The toaster oven: Second-best choice for college students

Last week I extolled the virtues of the slow cooker for the new college student. The slow cooker allows you to cook a lot of cheap, healthy meals while you are away at class (or in the library studying hard WINK WINK). The toaster oven is the polar opposite of the slow cooker, and just as valuable.

The toaster oven does not get a lot of respect in America these days, and that is a real shame. I once spent six months with only a toaster oven to cook with, and I found it to be extremely versatile. This small countertop oven is honestly as much as most of us need on a day to day basis. Sure, you can't roast an entire turkey in there. But how often do you do that, really?

Due to its size, the toaster oven is an extremely efficient way to cook small things. If you think about it, it's ridiculous to heat up a whole entire full-size oven just to cook a chicken pot pie or a corn dog. It's wasteful of both electricity and your time. The toaster oven heats up quickly, and takes up very little space.

And - not to state the obvious - but you can toast things with it, too. Have you ever tried toasting a bagel in a full-size oven? It's not a fun experience.

Imagine if I told you that you could replace your entire full-size oven AND your toaster with one small appliance. This thing is like magic!

The only down side to the toaster oven is having to clean out the crumbs. This is something that has to be done fairly often, lest they start scorching and sending out nasty-smelling smoke. But if you can deal with that, you will find that it is an extremely handy little appliance, especially if you have little to no kitchen space (or equipment).

Image courtesy Flickr/massdistraction