Japanese toaster oven: wakaranai...

March 31, 2012 1:32 AM

Do you know any recipes of stuff I could bake in a toaster oven? Muffins, bread, cookies, or even meals? What's your general rule of thumb when it comes to method and time of cooking? We're talking old school toaster oven here, I can only select the cooking time, not the degrees.

I thought I would have access to a regular oven, but I don't, and I have flour I want to get rid of (and also get the benefits of doing my own cookies and such :) )
Is this even possible? Anyone ever done it? All the recipes I find online are for modern toaster ovens for which you can select the cooking degree.
The only things written on mine are different timings for different type of foods, like toast or hot dogs.
Here is the culprit.

Thanks!

posted by kitsuloukos to Food & Drink (10 answers total)

Could you get an oven thermometer and fit it in there? Then at least you'd be able to see how hot it typically gets.
posted by troublesome at 1:42 AM on March 31, 2012 [1 favorite]

In my 20s I took all these cooking courses...but I only had a toaster oven at home. You can make pretty much anything in that puppy, you just gotta scale it down. Roasted chicken with veg? No, cornish game hen with baby potatoes and mange tout! Cake? Ramekin muffins! Quiche? Skinny fritatta!

Basically, experiment around to know about what the temperature of the toaster oven actually *is* and then adjust accordingly. If it won't get hot enough to roast a chicken, then you slow(er) cook it in some liquid. Perhaps cake won't work, but cookies and lava muffins, oh yes. Good luck!
posted by iamkimiam at 2:35 AM on March 31, 2012

Toaster oven cupcakes are pretty easy, so long as you know the temperature of the oven. Get a thermometer and a little pan such as this one and go nuts! No other requirements except to check your cupcakes/muffins way earlier than usual, since the heating elements tend to burn the bottoms/tops of the cupcakes faster.
posted by xingcat at 4:50 AM on March 31, 2012

My husband and I use ours to make cookies. We make a full batch of cookie dough but instead of baking 3 dozen cookies or whatever in the big oven, we put the dough in the freezer, and slice off a few rounds to throw in the toaster oven. As long as you're not super picky about the texture, they turn out delicious.
posted by specialagentwebb at 6:16 AM on March 31, 2012

You do need to know what the temperature is, so that you can adjust cooking times accordingly -- I'm with troublesome that you should get an oven thermometer.

You can pretty much make anything in a toaster oven that you can make in a conventional oven. There are cookbooks specifically designed for cooking in toasters (just search "toaster oven cookbook" over at Amazon).

I myself get a huge kick out of Eric Ripert's PBS mini series (each episode is ~3 minutes) Get Toasted, which you can watch for free here.
posted by shamash at 6:56 AM on March 31, 2012 [1 favorite]

I cook everything in a toaster oven. Cookies, cornbread, lasagna, quesadillas, chicken... Just start playing around with it using cheap stuff and you will quickly learn the quirks of your oven. On mine for instance, I had a tendency to burn things especially anything that sat up high. You may need to adjust your rack if you can, cover things with foil, use a piece of foil or tin pan to deflect some of the heat or leave the door open a bit. It just takes time to learn the tricks. I never used a thermometer but it sounds like that might have solved some of my problems.
posted by iscavenger at 8:30 AM on March 31, 2012

I use my toaster oven all the time to make roasted vegetables, so they're the perfect, nearly effortless side dish. Toss bite size pieces of whatever veg you want with a little olive oil and sea salt, spread them on the foil-lined tray, and roast till they get golden. (I'll microwave denser vegs, like potatoes or carrots, for a few minutes first.) It will take a little experimenting since you don't know the temperature of your oven, but 20 minutes might be a good starting point.
posted by scody at 10:27 AM on March 31, 2012

The Jiffy boxes of corn bread mix are just the right size to make 6 muffins; I made them in my old school toaster oven and just watched until they looked about done.

I don't know if this is even remotely true, but when my (newer, with a thermostat) toaster oven malfunctioned, and got up to 600 according to my oven thermometer, I talked to the manufacturer, and they seemed to think a regular oven thermometer wouldn't give an accurate reading in a smaller space. Which doesn’t make any sense to me, but might be something to keep in mind.
posted by mgar at 11:02 AM on March 31, 2012

Whole wheat toast. Spread with peanut butter. Toast again (30sec-1min or so). Heaven!
posted by sexyrobot at 2:00 AM on April 1, 2012

Response by poster: thanks everyone! I'll try the thermometer once I get one... This thing is actually quite scary, a friend was able to make a cake last week, but the method involved checking is it was okay "everytime it smells like it's burning"...
posted by kitsuloukos at 7:46 AM on April 11, 2012