I bought a convection toaster-oven for my efficiency apartment when I was temporarily back in L.A.
I’m finding I’m still getting use out of it even though my house has a real kitchen. For one thing, much of what I want to cook in an oven doesn’t need all of the space of the regular oven. For another thing, I’m keeping my cast iron in the oven, so I have to find somewhere to put them when I want to use it.
I wonder about efficiency. On one hand, the regular oven is larger so there is more air to heat and keep hot; while the convection toaster oven doesn’t have that much space to heat. On the other hand, the regular oven is very well insulated; while the top of the toaster oven gets too hot to touch indicating that the heat is being wasted.
In any case, the toaster oven is just the thing for smaller dishes.
Toaster ovens are much more efficient than regular ovens. They cook faster and the reflective interior helps as well. There are some insulated ones available apparently but I haven’t seen one. The efficiency is improved a lot if the air around it can flow freely.
I don’t have the counter space for one at the moment but intend to pick a new one up as soon as we declutter a bit.
I use mine quite frequently. I don’t even have a regular toaster any more. A toaster oven is great to make a hot sandwich with, for instance, or herbed toast, or cheese toast. I find that I can even roast a chicken breast or pork chop in it, and have a perfect meal for one.
We got a convection toaster oven about a year ago, and use it a lot. We can fire it up and cook a frozen pizza and be done before the big oven has even preheated. On that alone, it’s more efficient than the large oven.
OTOH, it is slower at toasting bread than a regular toaster. But, you never have to worry about bagels getting jammed in it, and some things like garlic toast just can’t be done in a toaster.
Ours gets used two meals a day - toast, bagels, ego waffles at breakfast, a couple of multigrain kaisers or grilled cheese at lunch. There’s nothing better for reheating leftover pizza, and I frequently roast small potatoes with butter and rosemary in it. One of the most utilized appliances in our kitchen.
We use ours probably a few times a month. We use it for regular toast, for roasting nuts (which we use in recipes pretty often), for making garlic/cheese bread, and for other little cooking and reheating jobs. It was a wedding gift. Pretty handy thing to have around.
I adore mine, though I haven’t used it recently. I used to cook chicken, heat frozen pizzas, and most recently I would take a big fat loaf of Italian bread, quarter it, throw some pizza sauce and cheese on it, and run it through the toaster. Less than 5 minutes, boom, insanely tasty pizza bread.
I still use the regular oven when I’m doing something like cooking a ton of fries or something else that uses a large footprint, but I’ve used my toaster oven for more oven stuff than toaster stuff. It’s quicker and more efficient, so it doesn’t heat the kitchen nearly as bad as the oven does.
Ours gets used almost every day for dinner. Our oven is old and in bad shape, and we can’t really afford to replace it, at least not with one we’d want We can cook most dinners in our convection toaster oven, and I also use it for baking. We have a pretty big one, so it works great for a batch of muffins or cookies, etc.
We don’t use it for toast, though, we still prefer a toaster for that.
I don’t have a toaster oven at the moment, and that is because the ones I had in the past were (1) not insulated, so the outside toasted anything near it as well as the insides, and (2) cleanup was difficult; you couldn’t scour for fear of screwing up the finish, but you had to scour to get off the spills and crumbs welded to the surface.
But maybe my experience has been with cheap units. How do those with luxury versions feel about this?
This statement made no sense to me until I realized many people have electric ovens/broilers. Everyone I know has gas powered stoves and ovens.
I had used toasters and toaster ovens for a long time, and discovered in my current house that the kitchen outlets share a circuit breaker with my home theater setup in the adjoining room. If someone is watching the TV and I try to toast something, zap, the breaker trips. A major pain on weekend mornings. So I took a look at the power rating on the toaster oven. It was a rather staggering 1400 Watts. Researching on Google told me that this was, if anything, on the LOW end for toaster ovens.
My wife commented how her parents always used the broiler under their oven to make toast. Much faster (about 40 seconds a side), uses minimal gas, and I can make more toast at one time to boot.
We use ours all the time. Toast, English muffins, bagels (defrosted on oven, not toasted!) and even baked potatoes. My kids make nachos in it.
When I was in college, in a dorm without a kitchen, I used a hot plate and toaster oven for all my meals. My friend and I borrowed a few extras and made duck a l’Orange in them. It’s a must have appliance for us.
We have one and use it once in a while. We also have the toaster I received as a wedding present to make toast, so we only use it for baking small items. Sometimes the Princess likes home-baked cookies, and the oven attached to the stove hasn’t worked in years, so I will make small batches of cookies. When my bro lived with us for a few months, he used it to cook small frozen pizzas or burritos, because they came out crispy rather than soggy as they would if cooked in the microwave. Sometimes he would get bored and walk away, resulting in burnt food unless I was home and alerted him in time.
I use ours every day. I’m a SAHM with two little guys, and it’s very convenient for me to be able to pop four waffles or pancakes in to toast at the same time. Everyone gets a hot breakfast. And on days like today when I want to make hash browns, the toaster oven is the perfect size. We use it for hot sandwiches, heating buns for burgers, baking small batches of fries or roasted potatoes … yep, we use it frequently.
We can cook most dinners in our convection toaster oven, and I also use it for baking. We have a pretty big one, so it works great for a batch of muffins or cookies, etc.
