Black & Decker Toaster Oven: more Black than Decker…

One of the first things we were given when we arrived in our new apartment last November was a small Black & Decker Toast-R-Oven so that we could mainly fix toasts and fast meals during the adaptation stage of being in a new apartment AND having a newborn (my daughter was born 4 days before changing apartment).

I had never owned a toaster oven before, so I didn’t really have expectations of any kind, but what I did expect (like I do from any product I buy) was for it to do what it said it would do…

The Toast-R-Oven

At a first look, the Toast-R-Oven seemed quite easy to use; nonetheless I decided to give a look through the instructions, since you’ve always got to be extra careful with any kind of appliance.

The “Use and Care book” is actually one sheet of paper folded in six, so it’s not something you would use as a quick reference guide -by opening up just the English section, you still have a sheet of paper of 20 1/4 x 17 5/16 inches (unless you fold back the Spanish section and make it 8 11/16 wide). Written in English, Spanish and French, it has a description of the oven, a “How to use” section (for Toasting, Top Browning, Baking, and Broiling), a “Care and Cleaning” section, and a tiny “Cooking/Baking/Broiling Guide”, with a few indications on how to cook certain foods (quantity, temperature, time and procedure).

I really did not learn much from this guide that I couldn’t figure out by using it right away or that I wouldn't know from dealing with any kind of appliance.
What I did confirm, though, is the absence of any sound indicator for when the toast is done (something useful when you are, for example, a multitasking mother and wife), and the fact that the crumb tray swings down, but is not removable for washing. Now, if you consider how dangerous it is to wet an appliance, and how much it can be tilted and moved, you can imagine how creative you must be when it comes to cleaning it out, hoping all there is are crumbs and no drips from anything else…

Size wise, it is approximately 15 x 8 x 8 ½ inches (I really hope you don’t want the EXACT measurement!), and has a rack that can hold up to 4 pieces of toast, but they have to be on the small side and will fit tightly in just the same. The inside space is not very high if you’re planning to cook potatoes, meatloaf, or something of that kind in this little oven: more or less 3 inches. In any case, since we are 3 regular eaters in the house (my daughter still eats baby-food), I prefer to use the regular oven, and mainly use this tiny toaster for preparing quick meals only for my toddler son.

Food and the Toast-R-Oven

Toast: if the oven is being used for the first time, I have found that the toast will usually come out undercooked, compared to what the setting is (usually “medium”); if the oven has been preheated by cooking something else beforehand, the toast will turn out darker, if not burnt.

Open-faced grilled cheese: in this case, a lot depends on if you use the baking pan or not. Theoretically, you should select “top brown” and place the bread on the pan, but this way the bread doesn’t toast and often becomes sort of humid. On the other hand, if you don’t use the pan, the cheese might melt through to the bottom, making it hard to clean, since the crumb tray is not removable.

Frozen chicken nuggets and similar (fish sticks, mozzarella sticks, waffles, etc): these are cooked in the oven mode, so they require a 5 minute preheating which is easily done. Problem is, I found the temperature always has to be set lower than the one indicated on the product’s box, because if not it burns! And the time has to be shorter. But is it right for me to have to adapt and experiment to cook something that should take me 10-15 minutes at the most?

Baked sweet potatoes: these are maybe the best thing to do in this oven. Just make sure they aren’t too big. To play it safe, they should not be higher than 3 inches. Since I bake them with their skins on, a bit of burning doesn’t do too much harm, but I have to keep a close eye on them, too. The guide suggests placing them directly on the rack, but I may be buying strange potatoes, because they sometimes ooze a tiny bit, so I prefer using the baking pan.

Once cooked everything, the toaster has to be cleaned. As mentioned above, the crumb tray is not removable, which I consider a big fault. The other problem is that for some reason, the baking pan stays a bit sticky even after washing it. I have cleaned it both by hand and in the dishwasher, but in some places, it has a yellow shade to it. And you have to be careful with what you use to clean it, because it scratches very easily.

I am very grateful for this toaster oven, because it was a gift, and after using it a few times, I have learnt what to cook and what not to cook in it, and specially how. But I would definitely not recommend it, despite being of a very good brand that works better in other fields.