HOLLY ENGELLAND, A volunteer with the Two Rivers Historical Society, shows off the features of a vintage NESCO roaster that is part of the society's collection. NESCO roasters are a classic Wisconsin kitchen appliance that for years were manufactured in Two Rivers by The Metal Ware Corp. The company still owns the brand but makes the roasters in China. (Kayla Wolf/Wisconsin State Journal photo)

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Rick Carey knows he has a branding issue even though most Wisconsinites are well acquainted with the name.

His 100-year-old company a block from the West Twin River makes food dehydrators, slow cookers, coffee urns and hand mixers. There are egg cookers, steamers, pressure cookers and hot plates.

For hunters who want to process their own game, the offerings include meat slicers, grinders, vacuum sealers, equipment to make jerky and a whole line of spices.

They all carry the NESCO name. And not one of those products is what comes to mind for many, the Wisconsin State Journal reported.

For those of us who grew up in Wisconsin, a NESCO is what is hauled up from the basement or out of the pantry a few times each year to cook a ham, whole turkey

or keep gallons of baked beans or chili piping hot for a family gathering.

We’re talking, of course, about the NESCO roaster, a classic Wisconsin cooking appliance that will be working overtime for Christmas, New Year’s and Super Bowl parties.

“It’s a brand. It’s not really a product,” said Carey, president of The Metal Ware Corp., which manufactures NESCO products. “For a long time, it was really just a Midwestern thing.”

That was until the 1980s, when QVC came along and started selling the roasters on live TV to millions of households around the country for about $200 apiece. The boom in sales required 24 hours, seven days a week of production in Two Rivers, while porcelain coating for the roasters was made in nearby Algoma. But when other companies like Hamilton Beach and GE began making their own versions of the roasters, prices began to drop, and in the early 2000s production was moved to China.

“We made a Cadillac roaster,” Carey said. “Demand required it to be less expensive.”

An 18-quart NESCO roaster can now be purchased at places like Farm & Fleet, Walmart and Kohl’s for about $50. Roasters make up about 5% of Metal Ware sales, Carey said.

NESCO roasters have long been a part of our family. My grandmother had one in her kitchen next to her oven that was in use whenever our extended family crammed into her small bungalow in the village of Wales. When our oven went out for a time in the 1980s, my mother broke out the NESCO as a substitute. That’s how we learned the NESCO could be used to bake a pizza, if it was cut up before cooking.

Today, we have two of the roasters in our basement that have been used at graduation and birthday parties, wedding rehearsal dinners and to keep smoked brisket warm during fantasy football draft nights.

So when a note from Metal Ware’s public relations firm came through my email a few weeks ago pitching a story about jerky spices, I took a hard pass. Instead, I wanted to learn about NESCO roasters.

They were first developed in 1931 by the National Enameling and Stamping Co. in Milwaukee and became popular replacements for cooking in a wood stove in rural areas as the availability of electricity began to grow. Sales fell as electric and gas ovens became more popular, and the company eventually fell on hard times. NESCO production moved to New York before the owners of Metal Ware purchased the NESCO brand out of receivership in the 1980s and moved production back to Wisconsin.

Carey grew up in Two Rivers, graduated from Marquette University and earned a law degree at UW-Madison. After working in private practice for many years, he became the in-house counsel for Metal Ware in 2005. An avid hunter and angler, Carey left the company in 2009 to start his own company making game processing equipment, but purchased Metal Ware in 2016.

But while our visit to the Metal Ware headquarters and manufacturing facility didn’t include roaster production, we were able to observe assembly of dehydrators and watched as massive presses punched out cake pans and covers from sheets of aluminum. The company also is big into plastic injection molding and makes commercial-size ice cube bins for bars, orange plastic safety coverings for electrical wires, plastic parts for lawnmowers and even minnow buckets.

Carey is now eyeing expansion plans that include more production space and new corporate offices that would include a museum to show off early Metal Ware products that included toys. He also has an attic filled with vintage NESCO roasters that would also be displayed. Carey is pretty certain they all could cook a bird, a tribute to their durability.

“There’s not a single one of them that doesn’t work because there’s no moving parts,” Carey said. “They’re really simple and they last forever.”