Best Toaster Oven For Your Kitchen

One of the most important considerations in your decision-making process is the style of toaster oven you’d like to have. There are three major types: standard toaster ovens, convection ovens, and infrared toaster ovens.

Standard toaster ovens, as the name implies, combine the heating elements of toasters within an oven design. Large wires of metal or other elements are heated, which in turn increases the temperature of the oven chamber and cooks food.

Convection ovens rely on similar methods but have an extra trick up their sleeve. Instead of waiting for the heating apparatus to spread warm air throughout the chamber, convection ovens use fans to blow hot air across the food within the oven. This usually results in a louder but more efficient cooking option.

The infrared oven, similar to a microwave, uses waves to cook food. Don’t mistake this appliance, though, for your average countertop microwave. Infrared light waves are able to cook food more thoroughly, but tend to suffer from spotty cooking and is best only for flatter surfaces, such as pizzas. That’s why infrared ovens tend to be paired with a convection fan for better and more consistent cooking.

For quick reference to the major options available to you, consider the following:

Both the benefit and the detriment of a toaster oven is the smaller capacity. Toaster ovens can cook faster and more efficiently than conventional options in large part due to the small size. While preheating may be a thing of the past for your toaster oven, though, so too may be your ability to cook larger foods.

We recommend sticking with a toaster oven that has a capacity that meets your basic needs. It is important to keep in mind that while cubic feet is the clearest indication of size, it’s not the full picture. For instance, you will need 11-12 inches of horizontal clearance to fit a frozen pizza in your toaster oven. Not all of our picks offer this. Likewise, you will need vertical height to cook larger dishes, such as pies or lasagnas. Considering capacity will help make sure your new purchase is going to fit what you need—no more, and certainly no less.

We’ve taken care to list the weight and dimensions of each of our toaster oven picks to ensure that you and your kitchen are prepared for the extra burden. While many people plan to keep their toaster ovens on top of their countertops, they may not have considered the amount of space available to them.

Always measure and re-measure the amount of space available on a countertop to ensure that you have enough space for a few inches of ventilation on each side. Likewise, make sure that you also have enough space to open the door of the open and place items inside of it. If you plan to pull your toaster oven out of a closet for each use, then the weight of the product itself becomes more important. There is a fair amount of range in weight for each of our toaster oven picks, so be sure that the weight of the model you pick is one that you wouldn’t mind lifting a few times each week.

Finally, the features of each toaster oven ought to be considered to make sure you can maximize your investment. Some of our ovens feature timers, easy presets, clear LED lights, and bells to signal when food is finished, to help you better control the oven’s efficiency. Likewise, you should make sure the wattage of your unit is high enough to cook your meals.

• Can I put aluminum foil in my toaster oven? What about a metal pan?

• For all types of toaster ovens, from standard to infrared and convection, we recommend being careful with your use of aluminum foil or metal pans. Generally speaking, both are acceptable for use in a toaster oven, and both can be used to make some dishes even better. There are a few things, though, we’d recommend you keep in mind:

  Never allow aluminum foil or metal to touch the heating elements within the toaster oven itself. Likewise, do not cover the bottom of a dish or use a pan or foil that will completely cut off circulation within the unit. Doing so may pose a risk of fire or damage to the internal elements of the oven.

• In what position should the rack be in for bagels? How about pizzas?

• The position of the racks within your toaster oven is going to depend on the number of racks available to you. There are a few tips and tricks, though, that we can offer for the specific placing of your favorite foods. If you’re hoping to toast bread or bagels, keep your items as close to the heat source as possible and flip halfway through cooking. This will provide a more consistent toasting experience.

  For baking items, such as pizzas or TV dinners, we recommend the opposite. Place your dish on either the center or upper rack, whichever is further away from all sources of heat. For convection or infrared ovens, the center is usually the best.

• Do I need to preheat my toaster oven?

• That’s going to depend on a few factors. Namely, the size of your toaster oven, the wattage of the product itself, and the importance of a preheated oven for the item you’ve chosen to cook. While conventional ovens can take 15 to 45 minutes to preheat to a common cooking temperature such as 350 degrees Fahrenheit, toaster ovens can reach that temperature much faster.

  Generally speaking, if you’re hoping to heat up something frozen, such as a pizza, we would just set the oven for a minute or two longer than the baking time and keep a close eye on the product as it cooks. If you want to ensure you get the oven heated correctly, 3-5 minutes is a fair metric for most toaster ovens to hit the temperature you need to cook with.