But You Will Never Forget It

Over the last week, I’ve implemented a strange new way of honoring and remembering my late father. I bought a Ronco Showtime rotisserie oven and fixed a pork roast.

My dad was not a good cook. I’m not sure, but the feeling I always had in my youth was that he figured any man who cooked had to be a flamer.

I can’t recall ever seeing him cook anything before my mother died. I saw him carry boxes of Cheez-Its into the living room and eat directly from them. I saw him open packages of lunchmeat, grab handfuls, and put them in his mouth. I saw him eat raw hot dog. He didn’t cook. He didn’t even barbecue.

At some point in his old age, he developed an interest in infomercials. It seemed like he was more curious than he had been when he was young. I think he wanted to see if the crazy things they sold really worked. He ordered a few things. It is for this reason that I have personally had the opportunity to handle Mighty Putty.

I think the Showtime oven was his most surprising buy, because of his lack of interest in cooking. It startled me. Apart from the surprise, I thought he had been swindled.

As everyone knows, Ronco was named for Ron Popeil, the TV huckster. What people may not know is that Ronco had nothing to do with the original Popeil company, which belonged to his dad, Sam Popeil. In fact, it was a competing company. Sam and Ron were bitter rivals. They were estranged.

Here’s a story I’ve told before. I clerked for Jack Dominik, Sam Popeil’s intellectual property lawyer. Jack kept samples of inventions his clients had created. For example, he had Glugless Jugs. This is a big jug with an air line molded into it so the contents pour out continuously instead of in intermittent spurts. The Glugless Jug makes pouring pool chlorine much safer. For some reason, Jack actually gave me one. He was extremely eccentric.

Jack showed me his example of the Bionic Knife. This product came out in the Seventies. It was similar to a Ginsu except for a weird triangular saw handle, and it came in a case which unfolded to form a cutting board.

Why “the Bionic Knife”? Because when Sam invented it, Ron was dating Lindsay Wagner, TV’s Bionic Woman. Sam wanted to needle him.

Anyway, in the mind of the public, the Popeil name is associated with cheap, gimmicky products that don’t work. It is associated with fraud.

Is that fair? Yes. Jack Dominik told me what Sam told him about one of his ads. It showed a knife cutting through a nail and a boot. Popeil said the nail was made of lead, and the boot had been soaking in lye all night.

Sam Popeil was pretty shady, so anyone who flinches at the sound of the name Popeil can be forgiven. I thought the Showtime oven had to be a ripoff.

To make my suspicions worse, it came with a “flavor injector,” which was a giant syringe that inserted solid objects in meat. People were told to load it with things like garlic cloves and shoot them, whole, into roasts.

The sight of the newly-unboxed oven and flavor injector was jarring, but if you think that surprised me, you should have been there the first time my dad tried it. He got a recipe somewhere; probably included with the other things he bought. He shot garlic cloves into a big piece of pork. He followed the directions. When it was done, he invited me to try a piece.

You can guess how optimistic I was, but curiosity runs in families, so I tried it. It was excellent. Tender, juicy, and flavorful. The chunks of cooked garlic were a wonderful touch.

The original Showtime ovens (three sizes) really work, and the construction isn’t bad, either. They were made in Korea, not China or India or some other known source of disappointing garbage. The cases were sturdy sheet steel, nicely painted. The ovens use good-quality gearmotors to achieve the desired 6 RPM, which Ron Popeil said he personally chose after a lot of testing. When you put a Showtime on your counter, it won’t heat the material under it, so it’s safe for stone and wood.

One of the neatest, and funniest things about the Showtime is that the top of the oven is used for cooking vegetables. It gets really hot, so Ron Popeil, marketing genius, turned a burn hazard into a feature. He sold little trays for vegetables, so you can cook side dishes on top of your oven while your meat roasts. This actually works.

The metal parts that hold the food get very hot during cooking, so if you try to remove the food with your bare hands, you get blistered. Ron’s answer? He included a pair of cheap insulated gloves just thick enough to allow you to pull the food out and put it down before getting burned. Fortunately, I have a pair of silicone chef’s mitts which are much better.

Cleaning up is not bad. You clean the window, which comes out, the broiler pan that sits in the bottom of the machine to catch grease, the spits and spit holders, and maybe the heat reflector. A self-cleaning wall oven with a rotisserie would be simpler, but I’m not looking to drop $4000 any time soon.

Rotisserie cooking is better than cooking on a pan. When you cook with a rotisserie, the grease and sauce have a hard time falling off the food, so everything is basted continuously. The liquids keep pouring down the front side, keeping things moist until they bake into a delicious crust. Meat browns beautifully on all sides, and it doesn’t dry out because gravity drains the juice out of the upper parts. I haven’t Showtimed a turkey yet, but my buddy Mike does it all the time, and he says the breast meat is always perfect.

When my dad and I left Miami, I threw his Showtime out. I had no help with the move, and I was also taking care of my dad. The things I threw out and gave away were worth 4 figures, easily, but I had no choice.

My dad didn’t care, because he hadn’t used it in years. It’s not like I discarded his treasured possessions.

Sometimes it bothered me that I didn’t have a rotisserie any more. Mike rubbed it in during phone calls. What are friends for? He has two Showtimes.

I started thinking about the Showtime last week, but I didn’t think I could get one. I believed the company was kaput. Ron Popeil died in July, and he was retired at the time.

When I checked Amazon to see if any company still made a countertop rotisserie, I found that Ronco was still selling them. The company had been sold years earlier, and it had gone into bankruptcy, but it was back.

The new ovens got mixed reviews. I read two disappointing things about them: the steel (Chinese) was thin and flimsy, and the motors turned too slow. Unsatisfactory. If I was really going to do this, I was going to honor Ron by trusting his 6 RPM design. I actually looked into putting a faster gearmotor into a new machine, but I couldn’t find any acceptable motor deals.

I checked Ebay for used Showtimes, and I found a like-new oven. It looked like it had just left the Ronco warehouse. I made an offer, and I ended up paying about $70. When the oven arrived, I could see that it had never been used. It was spotless.

I decided to honor my dad by making a pork roast. I bought a bone-in shoulder roast and cut the bone out myself. I put salt and Accent on it and let it sit in the fridge for two days.

I planned to use my old recipe: apricot nectar, sage, and Marsala, reduced and applied as a glaze. Then I learned that coronavirus had somehow created a shortage of apricot nectar. Reluctantly, I used peach instead.

The proportions are 12 ounces nectar, 1.5 teaspoons sage, 1/2 cup sweet Marsala, half a teaspoon of salt, and as many cloves of crushed garlic as you like. Just boil it down to a thick syrup.

I tied the roast together, shoved it onto the spits, tied it again, covered it with syrup, and fired up the machine. One and a half hours later, I had the roast you see in the photos. I overcooked it a little. I went to 160° when I should have stopped at 145°.

Overcooked or not, it was wonderful. It was tender and juicy. The heat from the element charred the outside of the meat along with the sauce, and the charred stuff flavored the meat’s juices. You would think the black parts were ruined, but they were better than the rest of the roast.

The oven has two settings. One is closer to the element than the other. I used the far setting. Next time, I think I’ll finish the roast on the near setting to get more blackening.

I wish I could serve my dad a big slice.

Of course, I sent the wife pictures. She is looking forward to a continuous supply of roasted pork and beef.

After the novelty wears off, I’ll probably use the oven pretty rarely, but I’m glad I got it. There are times when there is no substitute, and it brings back memories of my old man. Also, Mike is moving to Florida, and he will be living with me for a while, so it will comfort him by reminding him of his natural habitat back in New Hampshire.

A cynical person would say I’m looking forward to having my own personal live-in rotisserie chef, but I’m not like that. Not me.

It would be interesting to do a small boneless turkey in the rotisserie. Might be impossible, because the legs and drumettes stick out after you stuff them.

My rotisserie mission is accomplished. On to the next challenge.