The toaster oven has had far too much attention paid to the “toaster” part and not the “oven” part. New, multifunction toaster ovens are capable of heating up quickly and cooking in the same way as the fanciest of ovens—only smaller, and faster, and using less energy. These are our picks.
One of the biggest advertisements for multifunction toaster ovens is that they pretty much all include a convection setting. Only the newest or fanciest full-sized ovens include this setting, which uses fans to blow hot air around to ensure a super-fast, super-even roast. Oh, and another name for convection? Air-frying. Yep, that’s what it is.
Due to their small size, toaster ovens heat up much more quickly than a standard oven. With older ovens, that didn’t matter so much; you weren’t going to use them to roast or bake or fry, because they just weren’t powerful enough. But these are, so for small batches of roasted vegetables, crisped-up frozen food or even air-fried fish, you can get dinner ready faster than ever.
Multifunction toaster ovens cram in so many features on top of baking, toasting and air-frying. They can also get down to a very low temperature—say, 200 degrees—which enables you to dehydrate fruits or make your own beef jerky. And because they use so little energy, and can turn off automatically after a set amount of time, you can simply let them dehydrate all day.
