How A Toaster Oven Can Improve Your Diet

The home quarantines and lockdowns brought about by the Covid-19 pandemic have significantly changed our lifestyles in more ways than one. People nowadays avoid going to restaurants to stay safe, which has triggered their inner chefs to experiment with various recipes at home. That’s why the use of home appliances like toaster ovens has grown significantly. These appliances are not new to us, but their technology has evolved substantially, making them an excellent option to improve our diets. To help you prepare healthy meals, we will explain how a toaster can benefit you and improve your eating experience in the following guide. Let’s begin. 

Benefits of A Toaster Oven

People prefer toaster ovens for home cooking for various reasons, and the following points will highlight the most prominent ones. 

• Compact Size

Unlike a traditional oven, a toaster oven is small in size, thus taking very little space on your kitchen counter or table. Its compact design makes it a perfect choice for small kitchens and apartments with limited space. A toaster oven’s small size and relatively lightweight make it easy to carry around with you wherever you go, making it the perfect cooking companion for a journey, as long as you have a power source. 

• More Efficient

Don’t be fooled by their small sizes, though, as they are pretty capable of performing a plethora of tasks, such as dehydrating, defrosting, roasting, broiling, baking, and toasting. Toaster ovens can heat food in half the time a regular oven would take. This feature also lets you save energy and reduce your electric bills. 

• Focused Heating

Toaster ovens are pretty efficient at managing the heat inside the compartment because they use convection or targeted heat technology to cook food quickly and evenly. When you use normal ovens for cooking food, they tend to heat the whole area around them, which easily warms up the kitchen. With a toaster oven, you utilize its heating system only to concentrate the heat on the food. 

• Flexibility

As we have already mentioned before, a toaster oven can do a lot more than just heating up meals. The broad spectrum of cooking tasks it performs makes it a versatile machine. It surely is a simple and small appliance capable of doing major cooking tasks, giving you greater flexibility and convenience. 

• Simple To Clean

People who know their way around the kitchen understand how tough it is to clean a regular oven, but it’s a lot easier to maintain a toaster oven. Thanks to its small size and removable trays and racks, you can easily clean it without spending too much time or effort. 

• Browning Features

Unlike microwaves, toaster ovens are also capable of browning various dishes due to their broiling feature. A toaster oven can broil food quickly and evenly, thanks to its focused heating pattern that directs the energy on the surface of the food, giving it a golden-brown crust. 

How Does A Toaster Oven Enhance Your Eating Habits?

Now that you know the benefits of a toaster oven, here is how you can use it to improve your diet and eating habits. 

• Warm Up Leftovers and Defrost Frozen Food 

Toaster ovens can warm up your food at a much lower temperature than standard ovens. A large oven might take at least 200°F to warm food for you, whereas a toaster oven can do the same in just 170°F, keeping the food from drying up and allowing it to retain its nutritional value. You can quickly reheat the food that you have left from last night’s dinner to enjoy it the next day or defrost meat and chicken before you cook them.

• Toast Nuts 

You can also toast nuts with a toaster oven, which makes for a healthy snack rich in good fats and various nutrients. To do so, simply spread the nuts on the oven pan over an aluminum foil sheet, and heat them at 350°F for 15 minutes. Shake the pan every five minutes to toast the nuts from all sides.

• Bake and Roast

You can also use a toaster oven for baking cakes, muffins, or cookies. The appliance’s compact size is ideal for baking food in small batches, which is especially beneficial for those who struggle with portion control. It is also more efficient and convenient if you want to bake for one or two people at most. For meat lovers, its compact size is ideal for roasting meat in small quantities, suitable for one or two people. Using this appliance, you can roast quartered chicken, pork tenderloin, a few ribs, and more without worrying about preparing food more than you need. 

Toaster ovens are certainly worth the investment if you enjoy cooking because they offer great flexibility and versatility. Their small size is perfect for single individuals as it allows them to prepare food in adequate quantities, not to mention, they barely take space in kitchens or on tabletops. Thanks to its many perks, toaster ovens can improve your diet and eating habits in more ways than one.