I had one a while back, but for what little I actually used it for, it took up too much space. So I gave it away.

Sorry I can't help you with recipes. If I could, I'd probably still own a toaster oven! LOL

Linda

Baked potatoes, biscuits, corn bread, melted cheese sandwiches, grilled grapefruit with brown sugar, 1-2 person frozen prepared meals - just about anything I can fit in there that I don't want to heat up the big oven for.

Toast......hate it....wish I had a toaster instead. It's slow making toast.

I had a toaster oven for years and years. Only really used it to make toast but as Linda says, it was way slow in toasting bread.

I found it wasn't large enough to make enough cookies or biscuits or chicken nuggets to feed more than one person.

So I got rid of the toaster oven and got a toaster. MAN is that fast toast!!!! Blink of an eye and the bread is toasted.

My husband misses the toaster oven for heating a slice of pizza, soft pretzels, left overs....

I'm putting an iron skillet of Shepherd's Pie in mine in just a minute:

ground beef, browned
chopped onion and garlic
steamed mixed vegetables
half a pack of beef gravy seasoning
splash of white wine
about 1/2 cup water

mashed potatoes on top, dot with butter
bake at 350 for about 30 minutes

Ribs: brown in small cast iron skillet, top with BBQ sauce, finish cooking in toaster oven

Roasted vegetables: chop up vegetables, toss with olive oil and seasoning, roast in greased shallow pan at 400 for about 40 minutes or so.

Egg and sausage casserole: 1/4 lb. sausage, brown, drain; add in chopped onion and bell pepper and put all in a pottery pie plate; beat 4 eggs, add s&p, pour over sausage mixture; top with grated cheese, bake at 350 for 25 to 30 minutes or until set.

Do a search on this forum for "toaster oven" - we have had several threads recently.

My mom used to have one of those but she never used it. It was just sitting next to the big oven collecting dust and grease. If I want to make toast I will use my toaster. Other than that, I wouldn't know what to use it for. Al

I do, and I make just about everything in it that will fit.
I'm also cooking for one most of the time.

Wow I have exactly the opposite experience with a wide variety of regular two slice toasters - they take FOREVER. Maybe I don't have them cranked all the way to max? And bagels get stuck unless you have a wide slotted one.
I do tuna melts too and it does reheat pizza a bit differently than the microwave - whether you prefer it or not I imagine is just that, preference. You can also make mini pizza's fresh or from english muffins
I have also frozen cookie dough and cut off just enough to make two and done them in the microwayve - that way I'm not tempted to eat the whole batch or have to take it to work - not that I mind but not all the time.
Croutons, garlic toast - all in the toaster oven.

And I'd do a search ....but it wasn't working earlier today.

Mary, my regular oven went out quite awhile back and my small toaster oven has saved my life in the meantime. I do just about everything in it that I did in the large one.

You do have to get creative with pan sizes that will fit it, like cookie sheets, etc. just don't work.

But I kept my little toaster too. It is much faster with toast!

I recently bought one so I don't know everything I will use it for yet. I found I was heating up the big oven just to heat one hot dog or hamburger bun in foil. I don't like them heated in the microwave. So I will now be using the toaster oven for that. I also like it for placing an opened sandwich in it to melt the cheese and heat the meat before I put lettuce on it.

I buy stuffed potato skins in the frozen dept. at Kroger and heat them in there too. I imagine anything from the freezer will do well in there, I just don't buy much frozen stuff. I will use my toaster to make toast.

I use toaster for many things, including making bacon, crispy duck skin, and crispy salmon skin.

Toaster is also great in making crispy again second day fried eggrolls, second day fried calamari and anything fried.

dcarch

I know SharonCB has one that she uses a lot, I think maybe exclusively because she doesn't have room for a regular oven, so she probably has some great ideas.

I don't have one, I've never had one. Amanda had one and gave it away, it never got used. We do have one at the office, it got used only for frozen pizza rolls and that type of thing. I tried baking a loaf of that "canned" italian bread in it once and it rose up to the top of the oven, stuck there and set off all the alarms. We're on our 4th one at the office, so they haven't lasted very well.

I have a regular toaster for toast. We also have a regular toaster at the office, it's a Proctor-Silex that I got as a wedding present in 1974. It works great. I took that to work and Elery bought me a new toaster that only toasts one side well.

The new stuff is definitely not as good as the old stuff in this instance, I should bring the old one back home and take the new one to work, although I got a new one so Ashley could toast bagels without having to fish them out when they got stuck.

Annie

Mary:
I make a lot of 6 and 8 inch Prebaked Pizza Dough and keep them in the freezer.

If I want one and I'm not baking anything,
I'll pop one in the Toaster Over, on the Bake Cycle, about 400 Deg.
Lou

We keep ours in a slide out drawer and take it out when cooking two servings of fish, or perhaps heating up something that I don't have a lot of but want it to be crisp (like a square knish)where heating a big old oven just seems a waste.

I just like the convenience of having it heat up quickly and getting the job done more efficiently at times.

Sue

Don't the sides and top of a toaster oven get very hot, hot enough to melt a plastic bread bag or start a fire if the dishtowel gets too close?

Rita

Yes, it could melt a plastic bag. I doubt it would catch a towel on fire just from being close. Maybe if the towel were draped over it or something.

I don't put anything on top of mine except for the metal broiler pan that came with it (when that's not in use).

My Toshiba is better called a countertop oven rather than a toaster oven since it's meant for cooking whole meals and not just toast. It has 4 shelf heights and came with two roasting pans which are the perfect size for cooking meals for two people. I can do baked fish or a roast on one tray and a whole dinner of roasted vegetables on the other, cooking at the same time.

So basically I use it more than

I use the toaster oven every day that I cook at home, even if it's just for keeping something warm. Yes the top and sides get hot so anything I store on top has to be moved away except the dinner plates which I put there to keep warm. Sometimes I'll have a finished dish from the gas stove that I also keep warm on top of the toaster oven, and I cover the dinner plates and that dish with a dishtowel so it all keeps warm until what's inside the oven is finished.

It's now 27 years old and has never broken down or stopped working. It has just two heating coils, one up and one down, a temperature gauge and a countdown timer which shuts it off. It's so simple with no moving parts that I think it will work forever (no rotisserie, no fan, no microwave).

Any simple recipes for small quantities that you would bake or roast in a regular oven can be done in it, with the exception of a large turkey or baking sheets.
We love a pan of

SharonCb

Almost anything I could make in a regular oven, I could make in my toaster oven, and naturally, it depends on the size of your toaster oven. I even have an Air-Bake Cookie Sheet for my toaster oven for baking cookies (I keep cookie dough balls in the freezer). I loved it because I can make a one- or two-serving size of things and not heat the whole kitchen up.

There are TOASTER OVEN specific cookbooks that have all kinds of recipes in them. I have several of these books. Better Homes and Gardens Toaster Oven Cook Book is very good.

Foil dinners are easy, and those are more than the one with a slice of onion, hamburger patty and veggies you made as a Girl Scout. There are a lot of really good foil dinner recipes available. Check Reynolds Wrap web site for some recipe ideas.

I make all our breads and wrap dinner rolls, cornbread, biscuits, hamburger and hot-dog buns, English Muffins, scones, sweet rolls, etc., in one or two servings in pop-up foil sheets I purchase in a box of 500 from Sam's Club, and keep these breads in the freezer. When I have a meal cooking in the toaster oven, I'll add a couple dinner rolls or some cornbread to the toaster oven to reheat the breads while the meal bakes.

I always love seeing pictures of canarybirds toaster oven. They just don't make small appliances like that anymore. Her toaster oven is like our first microwave oven we bought used in 1979 (a 1978 model). It's big enough to rent out to a family of 4, but after a couple decades of service in our house, it's now being used by our son (for ANOTHER decade). Our son is just one year older then the microwave.

-Grainlady

Marys1000, I used to have a large toaster oven or countertop oven like Canarybird had. With some foil on the tray, it made wonderful bacon! It made for clear drippings which I save, vs. the stovetop (without the mess) and the bacon came out cooked all around nice and crispy.
I have a new, smaller one now, it doesn't cook bacon as well, I may just need to learn how to tweak it. But it does great when baking a potato or a sweet potato, heating up my mini frozen pot-pies - take about 1/2 hr. I've taken frozen mini zucchini bread and heated them.
I don't use it a lot, as I visualize the electric meter spinning when the coils are lit, I do have a gas stove, but it does the trick with out using a regular oven for small things that can be heated or cooked fairly quickly.
June Lynn

Mary and Dcarch, both of you mention doing the bacon in one. Do you have to clean out spatters each time?

I used to cook my bacon in the big oven but have been afraid it would be too much for the little toaster oven. It sure would be great to know I can do it again!

Toaster ovens heat by infrared radiation as well as by convection. It is helpful to keep all the inside surfaces as reflective as possible. This way the cooking will be done more evenly.

dcarch

"Posted by junelynn --------I don't use it a lot, as I visualize the electric meter spinning when the coils are lit, ------June Lynn "

A toaster oven uses about as much power as a hair dryer, more or less. DonÂt forget, in the winter, all the power is converted in too 1 watt = 3.41 BTUs of heat to warn your house. ItÂs not wasted.

"Posted by dirtgirl07 ----- Mary and Dcarch, both of you mention doing the bacon in one. Do you have to clean out spatters each time? ---"

No splatter at all. I first set the temperature at 350 degrees to render the fat out, then at 400 to make them crispy. ItÂs a healthier way to enjoy bacon than frying.

dcarch

We've a very nice little toaster oven on our counter that came with the house. I didn't use it at first, for anything but toasting breads that wouldn't fit into our regular toaster, like bagels or thick cut bread.

Gradually, I'm beginning to use it to more purpose. It's a matter of thinking about it as an option when I'm preparing a meal. I love that I can use it to roast/bake small items or side dishes even if I've got something in the oven. Less trying to figure out how one thing that should be cooked at 350 can be done in the same oven as something cooked at 425, both needing to be done at the same time!

But, unfortunately, I'm not recipe specific about it. It's just a mini oven, after all, so I just use it with mini dishes!

I never had any use for a toaster oven until I had no oven. I remembered the little toaster oven from my youth that made burned toast that my grandmother then scraped and buttered anyway. I haven't had a working oven in quite a while. I finally broke down and purchased a countertop oven perhaps the same size as the one Sharon is showing, maybe smaller. It wasn't a high end model, just an Emerson from Target.

This Thanksgiving I did a 12 pound unstuffed turkey in it. I didn't think it was possible but it was. Since I carved it and froze the meat and almost everything for that meal I was able to do everything one item at a time. We had Thanksgiving on the sailboat where my son has been living in Long Beach since September.

I find that it runs hot and I have to adjust the temperature dial down about 25 degrees. Also deep loaf pan quick breads will tend to burn on the bottom before they are baked through. So I divide the recipe into three mini loaf pans instead or use a small bundt pan. Glass also tends to lead to burned bottoms on my quick breads.

We make lots of cookies, one-loaf quick bread recipes, pies and crisps and small bundt cakes. I haven't attempted yeast bread yet but I will at some point. I've baked pumpkin halves, and stuffing, and sweet potatoes. As long as the baking dish fits, I think almost anything can be baked in it.

I don't use the mini cookie sheets one can purchase for toaster ovens, they are so small they are silly. Mine has a removeable bottom liner so I use that with parchment. It slides into the rack slot. Works fine.

I love my Cuisinart - $100. from Costco. I bought a couple of 9" square cake pans and use them for roasting and baking meat, chicken and fish for 2. I even make 4 barbecued chicken breasts at a time in that little pan. And a 4-5 pound bottom round roast fits easily.

And a flat little sheet pan for making 4 egg rolls or a few dinner rolls and such. We use it about every day for something or other.

I love the toast it makes. Just like restaurant toast - dried out and crunchy. Takes as long to make toast as it does for me to fry two eggs for fried egg sandwiches.

Oh, yeah, I bought another small pan that holds Stouffers Frozen Lasagne perfectly. I just dump it out of the plastic pan it came in and put it into this one - bake as directed.

It has convection too, but I've never used it. I need to try it.

Val

Val, I never use my convection feature on my Cuisinart either. Just never got in the habit of using it. And I often transfer my home frozen meals to a glass/crockery pan to bake in the TO or heat in the MW oven. I'm now stressing to my sons to do this also. I've never trusted plastic in re-heating and now "they" say there is good reason not to! I know if I wait long enough......I will have my intuition validated!

Enjoyed seeing your Toshiba oven Sharon. I've never seen anything like that here. Obviously much better quality than any toaster oven you can get now. I can't imagine a toaster oven lasting that long. It looks like "they" would understand that people would be willing to pay more for better quality than the things that are turned out these days.

Mary, check out some of the TO cookbooks.

I can't add much to the endorsements for a toaster oven but I love it and use it almost everyday. I loved the Cusinart but got a Breville for Christmas--for absolutly no valid reason and I am ashamed.

Here is a link that might be useful: Toaster Oven Cookbooks

Mustangs, that is too funny! You got the Cadillac!

Val

If anyone has a favorite toaster oven cook book maybe I'll just amazon one to my friend:)

I love my toaster oven and use it for lots of things. We like toast with bread, buttered, THEN put in the TO. DH calls it the GOOD toast.LOL I always use it for baked potatoes unless I have the big oven already heating for something else.

Grainlady, I bought my Amana microwave in 1978. As I recall it was top of the line then and except for a few repairs it's still going strong. It is a big countertop model but we had it built in when we remodeled our kitchen...good gosh...could it have been 20 years ago. Tempus figits, doesn't it?

jude

Sharon, that looks very familiar. I have one in the garage! According to MIL, it needs a small repair and she never got around to doing it and now she isn't interested in fixing it. Apparentlly it cooks beautifully, but it weighs a metric ton!

Grainlady, I had a big microwave that I bought in 1982 for $100, a lot of money back then. I'm thinking it was an Amana, you know, I looked at that thing every day for 23 years and I don't remember, geez...

It had two settings, on and off, and a timer that went up to 15 minutes.

I used it for nearly 25 years, until it blew up and caught fire. I was sad and I don't like my new one nearly as well.

Annie