Perfection in one pan? That’s what All-Clad is promising with its new Stainless- Steel Ultimate Chicken Roaster ($179.95), designed to produce flawlessly roasted chicken and vegetables from the same dish. A detachable 9-inch metal arm suspends the chicken over a small tri-ply roasting pan with handles at either end, which holds the vegetables. But while every test produced a chicken with moist, tender meat, getting crispy skin was a crapshoot. Even when trussed, bigger birds (at least 4 pounds) drooped onto the vegetables, which thwarted browning for both and drowned the vegetables in drippings. But smaller birds weren’t perfect either: Though they cooked up with perfectly golden skin, they didn’t weigh enough to keep the inadequately anchored arm firmly in place (at one point it even fell off, dropping the chicken into the pan). We also were disappointed with the ¼-cup “infusion reservoir” in the arm; though we filled it with orange juice, our tasters couldn’t detect any citrus flavor in the cooked bird. We’ll stick with setting our favorite vertical roaster from Norpro ($27.95) in a regular roasting pan.

We now have a new house under construction, and in the meantime we bought a single wide mobile home so we can live on our property and not pay rent. Well, no roasting pan. Since I wasn't sure what I wanted yet, I pulled out my hugest Lodge cast iron fry pan. It has two assist handles rather than a typical frying pan handle. I put one of their cast iron trivets inside and put my seasoned chicken on it to roast. It came out absolutely wonderful, and continues to do so. Wonderful crisp skin and juicy meat. I'm not going to waste my money on a roasting pan now. There's something about the cast iron that gave me superb roasting results. When it comes time to do a large size turkey I will look for a larger cast iron pan to roast it in.

Sandy