All MHO and based on my experience with the quirks of the specific units I have owned.
Things a TOASTER is better at:
toasting bread
toasting pop tarts
Things a TOASTER OVEN is better at:
melting cheese
toasting bagels
broiling fish
reheating pizza
reheating individual portions of casseroles where you want to re-crisp the top
making crostini
Things a MICROWAVE is better at:
anything you don’t want crisped up
steaming veggies with little or no water
reheating anything soupy or saucy
Things an OVEN is better at:
cooking anything bigger than a couple of portions of fish
cooking casseroles like lasagna
roasting
reheating multiple portions of food you’d like to re-crisp
broiling large things
baking
Okay, you’ve sold me! At least I will give a try (and precious counter space!) for a while.
It sounds like it’s pretty versatile, I’ll just have to get out of the habit of ‘automatically’ using the regular oven when I’m making just a few servings of something baked. BTW, this one has instructions right on it “Do not broil meat” but it sounds like many of you do. So, did your toaster oven say it was okay, or are you all just living dangerously?
Actually, what really sold me was an easy way to reheat pizza. The oven takes too long for just doing a slice for a quick lunch, and the microwave makes the crust tough. I’ve been using a cast iron skillet with a cover on very low heat which is sort of okay but not really good.
I keep one out on the porch, a three season room you could call it. That way I can bake things when the air conditioning is on without the two fighting each other.
We’re all just living dangerously. The heating element is really close to the food so when the fat on a steak gets poppily (it’s a word!) it can start a fire. Don’t leave it unattended and you’ll probably not burn the house down.
One thing I find ironic is that the toaster oven isn’t especially good at toasting.
OK, let me explain. When I want something toasted, I want it toasted quickly. It seems to take longer in the toaster oven on the Toast setting, than it does in a toaster. Of course there are things that won’t fit into a toaster. (Bagels will, if you smash them.) I used to toast hamburger buns in the toaster oven. By the time the cut sides were toasted, the rest of the bun was dried out. So I use a cast iron frying pan for toasting hamburger buns. I find that the regular oven with the broiler on is better for making garlic French bread. ‘Toasting’ implies eating both sides of the bread. I should try just making toast in the toaster oven, but trying to toast just one side of something is better done in a regular oven or on the stovetop.
Where the Toast setting is useful is when I’m making a casserole and I want to make the top nice and brown and delicious.
The toaster oven excels at toasting bagels because it toasts so slowly. The bagel can heat up internally and then the outside gets crispy. Bagels are dense though, so I can see how this would work with bagels but not hamburger buns which are airy and would dry out.
Regular bread for regular toast in the toaster oven? No way. Doesn’t toast evenly and takes too long.
Cinamon or cheese toast, bagels, hot dogs, and reheating pizza are the most common uses in my house. The pizza reheated in the toaster oven is far superior to that done in the microwave.
I have this countertop convection oven. In it I can bake two full sized loaves of bread (about 7" high) or a full Papa Murphy’s family sized pizza (14" in diameter). I can make 2 cookies for when the mood strikes, or a whole batch for the office. I can toast a bagel (although as a toaster it takes a long time). I can do all this without removing all the pans stored in my big oven, waiting for it to preheat, heating up my kitchen, etc. In fact, I love my Oster so much that when I found another one on sale, I bought it and have it in my attic for when my current one bites the dust.
It’s pretty much impossible to print a plastic bread bag on a microwave.
(Of the toaster ovens I’ve lived with, two had bread wrappers printed on their top surface, an artifact of getting just hot enough to melt the vinyl when some dimbulb puts the loaf on top of the still-hot oven, but not hot enough to ever further damage or burn off the layer. It was a classic Wonder Bread wrapper when I was a kid, some groovy whole-grain stuff in the early '80s.)
A really good toaster is superior in almost every way, unless you live on smallish box foods that need oven/broiling.
True, but not that different. The distance between the top rack and the broiler in my toaster oven is about 4 inches. The distance in the oven is about… 5 inches. That means that a deep dish pizza on a pizza stone in the oven will likely be a bit closer than cinnamon toast on the rack in the toaster oven.
You ever try and fit a bagel in a normal toaster? Your everything bagel will quickly turn into a plain bagel.
Frankly, now that I’ve entered the world of toaster ovens I’m not sure at all what toasters are good for. They’re literally only good at toasting bread and possibly poptarts - and even then, only thinly sliced bread will work. Nice thick baguette slice? Forget it. Toasters, what the heck are they good for? I’d rather have a popover pan than a toaster, and the popover pan is truly a one-food item.
I cook for one person. I have some pyrex baking dishes that are about 4” x 8” which hold just enough chicken or a small casserole for two meals: dinner and leftovers for lunch. It’s 102 outside and all trying to get inside. To bake a dish at 450 degrees for 45 minutes, I much prefer my small toaster oven to the big gas oven that would hold about six of those and still be heating a whole lot of air. I’ll never trade in my gas burners for electric, but I love my little electric toaster oven.
I make individual pizzas. Toast lightly a flour tortilla, add pizza sauce, cheese, toppings, and return to oven to bake for 10”. Lovely.
Almost every toaster oven I’ve used has been better at making toast than almost every toaster I’ve used. I also use mine instead of the big oven for broiling stuff like garlic bread, and baking frozen french fries, tator tots, etc. A quality toaster oven is very useful.
The other thing I do in my toaster oven - it has tray as well as the wire shelves, and I usually line the tray with foil and put whatever I’m cooking on the foil. Not only does it cook up quickly and easliy, cleanup is just a matter of crumpling up the foil! Easy-peasy!
This post reminded me that I also have a toaster oven tray-sized sil-pat (silicone mat) for my toaster oven. I put the sil-pat in the tray and clean up is super simple because I can take the sil-pat out of the tray and everything just slides off it.
