Let’s get one thing straight right from the beginning- I am not a chef. I don’t cook very well and often my husband won’t let me into the kitchen, which he considers his domain. He’s gone today, so I decided to try a little experiment- I am cooking some red potatoes with rosemary and chicken in my dishwasher.

Ingredients

• One chicken breast- (I had more but didn’t want to waste any on the off chance that the dishwasher failed to cook my food correctly.)
• Red Potatoes 
• Italian seasoning
•  Olive oil
• Fresh Rosemary

The prep work was simple-

I put some olive oil on the chicken breast, seasoned it with a mysteriously named mixture of Italian spices and sliced and diced a red potato.

I went to the herb “garden” (all potted plants) and carefully selected some Rosemary, which seems to grow like a noxious weed in the Seattle area and sprinkled some on the chicken.

 I packaged the entire meal (with the exception of the spinach salad I will eat with it) all up in sturdy tin-foil, double-wrapped it when I realized that the foil was tearing a bit, and put it in the dishwasher to be washed, steam-dried and hopefully cooked. 

With more than a little trepidation, I turned the dishwasher on and listened to my food clunk around with the dishes.

The dishwasher, in case you are wondering, which I am sure you are, is an earlier model and not the silent kind. In fact, if vintage dishwashers were considered fashionable, this particular dishwasher would be worth thousands because I think it was made in the 1950’s, making it one of the first dishwashers ever made.

In addition to being one of the oldest dishwashers ever made, it is one of the slowest and noisiest dishwashers ever made.

I left the kitchen, tried to ignore the noise and did some hard-core “research” (aka web surfing.)

Finally, after enduring an excruciatingly long wash and dry cycle, I opened up the dishwasher, and took out the foil packet. I could smell the rosemary, so took that as a good sign, but when I opened up the  packet, the chicken still wasn’t cooked, which I blame solely on the dishwasher.

 As I’m not particularly a fan of salmonella, I decided to go for round two with the dishwasher and run it again. I know I could have cooked it for a little bit in the oven and enjoyed a meal a little sooner, but that would have ruined the fun.

Mid-way through, I heard a loud popping noise, which I naturally assumed was the chicken exploding, so I ran to the kitchen and once again, performed the not-so-arduous task of opening the dishwasher and re-checked the chicken. Since the breast was thicker than average, it still wasn’t cooked all the way through, but it did smell delicious.

When I took it out again, I actually cut into the food-the chicken was succulent and pretty good, but the potatoes were more like bricks than anything I would consider edible.