You’ve been bombarded for weeks, now, with exhortations to go out today and blow your pension fund on a whole load of new toys. Resist the temptation. Save your cash for good, healthy food! There’s only ONE New appliance you REALLY need…
There aren’t really too many ‘essential’ small kitchen appliances you ‘need’ in the 2020s. And there’s an even better choice than getting one of each of those select devices…
Have you guessed, yet?
I’m going to recommend that you leave all the other countertop cookers on the store shelves. And invest in a single, large-capacity, multi-role, smart, toaster, con-vection, air fryer, dehydrator oven.
But not just any… (all-that-stuff)… counter-top oven!
What we got…
The model we settled on, after considerable research and reading a bunch of reviews, was the Breville Smart Oven Air Fryer Pro (SOAFP). It’s designed to perform no fewer than 13 in-demand cooking functions, many of which until recently required separate appliances to perform. But the SOAFP cleverly combines the right combinations of its built-in functions to get the results you want on each setting.
Those features include heating elements in the ceiling and floor of the cooking chamber, true con-vection air flow, 4 separate shelf levels or precision cooking, and pre-heating for those functions that benefit from it, particularly baking.
We’ve tried all the functions, now, and I can truthfully say they all perform beautifully, as advertised.
Upper and lower heat
Unlike your classic toaster oven. the new super countertop ovens have heating elements both at the top and bottom of the cooking chamber. That lets you broil, finish a pizza properly and accomplish other jobs that only a large conventional oven could handle previously.
One thing I particularly love is that I can choose a shelf level and cooking function setting that gives me a perfect golden brown caramelized finish on any dish I want to make – including crumb-topped creations, a ‘Turkey stuffing’ casserole, cobblers, crisps and crumbles, and anything that wants a perfect top layer of delicious, bubbling, golden cheese.
Some of those special functions are actually covered under on-screen presets. You can switch from air-fry, to pizza, to re-heat to broil with the twist of a single knob.
Size does matter!
That’s no joke, and no exaggeration in this context. The SOAFP lets you roast a whole 10-lb. / 4 kg turkey, bake a full-sized casserole, fire a full-sized 12-in. / 30 cm pizza, or flawlessly broil a perfect little rib eye.
The cooking chamber is also tall enough that you can slide a small sheet pan or cookie sheet onto a lower shelf below a large item, to – say- cook up a ‘flat’ of oven fries or sheet-pan roasted veggies at the same time the ‘main event’ dish is baking or roasting above.
One really BIG advantage…
… Is that the Breville requires no heavy-duty wiring or special installation. Just plus it into any regular countertop, ground-fault interruptor 110/120 volt socket. The only proviso is that you don’t plug anything else into the same duplex receptacle. Because the Breville may draw as much as 11 to 13 amps depending on the function you have selected.
No matter what you use it for, the Breville SOAFP draws a mere fraction of the electricity that a con-ventional electric stove uses. At the price of power these days, that’s a God-send.
My take
Neither Erin nor I have used the full-sized oven in our ‘luxe, stainless-steel, full-sized stove since the Breville came into the house. And we now view our conventional toaster oven (acquired before the Breville) merely as an emergency backup.
We didn’t do any air-frying before we got the Breville, resisting the temptation to clutter the counter-top with additional single-function gadgets. But now that we have the SOAFP, we actually air fry fairly often. Bonus!
I’ve added it all up… And I discovered it could cost north of $2,000 to amass a collection of all the separate gadgets you’d need to perform all of a SOAFP’s functions individually. Not to mention the counter-top space you’d need to accommodate them all!
And perhaps the best aspect of all of the Breville is its price tag – under $500 for the second-most-deluxe model. It has all the functions of the top-of-the-line version, except internet/smart phone integration. And that’s something we’ve never missed in the time we’ve had the Breville.
So, to recap… If you MUST rush out and get another kitchen gadget this Black Friday- make it a Breville (or brand of your choice) SOAFP!
~ Maggie J.