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However, the performance is a little hit and miss, so be prepared for compromise. One of our most important and telling toaster oven tests is simply making toast. We fill the rack with bread three times and toast them on three different settings. We evaluate how evenly the oven toasts, how consistently it toasts and how much the low, medium and high settings differ from one another. After all, an air fryer toaster oven should be able to toast well, since it’s one of the most commonly used features.
Sarah Holden, culinary producer for Food Network Kitchen, breaks down three of our top picks, above. During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, everyone was ordering an air fryer. After all, the genius kitchen device makes it easy to cook crispy, fried foods in no time with less grease and oil. For example, the large glass door gives me easy visibility of the food I’m cooking and quick access to it as needed. It’s big enough the toast six slices of bread at once, or an entire 12″ pizza.
Whether it’s finding great products or discovering helpful advice, we’ll help you get it right (the first time). Watch as it cooks your food through the well-lit, easy-view window for an immersive cooking experience. We consider legibility of markings and ease of setting desired time and temperature.
The Hamilton Beach, Panasonic’s FlashXpress and Breville Mini Smart Oven were among the top finishers with mostly even cooking and a solid medium color. To ensure the fat renders and the wings crisp, air fry chicken wings at two separate temperatures. It’s important to eat your veggies, and while there are many ways to cook them—the air fryer isn’t a good choice for leafy green vegetables, such as spinach, bok choy, Swiss chard, and kale. The one exception to this rule is that air fryers are great for making veggie chips from these types of vegetables. In February Cosori issued a recall of 21 air fryer models following incidents of them catching fire, melting, overheating, or smoking. Our budget pick, the Cosori Pro LE Air Fryer, isn’t part of the recall.
The light setting delivered barely-there toasting while the dark setting produced proper dark pieces of toast without burning them. The Breville and Balmuda also nailed the light and dark toast cycles when I put them through their paces. The Panasonic FlashXpress’ well-calibrated dark toast setting delivered a proper dark without burning the bread.
It’s a serious work horse, and I’m thrilled we can use it for many things without having to turn on the big oven and use more energy than necessary. So everyone’s been talking about air fryers for a while now, and I have felt left out of the conversation. People just rave about the ability to cook something in their air fryer without all the oil and mess. After a recent discussion with my niece about how she loves it and finds it so versatile, I just had to have one. The good folks at Hamilton Beach must have overheard, because they provided me with a brand new Hamilton Beach Sure-Crisp Air Fry Toaster Oven to sample. And I am loving it so much that I created a new recipe for homemade crispy chicken tenders.
If your air fryer is smaller you would need to cook these in batches. Assuming an energy rate of 12 cents per kilowatt hour and an average use of one hour per day, hamilton beach toaster oven the full-size oven will add about $105 to your energy bill each year. Unplug the oven and use a toaster oven instead, and that yearly energy cost drops to $65.
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HSN will issue a refund and not deduct the HSN Return Label fee. Michael Sullivan has been a staff writer on the kitchen team at Wirecutter since 2016. Previously, he was an editor at the International Culinary Center in New York.
This article has been reviewed since its original publish date for accuracy, pricing and availability. Our best overall air fryer was updated in 2022 to the Breville Smart Oven Air Fryer Pro. While the Hamilton Beach Air Fryer Sure Crisp Toaster Oven has a contemporary brushed chrome housing, it pretty much has the same design as toaster ovens from decades ago.