On Thanksgiving Day, oven real estate is at a premium. Often a burner on the stove is, too. Hosts have long sought out alternatives: the microwave, the slow cooker, the instant pot, the grill, the turkey fryer.
Should we add dishwasher to that list? A few bold enthusiasts of this method say yes, but it’s perhaps not as miraculous as it might sound.
This got on my radar from Robbie Shoults, owner of Bear Creek Smokehouse in Marshall, Texas. He offers a tip to reheat the company’s fully smoked turkeys in the dishwasher, directly in the food-grade plastic packaging they come in. The idea is to run the turkey on a normal cycle without detergent. I’m an open-minded person, but something about this felt askew. Is it safe? Is it even practical?
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Yes, You Can Technically Cook Food in the Dishwasher
Dishwasher cookery isn’t anything new. In 1975, actor and noted gourmet Vincent Price demonstrated how to cook trout in the dishwasher on the Tonight Show. In the 1980s, a dishwasher salmon recipe made the rounds. Nowadays, TikTok offers all kinds of outrageous dishwasher cooking hacks. I watched an episode of Extreme Cheapskates where a woman cooked lasagna in the dishwasher, and what emerged looked so foul I can never unsee it.
There’s a Reason Dishwasher Cooking Hasn’t Caught on
Mind you, Shoults’s tip isn’t to cook turkey in the dishwasher; it’s to reheat it. But before you eye the dishwasher for Thanksgiving prep, consider what Dr. Mario Hupfeld, co-founder and food safety expert at NEMIS Technologies AG, says. “I wouldn’t recommend it. For reheating poultry, you want it to reach 165°F to ensure any bacteria don’t survive. And just because the water is hot, it doesn’t tell you how much heat reaches the center of a whole turkey. The thickest parts could remain below 165°F.”
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Bowen Khong of Aqualuxe agreed. “A dishwasher can transfer heat to the food you’re cooking, but it cannot maintain a reliably constant temperature. Just because the food feels hot or looks cooked doesn’t mean it has been cooked safely. And it takes a long time to complete a full cycle on the dishwasher.”
Then there’s the possibility of contamination. “Even if you run the dishwasher without putting soap in, a regularly used dishwasher will contain enough soap residues and other impurities that can contaminate your food if the water manages to get into the bag,” Khong says. “I think of this trend as more of a stunt rather than a practical hack.”
Is This Good for a Dishwasher?
On the off chance of food leaking, Sergei Barmichev, founder of Tampa Bay Appliance Fix, warns against this tip. “A leak can clog the filter, clog or break the drain pump impeller, clog the drain hose, and leave a smell in the drain hose,” he says. “A dishwasher is for washing dishes.”
I wouldn’t cook or heat food in the dishwasher unless I had no other choice. Which, thankfully, seems an unlikely scenario. Besides, on Thanksgiving Day, my dishwasher is busy doing the job it was built for.
Read the original article on Simply Recipes