As a former professional chef and part-time recipe developer, I have found that in both restaurant and home kitchens, toaster ovens are a sleeper hit. In restaurants, we treated them like tiny salamanders or ovens: they heated small portions of food faster – and saved more energy – than a full-sized oven. (This is why you’ll often see a toaster oven residing on omakase counters, where they’re used for broiling eel or fish.)
At home, it toasts, of course, but it can also dehydrate, broil, churn out snacks and help make quick meals with modest portions. (No wasted leftovers here!) Even if you possess a toaster oven that only has a basic heat function, so long as you can control the temperature, you have a powerful workhorse on your hands. And if you own a toaster oven with every preset imaginable, from bagel to cookie dough, you can still unlock even more uses.
My toaster oven is the most-used appliance in my kitchen. Below, I’ve shared 10 easy foods that I love making with a toaster oven, including eggs, s’mores and granola. Most of these take no more than a few minutes – and save more energy than making them in a regular oven.
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But first, the best toaster ovens at a glance
Best overall:
Breville Joule Smart Countertop Oven Air Fryer
Best budget:
Cuisinart AirFryer Toaster Oven with Grill
Best high end:
Lotus Professional Series The Perfectionist Oven
Read my full review of the 10 best toaster ovens after three months of testing.
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What are foods you can easily make with a toaster oven?
Eggs without having to babysit them
You don’t need a stove for eggs – you can just bake them in your toaster oven. This frees you up to make the rest of your breakfast, too.
How to make it: Butter, spray or oil a small, oven-safe ramekin containing a single egg. Add shredded cheese if you please. Place it in the oven and keep an eye on it until it reaches your preferred doneness. Then take it out and sprinkle with salt and freshly minced herbs, if desired.
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Crispy, evenly cooked bacon without the splatter
You also don’t need a stove for your morning bacon. I love making bacon in a toaster oven rather than a pan because it always ends up far more evenly cooked and crispy.
How to make it: It’s best to line a baking sheet or tray with foil and place your bacon strips separate from one another. These half-sheet pans from Great Jones have fit perfectly in every toaster oven I’ve tested.
Once the bacon strips are done baking in the toaster oven, drain them on a paper towel.
Great Jones Holy Sheet Half-Sized Sheet Pans
$45 at Great Jones***
Fresh, crunchy granola in small, easy batches
I love using a toaster oven to make granola because it lets you do it in small batches, and it’s easier to grab a spatula and toss the granola in a toaster oven than in a full-size oven. There’s also something particularly lovely about fresh, hot granola married with cold yogurt and consumed immediately.
How to make it: Choose any granola recipe you like with rolled oats, seeds, nuts or dried fruits. Fraction its ingredient servings, then bake as instructed.
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Homemade croutons from stale bread
This is a perfect way to use up stale bread. To store your croutons, line an air-tight container with a paper towel to absorb any moisture, and make sure the croutons are thoroughly dried before placing them in so they maintain their crunch.
How to make it: Cube up the bread and toss the cubes in a bowl with finely minced herbs, salt and a generous amount of olive oil – just so they’re coated but not soaking. Place on a baking sheet in your toaster oven and set it for 10 minutes on a fairly low setting, like 200F (93C). You want to be able to set it and forget it without the croutons burning, so that you can do whatever else you need to do in the kitchen.
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Restaurant-worthy crispy topping for mac and cheese
Mac and cheese is a usually one-note, easy weeknight meal, but you can quickly turn it into a restaurant-quality entrée with the addition of breadcrumbs.
How to make it: Preheat your toaster oven on the highest broil setting or whatever setting heats up its upper heating unit. Fill an oven-safe dish with warmed, ready-to-serve mac and cheese. Use something that fits inside your toaster oven, such as a mini Le Creuset or Pyrex glass storage container. Top it with breadcrumbs. Panko or homemade breadcrumbs made from stale bread is best – the more non-uniform, the better, and not too fine either. Drizzle the top with olive oil or a pat of butter. Slide the mac and cheese directly under the toaster oven’s top heating element and keep an eye on it until the breadcrumbs turn a golden brown. This should take no more than a few minutes.
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S’mores without having to go outside
You can make easy s’mores without firing up a grill – or a literal fire. I recommend also keeping an eye on these while they’re toasting – time will vary depending on the size of your marshmallows, and 350F is a good place to start.
How to make it: Assemble the sandwiches on your toaster oven tray, leaving off the top cracker. Toast the bottom cracker, chocolate and marshmallow until the latter two melt. Take out the tray, add the top graham cracker to your s’more and press down to enjoy immediately.
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Custom dehydrated herbs and tea blends
Some of the more advanced toaster ovens on the market come with a dehydrate function, for which their air-fry baskets are ideal – for instance, the Breville Joule’s dehydrate setting is 125F. The goal is to thoroughly desiccate, or dry out, the leaves or fruit peels you would want in your teas and tisanes.
How to make it: If your toaster oven doesn’t have a dehydrate function, set it on its lowest temperature setting and have some patience. It takes a few hours, but this is another kitchen task you should be able to set and forget. (I’ve dried thin slices of persimmon in five hours – and they taste even better than gummy bears.)
Breville Joule Oven Air Fryer Pro
$399.95 at Kitchen Universe $499.95 at Amazon***
Air-fried crispy noodles to top soup or curries
Growing up in Hong Kong, my absolute favorite dish was yeuk see chow mein, essentially a crispy nest of thin and fried egg noodles topped with a silken meat and bean sprout gravy. With this dish, the crispier the noodles, the better. It’s so much easier to make them in an air fryer than wadding up cakes of cooked noodles and individually frying them up in the deep fryer you probably don’t even have. In fact, this makes crispy noodles so wonderful and easy to make that you may want to top all your soups and gravies with them.
How to make it: Cook the noodles, toss them in a bit of sesame oil, then fry them on your toaster oven’s air-fry setting until they’re extremely crispy, usually within 15 minutes. The same method works for the noodles that you’d top the creamy Thai curry khao soi with.
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Crackly yet squishy condensed milk toast
In one step, a toaster oven on its convection or air-fry setting can make perfect toasted-on-all sides kaya toast or Cantonese condensed milk toast. Both are ideally squishy on the inside.
How to make it: Butter both sides of two pieces of thick toast. Spread kaya or condensed milk on one side and sandwich the bread slices together. Place the bread slices in an air fry basket or the rack so that all sides are evenly toasted. The goal is to have a crispy exterior and squishy interior. Dip your kaya toast into a gently baked egg, also made in your toaster oven.
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Dulce de leche, the energy-saving way
You save so much more energy making dulce de leche from condensed milk in a toaster oven versus a traditional oven. With the latter, it needs to spend far longer cooking in its water bath.
How to make it: Pour condensed milk out of a can and into an oven-safe baking dish. Add a bit of salt for better flavor, if desired. Tightly cover the dish with parchment paper or foil so moisture doesn’t escape. Then place the dish into a larger oven-safe dish. Fill that up with water just over half the height of the dish containing the milk. Bake in the toaster oven for about an hour, then remove and cool.
OK, how does a toaster oven do all this?
In the same way a rice cooker can cook so much more than rice, a toaster oven has an extremely versatile main function. Think of a rice cooker and a toaster oven as two ways of applying heat to food: rice cookers apply steam and toaster ovens apply dry heat. That’s what makes toaster ovens such great dehydrators and broilers in particular.
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Kiki Aranita is a food writer at the Philadelphia Inquirer and former senior editor of kitchen and dining at New York magazine’s the Strategist. She is also the owner of Poi Dog Sauces, and the former chef/owner of Poi Dog restaurant and food truck in Philadelphia. She writes and cooks with an eye towards sustainability
