This past week, I picked up a roast for, well, dinner with the intent on making it the next night. I have never cooked a roast before, but I wasn’t worried. Easy access to recipes on the internet make me brave. Besides, how hard is it to mess up a roast? But you need a roasting pan… one that will fit in the oven. I had a roasting pan. I’d had it for literally 10 years or so, eating up prime real estate in my cupboards under the stove. It was huge. Honestly, I don’t know what I was thinking when I bought it. Perhaps that it was on sale and it was pretty with its shiny silver cover. (Ooo… sparkly! LOL) Finally, I pulled that puppy out. It was going to get used after 10 years. Yahoo!
But, then, I took a good look at it and I eyeballed my oven. Hm… Would it fit?
Um, no. It was too big. Damn! So, my search for a roasting pan began.
One would think finding a roasting pan to fit in my oven would be easy, right? Surely, I am not the only person in the world who likes to roast meat. Except I have a few requirements:
- the pan cannot be longer than 17.75″
- I don’t want nonstick
- I won’t have to sell my first born child in order to be able to pay for it
You see, I live in an area where most of the houses were built in the 1940s. Our kitchen is nice and works great, but the cupboards have never been redone. This means our oven is still at 1940s size. (Apparently, everything was smaller then. Sorry, ladies! 😉 ) Now, most of the roasting pans will fit in my oven if… they don’t have handles or the handles turn up. I found this beautiful red ceramic coated roasting pan. I was ready to snap it up–the pan was only 15″– but those handles… they stuck out so far. A good 2″ on either side. A quick call to Charlie for the dimensions of our oven, and I knew it wouldn’t fit. (sigh)
It’s so pretty. Available at Bed, Bath and Beyond.
And then I saw the Calphalon roasting pan. The handles didn’t stick out to the side, it wasn’t non-stick, and it looked like it would fit. Ya– What? You want $129.99 for a stainless steel pan with no rack? (This was at Bed, Bath and Beyond.) You have got to be kidding me!
- It’s only $149.99 at Amazon!
Orgreenic, Inc. had an eco-friendly nonstick roasting pan for $39.99, but, again, those darn handles.
Twenty minutes later, I arrived home empty-handed and decided just to use my broiler pan for the time being. It worked just fine. Most likely, I will just buy a rack for $10 or so and use my Pyrex glass dish to roast stuff. Or I could redo my entire kitchen. Yeah, why don’t I do that? LOL
