America's Test Kitchen Toaster Oven Perfection: A Smarter Way to Cook on a Smaller Scale

"Toaster Oven Perfection: A Smarter Way to Cook on a Smaller Scale" is a valuable resource for making the most of a multipurpose toaster oven. With its guidance on adjusting cooking times and tackling smaller recipes, it’s been instrumental in optimizing the performance of my "Easy Bake Oven." This book has helped simplify meal prep and ensure perfect results every time, making it a great companion for efficient and effective cooking.

Better recipes than most books

I recently purchased the Breville Smart Oven that ATK coincidentally scores highest in their reviews of toaster ovens at the beginning of the book. I live alone in a rental, so I generally cook small meals and have a rental oven that works ok, but can’t be trusted to heat reliably (oven thermometers prove that). Although I can adopt lots of recipes to my oven, I wanted to see what my trusted chefs at ATK had for me in this book.Things to know about this book:-I previously had a smaller, traditional toaster oven that cost about 30 bucks and could hold about two pieces of toast at a time. My new one can hold a small frozen pizza and probably a roast chicken. And that’s really the size of toaster oven that will benefit most from the recipes here. The book recommends using a 13x9 baking sheet and baking pan for many recipes, so consider if this makes sense to you.-Many recipes are scaled down (geared toward servings of two versus a more traditional 4, for example) but you’re often given advice about how to adapt if you want to cook for more servings.-I find cookbook reviews on Amazon vary greatly depending on what the reviewer is used to cooking/eating (“recipes are too fancy!” And “recipes are boring” on the same book!). Here are some sample recipes in the book to help you know what’s in here:-Weeknight Roasted Chicken with Lemon and Thyme-No-Boil Baked Ziti-Baked Crostini w/Oven Jam and Brie-Chicken Souvlaki-Moroccan Fish and Couscous Packets-Glazed Meatloaf-Easy Chicken EnchiladasGenerally, this has a great variety of recipes if you like what ATK offers - meat and fish mains with one or two variations on each, casseroles, desserts, breakfasts, sides, and some small batch baking. Most importantly, the recipes include what I love most about ATK books, which is a “why” behind each recipe - why we added oil here, why we have you toast the panko crumbs before coating the meat there. To me, this helps you become a better cook and understand what was changed in adapting a simple recipe like chicken Parmesan to the toaster oven that could help you adapt other recipes that aren’t in this book to the toaster oven.

I have made many of these recipes and they are excellent. I love my Breville oven and have had one for years. This book is an excellent add on.

This is a nice cookbook from ATK's. It's informative, well written and has some great recipes. With that said, it wasn't what I was looking for. I was more interested in smaller size baking recipes as I find those a bit more challenging to downsize in quantity. It was a bit disappointing that the cookie recipes were for full size recipes with the suggestion of scooping the remaining dough onto a cookie sheet to freeze and use at a later time. Well, I can figure that out for myself. Same with the scone recipe. Most of the main meal recipes, I could figure out how to downsize on my own, so in the end, even though this was a nice cookbook, I returned it.