furnace turkey roasting?
If you have a covered roasting pan, place the turkey on a rack in the pan and add water or broth to the bottom of the pan up to but not touching the turkey. Keep it covered and place it on a a stove top burner(s) over med-low heat. Using an using probe type thermometer will help you keep on eye on the internal temperature. When it reaches around 110 degrees, uncover it and pop it in the oven to brown and finish cooking to minimum internal temperature of 165 degrees. Another option is to start it in your microwave oven if it fits, then finish it in your oven. In either case, I probable wouldn’t stuff it. 🙂 Good luck!
I have a similar problem with my oven, though it’s much younger, and I can control the temperature somewhat by setting the gauge to about 150º below my desired temperature. I second buying an oven thermometer, if only because you might be able to perfect an on-off system to regulate the temp. Nigella Lawson’s newest book, Nigella Express, mentions roasting a turkey at 500º for a short time, and the recipe she recommends in Feast calls for a 450º, I think. Anyway, if you brine your little bird for two days beforehand, I doubt you’d be able to dry it out, even in a very hot oven.
Some broilers have, as a safety feature, a thermostat that shuts the heat off at 500°. What that suggests to me is that an unregulated broiler would be able to get significantly hotter. If I were you, I’d consider the possibility that your oven will do the same thing. Sure, the temperature knob only has settings up to 500°, but that’s no proof that the heat won’t go higher with the thermostat disabled. On the plus side, you may have the best damn home pizza cooking setup ever. On the minus side, you might burn the turkey. You might also burn the house down.
I’m thinking you may have already been to this website, but just in case you haven’t, it looks like they refurbish the thermostats separately from the oven. I know you don’t want to ship yours off, but they might already have some rebuilt thermostats in-house that they would be willing to sell you. Alternatively, if the thermostat already doesn’t work, send it to be refurbished. At least you wouldn’t be sending the whole oven. As for roasting, if you have a large enough LeCreuset (or similar) dutch oven, you can use them to roast on the stove top, as long as you keep the lid on and religiously baste the bird. It would take much longer, and you’d have to crisp the skin in the oven, but it may be a way to make it work, as a last resort.
If aesthetics are not too big of a concern, I see two options: Cut it up into small pieces first, as these will cook more evenly, or boil it. Poultry is safe to eat at [internal] temperatures well below boiling, and if you take care to boil it in a tasty broth, your turkey will be juicy and deeelicious. But it will look like boiled turkey. You could try to take it out of the water and broil it for ~15 minutes afterward to crisp and brown the skin [with appropriate amounts of butter/oil & spices rubbed into the skin, of course], but I doubt it will look like a pretty thanksgiving turkey no matter what happens. Other than that… if you have a covered container big enough to fit the turkey in, that will keep it from getting too terribly dried out/burnt at 500 degrees, as the steam will condense and mostly stay put. If you choose this route, meat thermometer the hell out of that bird before you serve it. It will likely look way more done than it is on the inside.
