Toaster ovens good for anything other than toast? (pizza, broil, bread)

[Almrausch]

I use my toaster oven for making a little pizza, Hawaiian cheese toasts, little cookies, even warming things up slowly or I bake my apple crisp in it. Even little hot treats when I have company.

[SATX56]

Originally Posted by nmnita

I can remember when a toaster oven was used mainly for toast. What do you use your for or do you use one?

We could live without a regular oven, before we could live without our toaster oven. We use it for roasting veggies, baking potatoes, chicken and yes, toast.

Toaster ovens used to be less useful. But, now they have top and bottom elements, thermostats and timers. You can cook just about anything you can cook in a conventional oven in them. If it's big enough. Saves having to use the conventional oven which heats the entire house. Much more efficient use of energy. The big negative is they take up a lot of precious counter space. Every time we get a new one it stays on the counter a while. Then it get relegated to the pantry.

[mrs.cool]

I use ours' for everything that will fit. Except toast. Takes too long.

[laorbust61]

Pizza
Cheese Toast
Panninis
Potato Skins

[Sally_Sparrow]

We bought a larger toaster oven, the kind that can cook a "full size" frozen pizza. I couldn't live without it. We use it to make cookies, bake chicken, casseroles, whatever you'd use a regular oven for, except cakes. Well I did use it to make a cake once when the regular oven wasn't working but it takes forever that way.

We also have a very small kitchen and aside from being tiny, it is not air conditioned. Imagine a square box added on to the corner of a house as an afterthought; that's our kitchen. It's in the right rear corner of the apartment, because of the location it doesn't get any air flow from the large window AC on that side of the house, and I bet some of you folks have master bedroom closets that are larger! So, even stove-top cooking makes it unbearably hot in there, turning on the oven definitely makes the kitchen into an oven! We do whatever we can to avoid heating it up. Toaster oven is pretty much all we use in summer, if we don't cook outside instead.

[Cape Cod Todd]

We just got another one recently after our old one ahhh caught fire....
We used to cook all sorts of little things like tots, bagel pizzas, toast, fries, anything that a toaster can do a toaster oven can usually do better.
It beats heating up the regular stove.

[Wry_Martini]

I splurged for this one: Breville Smart Oven - 1800 watt

Worth every penny. It's more of a countertop convection oven that you can also use for making toast.

I use mine all the time -- as a single person living alone, I use this instead of the big oven, most of the time. It's great for heating up leftovers, baking small batches of muffins, etc. I also bought a set of small, single serving casserole dishes, and I do a lot of single serving size lasagne and other casserole type things.

[lubby]

I use mine mainly to toast bread, bagels, waffles but on occasion I will used it to cook a few breaded frozen chicken tenders, or french fries. That's it.

[Dirt Grinder]

Speaking of toaster ovens - who has never melted a bread bag onto the top of a toaster oven? C'mon now - 'fess-up, I know I've done it.

[GoldyViolet]

I used to buy a lot of appetizers and would use the toaster oven for that. Now, I mainly make them from scratch so don't really use it much. I've never used it to toast bread actually.