"Toastie" (or his look alike cousin, we went through two) has been a member of our cooking family since early 2000. "Toastie" was our primary oven from 2000, all the way through to early 2009, when we finally got our kitchen finished. And, now, he's going to help me save money on our electric bill this year! Okay, so cutsie-ness aside. Using our old toaster oven will save us money.
When our wall oven went out, for the last time (insulation on the wiring completely flaked off), we went several months, with the hope of replacing it, and no oven whatsoever. I spent about 8 months finely tuning the craft of baking bread in a makeshift oven on the stove. I can tell you this, it wasn't easy keeping up with the bread demands of my brood of 5.
It became clear that we needed to take our time replacing the oven, and redesigning our kitchen. So we bought a toaster oven to take care of all of the baking and broiling. We were just thinking of this as a convenience item, to help me with baking. Never did we consider just how cost-effective a counter top oven can be.
Enter the toaster oven. It's just a $49 Wal-Mart special. You wouldn't think a toaster oven to do all the oven work that a family of 5 might need. But it really did. I baked 2 loaves of bread at a time. I roasted whole chickens. I baked birthday cakes, 1 layer at a time. I roasted small beef roasts. I kept my family supplied in cookies, granola, muffins, biscuits, pizza, lasagna, all with this little oven.
Oh, I drooled over ads for large ovens. GE had a particularly tempting ad campaign to "cook big", at the time, with their range oven. But we were taking our time, and in the end I can see that was wise.
When the kitchen was finally complete, and I had "real" ovens, once again, I was very happy to switch over, so that I could "cook big". The toaster oven went to live in the garage, waiting for a friend or neighbor to have need of its services.
All those years, using a toaster oven saved us money, and we didn't even realize it.
Toaster ovens use about half the electricity of a standard oven. You can turn a toaster oven upside down or around and find the wattage information. Our toaster oven is medium size, and uses 1400 watts. Smaller toaster ovens can use as little as 1200 watts, while larger ones can use as much as 1800 watts. Compare this to a standard wall oven, which uses on average, about 4000 watts. Why heat up a 30-inch box, when your casserole dish is only 9 inches in diameter?
After reading on CT on a budget about her frequent use of a countertop oven, I thought I should take a closer look at the electric savings I could be making, if I brought our toaster oven out of retirement. And since I had one just chomping at the bit to be of service again, I brought it back in from the garage, and made a place for it on the kitchen counter.
No doubt about it, microwaving will almost always be the cheapest method of cooking/heating. But there are times when a standard oven produces the desired texture. Microwaving a pizza is not as satisfactory as baking a pizza. Microwaving a whole chicken would leave the skin all clammy. Whereas a standard oven gives you that nice crisp skin. Sometimes I prefer the drying effect of the standard oven, such as when making garden lasagna. A microwave would leave me with a soupy bottom layer. And while you can microwave bake moist bar cookies, I just can't picture crisp gingerbread men coming out of my microwave.
I do love my microwave for moist cooking of many of my favorite foods, such as oatmeal, scrambled eggs, even quick breads like corn bread. And the speed of a microwave is very freeing at the end of the day. If I've done the prep work early in the day, I can quickly microwave the rest of dinner, in the evening, and have it served in about 10 minutes (yes, we timed this the other night, my girls and I. We wanted to see if we could get dinner served in 10 minutes.)
But on days when I'm looking for standard oven baking, without the need for the whole wall oven to be heated, I use the toaster oven. It's just the right size for a single casserole dish, or keeping warm a tray of bean burger patties, while the rest fry up, or making that small 2-loaf batch of French bread so that we can have garlic bread or bruschetta with dinner.
Will I get rich on my savings? No! But, figuring I use the toaster oven 2 hours per week (about my use these last couple of weeks), instead of my wall oven, I'll save about 12 cents per hour, or, 24 cents per week, or, about $1 per month. While not a huge savings, every last bit counts. (My savings are based on an electric rate of just over 8 cents/KWH. Most of the US pays far more, and could see greater savings per month.) I may find that I use it more when cooler weather returns, and I'm serving more casseroles for dinner. So, my monthly savings may sky-rocket to $2 per month. That's $24 a year, and nothing to sneeze at. $24 is enough to buy groceries for several days, or, pay our electric bill for over 2 weeks in summer, or, pay for gas for our less-used car for 1 month, or, you get the picture -- $24 is something.
Would I go out and buy a toaster oven, just for the electricity savings? At retail prices, probably not. But if I had one in storage, or could borrow one from a friend or relative who wasn't using theirs, or I found one for a steal at a garage sale or thrift shop, then I would definitely use a toaster oven for smaller oven needs.
I would also like to point out that this is one of the money-saving strategies which won't require additional time or labor of mine, to achieve the same results. Many money-saving strategies do require extra work and/or time on the part of the participant.
If you're curious how the various electric cooking appliances stack up, in the right-hand side bar is a reference with use and cost (based on my rate of about 8 cents/KWH), from least expensive to most expensive. Toaster ovens and microwaves are at the top of the heap, with standard electric wall/range ovens at the bottom.
