Anyone ever do car engine cooking? A friend of mine worked somewhere without a microwave/oven/toaster oven. He’d put food wrapped in foil and cook it on his car’s engine.
I didn’t really answer you here:
We don’t use the toaster oven much. It’s really something a bit more than a toaster oven – it’s taller and deeper than the typical ones that can only hold a pair of sandwiches side by side. It can go up to 450 degrees, so that’s a plus.
We’ve baked brownies, cookies, and frozen pizza in our toaster oven with acceptable (if suboptimal) results. The heating is not consistent throughout – any part of the food close to the heating element gets a bit overdone. Depending on what’s in there … turning the food is sometimes possible, sometimes too much trouble to bother.
I haven’t used my full-sized oven in at least two years. I have a Hamilton Beach toaster oven which serves quite well for anything I need to bake. I have noticed that some of the frozen dinners I’ve bought specifically say not to cook in a toaster oven* but they’ve all had a microwave option so that’s okay.
I do plan on checking out some of the alternate cooking ideas using my slow cooker. I’ve occasionally thought about getting an air fryer, but I’ve got a small kitchen and I’m starting to suffer from appliance overload. I also had a friend suggest replacing my slow cooker with a One Pot.
*I’m not sure why that is, but I’ll take their word for it.
I’ve broiled salmon with honey mustard glaze in a toaster oven. Poached salmon on top of stove .
This is how I cook bread when camping.
I have a cast iron pot, and a metal disk (from a cake tray).
I put a layer of rocks or sand in the pot, then the cake tray bottom on top, and the bread dough on that. I usually add water to the rock/sand layer to get a softer crust. Then the lid goes on, and I rely on gut feel and bravado to determine how long it remains on the coals of the fire.
I’m pretty reliant on the oven and will occasionally use my crockpots for soups and pulled pork bbq.
Using ramekins in the crockpot is a great idea for desserts. Never tried it though.
Going ovenless reminds me of camp cooking, Dutch oven with chili, skillet cornbread/cakes/brownies over a fire or cook stove.
I’ve cooked bone in chicken or pork,it can be done stove top. In a heavy bottomed large pan with a lid, heat a little oil and sear both sides well, remove meat-scrape up the bits while adding some liquid, replace the meat and cover let it cook low and slow. Sometimes I’ll criss cross sticks of celery and carrots and place the meat on top to prevent sticking.
I will mostly use my griddle pan on boneless cuts, heat the press in the pan until very hot add the meat and sizzle it a few minutes both sides. If it’s steak I have to get the fatty edge all cooked up too.
I have a cast iron Dutch oven I’ve never used. I feel I’m missing out.
Recipes/techniques for these would be welcome, too. Especially if there are ways to adapt grocery-bought cake/brownie mixes to skillet preparation.
It’s not a traditional cake in any way, by my wife loves (on rare occasion, because it’s super bad in terms of fat) to take cake-from-a-box and cook it on the skillet as if it were a pancake!
You do end up using about 3 times as much butter because it’s a lot more sticky, but it works quite well, although you normally cook it about twice as long as a pancake and at 2/3 of the temp. Use of the lid is suggested to help it cook all the way through, although you’ll want to uncover as much as possible for the crusting.
The crispy buttery crust is non-traditional, but it works surprisingly well: and if you’re using salted butter, you get a every so slightly salty, buttery, crispy exterior with a large surface area.
But you’ll use a LOT of butter. So only an occasional thing.
My grandmother made meatloaf in a pressure cooker as she originally didn’t have an oven in her kitchen. I never had an oven-baked meatloaf until I got married.
At that time it was still possible to get baked goods from the milkman.
Yes, an insurmountable problem for me with breast meat. My answer: thighs. Very hard to overcook.
Dan