudhomme one.  Good choice!  But you can season your chicken with anything you like and have on hand.  Okay, maybe something like vanilla extract might be nasty, but you know what I mean!

All you have to do to cook a perfect roast chicken in the NuWave is to READ THE DIRECTIONS THAT CAME WITH THE APPLIANCE!  I swear, it never ceases to amaze me as to how many people complain that something doesn’t work as advertised, when they didn’t read the directions before using it.

Our chicken was 5 1/2 pounds, fresh, not frozen.  So in the NuWave, according to the instructions, it cooks for 15 minutes per pound, which comes to about an hour and 22 1/2 minutes, if you’re being exact about such things.

Basically, you season the chicken with salt, pepper, and whatever other seasonings you are using, in both the neck and main cavities.  Then lay the bird, breast side DOWN, on the 1 inch rack in the NuWave.  I like to spray the rack lightly with Pam first, just in case it might stick.  Brush the side that is facing up with some olive oil, season with salt, pepper, etc.  Since I was using the Chef Paul seasoning, which already contains salt, and Mike shouldn’t be having so much salt, I omitted the additional salt and just added additional pepper.  Cover the oven, set it to whatever is half of the total cooking time for the weight of the bird, and let it cook.

When the machine beeps, turn the bird over so that it’s breast side up.  I used heavy paper toweling to protect my hands while doing this.  Brush this side with olive oil, season with whatever you are seasoning it with, cover, set for the other half of the cooking time, and let it cook.

Once it’s done, remove the bird, tent with foil to keep warm, and let rest for 5-10 minutes before carving.  I used this time to cook some asparagus on the 4 inch rack.  Simple…one pound asparagus, trimmed, tossed in a little bit of olive oil and seasoned with garlic powder and lemon pepper.  Salt if your doctor won’t beat you for having it.  Arrange on NuWave rack, and cook on HIGH for 5 minutes.

The sauce is something you do on the stovetop.  Chop a medium onion, and cook it in 2 tablespoons melted butter until golden, adding 2 minced garlic gloves after about 3 minutes.  Add 1/2 cup white wine, let it cook down until there are only a couple of tablespoons of liquid left.  Add 1 1/2 cups chicken broth, raise the heat to high, and let it boil down to about 1 cup.  Add 1/2 cup heavy cream, bring to a simmer (lower the heat, or else the cream will boil over and make a huge mess!).  Simmer until slightly thickened.  Season with salt & pepper to taste.  This whole sauce-making process should take about 15 minutes.  You can do it while the chicken is still NuWaving, it can easily be reheated if done ahead.

The chicken?  Perfection.  I admit that I was a bit skeptical as to whether the skin would turn out crispy and all, but it did.  The dark meat was completely done, without drying out the breast meat.  Even Mike, who thinks that all infomercial stuff is crap, is sold on this appliance now.  He can’t stop raving about this chicken!

It’s been said many times that the test of a good cook is how they do a roast chicken.  With a NuWave Oven, you can do this, and be the envy of your family and friends!

Well, I already mentioned in a previous post that my friend Kat has one, and she absolutely loves it.  In case you’ve not read her review yet, you can find it right here.

One of my favorite ways to cook vegetables is to roast them.  This gives them a nice caramelization that you can’t get by boiling or steaming them.  So I decided to try some asparagus in the NuWave as my first project.

To prepare fresh asparagus, you first want to break off the woody bottoms of the stalk.  Hold the stalk witha hand on each end, and start to bend it, it will break off where the thick, woody part begins.  You can save these to make vegetable stock, and just cook the top part.  If the stalks are really thick, you might want to peel the tough outer skin with a vegetable peeler.  But if it’s nice, pencil-thin asparagus, no peeling is needed.

I simply followed the instructions in the recipe book that came with the oven…tossed the stalks in a little bit of olive oil, and seasoned with garlic powder, a little bit of salt (not too much for us, because Mike has to limit his sodium intake), and some lemon pepper.

The rack is reversible.    If you want your food closer to the heating element, use it as shown in the picture here.  If you need it to be further away (such as if you’re doing a whole chicken or small turkey), turn it over and use it that way.  The recipe book will tell you which way to set the rack.  The heating element is at the top of the oven.

I’ve set the rack like in the picture here, and set the asparagus onto that.  The temp was set to HIGH, for 7 minutes, per the instructions.  My asparagus was kind of thick, if it’s thinner, go for 5 minutes.

It came out perfect!  Not overcooked and mushy, but not raw, either.  Just the right amount of crispness that I like with most fresh veggies.  It got slightly brown and caramelized around the edges, which added a lot more flavor than just plain steaming does.

Next, I tried a recipe from the booklet for *air-fried chicken*, using boneless skinless chicken breasts..  The recipe was a little confusing, because it called for *2 chicken breasts*, without specifying further.  Technically, *2 chicken breasts* is really four pieces as they are sold in the store, as the whole breast is cut in half.  Also, from the amount of mayo/mustard mixture called for (3/4 cup n all), it was enough to coat 4 chicken breast halves.  So that’s how many I cooked.  I then coated them with crushed corn flakes and placed them on the rack, positioned in the higher-up position once again.

The recipe called for cooking them for something like 16 minutes on HIGH.  But I let them go for 20 because the pieces were kind of big.  Ten minutes, turn the chicken over, another ten minutes, done!  they came out nice and brown and crispy, just like oil-fried chicken, but much healthier.  It’s even healthier if you use the low-fat mayo, as called for.  And best of all, the chicken was very moist inside, not at all dry, as can happen often with boneless skinless chicken breast meat.

The next question you may have is – how easy is this to clean?  I don’t have an electric dishwasher and have to wash everything by hand, yet I found the NuWave very easy to clean.  Mine didn’t come with a nonstick rack as the newer ones sold directly from the infomercial and the NuWave website do.  But a quick spray of some Pam took care of that.  The only part of the oven you can’t immerse in water is obviously the top part that contains the heating element, just wipe that clean with a damp paper towel.

I got mine from the Brylane Home catalog, for a lower price than the infomercial.  However, that didn’t come with all of the accessories that I could have gotten if I’d ordered that way.  It seems that they are coming out with as many accessories for this thing as there are Wii accessories!  But I’m not sure if I really need stuff like the extender ring or not, I just wanted the oven, so that works for me.  Also, the older one that I got has analog timers, the newer ones have digital controls.  But as long as the oven works the same way, I’m happy.

The official NuWave website and infomercial also let you put it on a credit card and pay in installments.  That might make it more affordable for some.

And so far, I am very happy.  This will probably get a lot of use now that summer is coming, as I won’t have to fire up the regular oven and heat up my kitchen.  It’s also an energy saver, using far less power than the conventional oven.  And I won’t have to sacrifice the quality of cooking.

You also aren’t limited to using their recipes in the booklets that come with the oven.  There are instructions for converting your own favorite recipes for use in the NuWave.  Remember that this works like a convection oven, which is why food cooks faster.  So you have to read all instructions very carefully and learn the differences between this and a conventional oven.

So, if you’ve been thinking about ordering one of these things, go ahead and do so.  I think you’ll really like it!

Honestly, I haven’t been cooking that much lately.  Mike’s appetite has been bouncing up and down since getting out of the hospital, probably due to side effects of one of the meds he’s taking.  For the most part, we’ve either been eating out or picking at leftovers.  Mike is still out on disability, so we go out to break the monotony of sitting in the house all day, watching judge shows and commercials for Mesothelioma lawyers and Medical Assistant schools.

But leftovers don’t last forever, and we really shouldn’t be eating out all the time.  So I have decided that tomorrow is the day I try the NuWave for the first time.

I got some boneless skinless chicken breasts on sale at Shaw’s today, and some fresh asparagus.  I’m going to try a recipe in one of the recipe books that came with the oven, Air-Fried Chicken.  Sounds like a good hearth-healthy recipe, not much in the way of added fat.  It calls for dipping the chicken breast in a mixture of mustard and low-fat mayo and seasonings, then coating it with crushed corn flakes.  Sounds pretty tasty to me!

I’m going to cook the asparagus in the NUWave, too.  I’ll post again afterwards to let you know how it went.

You may have seen the infomercial for this thing.  I was not aware that Heidi Bohay, who hosts the infomercial, was a “TV cooking expert” as she was billed.  The only thing I remember her ever doing was an 80′s TV show called Hotel.  I used to like that show.  Bohay played a front desk clerk who was married to a guy who was a bellhop at the same hotel.  She ended up marrying the actor who played her hubby in real life, and they are still together, with three kids.

So this is what she’s doing now.  Are infomercials where stars of old 80′s TV shows go when there’s not much other work out there?  I ask this because I saw another informercial the other day for a competing product to the NuWave…I forget what it was called, but Mr. T was in it.

We saw that one in a bar, and the sound wasn’t on, but I wonder what he was saying.  Perhaps “I pity the fool who doesn’t call right now and buy this thing!”

Anyhoo, my friend Kat has a NuWave oven, and she can’t stop raving about how great it is.  You can read her review of it HERE.  She’s actually posted about it on her blog several times, but this was the first in-depth review.

So I’d been seriously thinking of ordering one of my own.  A problem, though, was that they ship via FedEx, and every single time I’ve tried to get FedEx to deliver anything to my house, they lose it.  And then I have to go through customer service of the shipper to tell them that FedEx lost it, they need to file a claim and get me my money back.  Pain in the butt.

I was having FedEx stuff sent to Mike’s office, which worked fine.  But now he’s out on disability and we don’t know exactly when he’s going back.  I was going to hold off until them.

But then today I got a catalog in the mail, that had a NuWave oven in it, for less than the infomercial cost.  I know why it’s cheaper, no extra freebies that come with the TV offer, and this one also has an analog timers, while the newer version that Kat has is digital.  But the company’s website charges a fortune for shipping, including extra S&H charges for some of the *freebies*.  Besides, I really don’t need all of that extra stuff.  As long as the oven does the same as the one that Kat has does in regard to cooking the food, I’m happy.

Best of all, Brylane Home ships to P.O. boxes.  I also have one of their credit cards, which often gets me money-saving coupons for using said card.  So I got a pretty good deal on this.

Can’t wait to get it!