FWIW, and now going full salesperson, Dualit toasters are low-tech and minimalist. The timer is clockwork. There is no automatic pop-up function; you can depress a lever to raise the toast during cooking to check its colour, if you like. All parts are serviceable/replaceable. I've had my bog-standard Dualit (plus two cages) for 20+ years, and so far I've not had to replace even a heating element; and this with usage at least five days a week.
Even if I'm incorrect and a closed grilled cheese sandwich was the culprit, a toaster oven would still be a better suggestion in my opinion!
At any rate we're talking about toast here and an oven broiler only has one setting (usually): all the way on, so you're using as much energy as it takes to brown a steak just to crisp up a bit of bread.
It's not really about heating up the air, anyways, toasters and broilers mostly directly heat things. A toaster (or toaster oven or countertop convection) just has the elements closer so can direct more energy into the bread and less to.. everything else.
Ovens I've used take roughly 15minutes to warm to 400F (200C), regardless of if they are electric or gas.
That said, you can buy a toaster oven for $30 from Walmart, and that cost covers the energy, material, transportation, and labour, plus markups at each stage. If you assume a $0.10/kWh energy cost, you might have at absolute most 100kWh of energy used in manufacture. That puts the oven/toasteroven breakeven point from an energy perspective at no more than about 60 hours of heating element usage.
I think we should support companies that not only support right to repair, but look towards quality and longevity of their products. Dualit makes the case. Bonus points that their classic series are hand built in-house!
Not just toasting bruschetta - it's secretly a $60 patio oven, opening the door to things like baking fish mid-July without heating or smelling up the house.
Meanwhile if you’re in the cohort that enjoys homemade toast, enough very infrequently, you almost immediately find value in owning even a $10 toaster.
Sandwich cages are the kind technological solution people in general just have something of a blind spot against. Made myself a note if I decide to buy a toaster when I move next year
Ah, the wonders of technology and engineering :)
Oh look, my channel now has 200k subs! Cool.
The cage is very stiff and squeezes the slices very tightly together. So get the bread thickness and filling right, and it doesn't drip much/at all, and the slices will stick together. Crusts help. So it's not unlike a dedicated panini/sandwich toaster.
It's not perfect, a dedicated device is worth it if you're going to use it a lot and/or you have the counter space.
But there is no link or button anywhere on the page that tells me how to buy one. :(
Or the site map has "shop" listed:
https://www.dualit.com/products
Don't know if that's international or just UK. A basic search shows Dualit stuff at Target and Home Depot, though. Amazon, too.
It is at this point I realised my toaster oven is fine, for that once a week serving of toast.
Now, if they had a 30 yr parts warranty, or some such, at least I'd feel semi-secure..
Restaurants buy proper commercial gear, from hospitality supply depots. You don't buy restaurant ovens, and gear, from amazon or home depot. A strong tell is, restaurants aren't looking for candy red, enamel coated stuff. They want stainless, and their gear is hidden away in the kitchen, and they don't want to pay a penny more for trend.
Honestly, why would you say that? There is nothing about this that is commercial.
A 30 yr parts warranty is what tells people it's actually well engineered.
If cafes are buying a toaster at home depot, they're doing it wrong. Most retail equipment even specifies warranty is void for commercial use.
My aunt had the six slice version rated for 240 slices an hour when she ran a bed and breakfast. I've also seen the four slice one in smaller cafes. All in the polished stainless steel finish of course.
A picture: https://www.lowes.com/pd/De-Longhi-2-Slice-Aluminum-Toaster/...
I bought it in Europe so it was 220v. When I moved to the US I purchased 110v heater elements and swapped them out.
It's metal, held together with screws, and toasts bread. It's perfect.
But seriously won't the cheese drip out the bottom?
Honestly I was just impressed that the parts were available. Most consumer-grade toasters use nearly-identical mechanisms, with zero available replacement parts (maybe a crumb tray if you're lucky).
If some well built toaster that won't fail costs more than 4 times what the cheap toaster does, then it probably doesn't make sense to buy it. Especially if you can't guarantee that the well built toaster will actually last a lifetime.
I'm sure the manufacturer(s) don't want to worry about self-service causing house fires though, and it costs a lot to create, maintain, and distribute a stock of replacement parts for what ultimately is a disposable appliance. I just wish I could find a solid basic consumer/prosumer toaster in the sub-$100 range.
Even better is how I can redesign the replacement part so it doesn't fail in the same way next time.
Repairing isn't supposed to make sense, you get the next, better iteration of the product.
In practice, products fail way too early and for easily avoidable reasons justifying the need for repairs.
That's a bit too low tech for me, but otherwise looks like a solid device :D
I'll keep using my toaster-oven for that.
Also it's incredible difficult to touch the elements even if you wanted to: there is a mylar sheet covering them (and they are behind a cage...).
See:
https://assets.dualit.com/images/landscapehalf/50027-classic...
In the dining hall one morning, a teacher sees three kids putting ice cubes into the toaster. The teacher walks up to them. Two of the kids dash away, leaving the third to fend for herself.
Teacher: "What are you doing?"
Student: "Putting ice cubes into the toaster."
Teacher: "Why would you do that?"
Student: "To see what would happen."
Teacher: "Okay. Let's think about this. What happens to ice when it gets hot?"
Student: "It melts?"
Teacher: "Yes, it melts into water. And what happens when you put water into an electronic device like a toaster?"
Student: "...it goes boom?"
Teacher: "So should you put ice into the toaster?"
Student: "No."
Teacher: "Thank you."
This is a camp explicitly for gifted & talented students, by the way. They are exceptionally talented in many ways, but they're still 11 years old.
Believe me, they're the worst ;)
My son recently got on the wrong train to get home from school, it was one that was "fast" that is it doesn't stop in the place where we live, his train sailed straight through our station and the next several stations, before it finally stopped somewhere and he got off.
At this point he (rightly) whipped out his phone and called me for help/advice. I checked the train timetables, figured out that although I could have gone and picked him up in the car, it would actually be quicker - and perhaps a learning experience - for him to get the train back.
So, I told him "go to platform X and get the train at HH:MM and it will bring you home".
He went to platform X, but unwisely got on the first train which arrived, which unfortunately was a delayed - fast(!) - service. So, he ended up going in the other direction on a fast train - and (again) not stopping - straight through our station, until his train eventually reached somewhere it did stop at.
At this point he phoned me in tears. I got in the car and drove there to pick him up.
We filed that under "learning experience". We seem to be having plenty of them...
Even if a video I could watch online was available in the 1990s, the recipe would still fail no matter how safe the instructions were because I misunderstood the base concepts. My mom taught me safety in the kitchen afterwards.
If I may suggest, instead of reprimands (I'd imagine your kid knows they'd messed up and won't try this experiment again), use these situations to teach your child about forming hypotheses, questioning assumptions and doing reality checks before starting an experiment.
Just don't burn yourself! (Technically applies to the toaster as well though)
*Probably also because American bread is awful.
Except grilling it is the best thing you can do to oversugared white bread.
I have seen that fancy horizontal mitsubishi toaster on youtube but never one in store.
The only thing that seems weird to me is "uncooked bread" reference by GGP - did their 12year old put a dough in the toaster?
One bonus way I like to make it for myself is keep the lid open and only cook one side. This leaves one side moist and other crispy. Downside to toasting one side is it's slower due to no pressure.
Cooking both sides with lid down is quicker, but you have to be careful with the height setting you use. We know how to make it perfectly now, but when we first got it we were making squished cracker-like toast.
I know it's tempting to blame modern technological monstrosities for this nonsense, but kids were lighting toasters on fire before the internet.
Source: lit a toaster on fire, prior to the January 1983 IPv4 migration on the ARPANET (and long before I knew what any of that meant).
Just because you respond to something doesn't mean you are either refuting it or agreeing with it.
You have to put 2 slices of bread, cheese in between, and of course take it out before it all starts burning.
I make my cheese and toast in a frying pan (I honestly thought this was way _everybody_ did it :D )
However, you do need a tray on which the bacon sits, which was perhaps your employee's mistake.
Anyone want to coin in?
Go for it!
I'm not (currently) a parent, so this may be off base, but I am currently in the crunch part of the process so looking to learn:
Is there not a better opportunity for this to be a learning experience by making it a couple of hours of your kid's time to do that cleaning? I know my adult life has benefited from my parents' insistence that I clean up my own messes, and 12-year-olds are certainly capable of generating elbow grease.
IMO, the best course of action would be to not ridicule or reprimand them but explain how this wasn't the best course of action and then clean the toaster together with the kid - that way they learn how to do it and don't feel like an idiot. And you don't have to fume over what your kid did wrong but spend some time together.
Obviously, if your kid actually IS dumb and reckless, things would be different.
I don't see it as a punishment to make the kid stick around and help with the cleanup to the extent they can; rather, it's an attempt to practice conscientious habits (if you make a mess, you stick around to see it cleaned up even if you need help to do so), in addition to the specific learning experience that some things are really hard to clean, so we should be careful in our experiments with those things.
No need for an actual toaster, although this one takes a minute or two longer. As an added bonus, my mother-in-law hates waiting that extra minute or two, so that's a big win in my book.
Do you have a fancy toaster? I wouldve just replaced mine, although mine is pretty basic
As a bonus, the kid learns that if you arent careful with your items they may break and be gone. you dont waste hours of your time on something that should cost about 1 hour of your time at work max.
Edit: Agree to disagree, but my post is still a valid position to hold and im open to conversation. but sure use downvote as a dislike button - we are all familiar with where that gets us.
okay guess im an asshole. go use a salvaged toaster in your kitchen. for $20, id rather not risk burning my house down or teaching my kids to put their hands inside the toaster but to each their own
I'd be very tempted to work with him to help clean it; let him do much of the grunt work whilst I helped and supervised (though to be honest I wouldn't be that hard on my kid for doing this unless he had been told don't do it beforehand. I've done enough boneheaded things in my day!).
>I'd be very tempted to work with him to help clean it;
how is this being hard on your kid, but you doing it by yourself is totally normal and replacing it a total economic waste? Is it easy to fix or not?
Replacing the toaster and yelling 'We had to spend $X to get a new one now!' will be forgotten by the end of the day.
If the kid was present for it. Otherwise, its very much just another "oopsie" they did that mom and dad clean up behind the scenes and they have no idea what the difference is between ruining a toaster and spilling a glass of milk.
>We had to spend $X to get a new one now!
I would never say this to my kids.
So what would the learning experience consist of then?
> If the kid was present for it.
OP mentioned several hours of work + dry runs in the garden. Pretty hard to miss that, unless they're perpetually glued to their screens (which would be the bigger concern). PS: Also, unless you take your kid to a physical store, the new toaster will pop up even more magically than the cleaned one.
honestly, the last thing i want my kid to think in that situation is that it is okay for them to put their hands in the toaster. Which they might do if they see me do it while cleaning
which is why you unplug it before working on it and make a BIG point to the kid of both hazards, and how essential it is to remove power before working on something, AND to do test runs in a safer area like outside, etc.
>>the last thing i want my kid to think in that situation is that it is okay for them to put their hands in the toaster
I'd say that you don't want them putting their hands in WHILE IT IS POWERED or HOT. Important distinction, and best started early and often. They'll see it sometime, better to have them have a context so they can tell the difference between doing the same thing when it is smart (powered down and repairing), vs Darwin Award candidate level stupid (when powered); then they can evaluate other's actions and draw the right conclusions.
Odds are the toaster company doesnt want you mess with it either. This isnt the old days where you can just use some elbow grease and fix everything on your property. Liabilities need to be managed. Electrical items need certifications. Doing it yourself takes hours. It's just a lot of things that are unnecessary to deal with over a toaster.
If I am going to teach my kid anything about fixing electrical items it's that if it isnt working then he (or she) should unplug them and then he shouldnt touch them until certified to do so. It'll encourage them to look at the bigger picture of the problem.
Sure, as an adult we can see through red tape and feel cool about it and want to teach the same to our kid.. but it's really not worth it. Kids that are smart enough to learn the will likely experiment with new things they learn. Just because they safely unplug the item before working on it doesnt mean it's safe to plug back in afterwards.
And throwing it away without replacing it punishes everyone in the house for the kid's mistake.
Nowhere did I do this, and the claim is confusing because I am a supporter of repair-and-reuse in general. People are extrapolating from me saying specifically that a toaster is not worth it. Toasters cause house fires. I would always sooner replace it for $25 than salvage one.
>And throwing it away without replacing it punishes everyone in the house for the kid's mistake.
A lack of a toaster for a day or two hardly punishes anyone, and the child sees that other people can be impacted by their recklessness.
> Some people are on a budget where replacing even a $25 toaster is not a painless expense
Yeah, I am one of those people actually. I have an emergency fund that I would happily use for this 1-off incident.
Could be fun to sit with them and take apart the toaster and assess it together and see if its worth cleaning or replacing and explaining why. But I wouldnt spend 2+ hours cleaning it by myself and then complaining about it
I will happily spend hours repairing something that costs 15 minutes of my time to buy.
Throwing away salvageable things is just wrong, it’s not an economic question for me.
after you adjust to dealing with disposable items a lot.. you kind of grow out of the feeling that every item is special and needs to be repaired to max extent and kept for as long as it can. It feels anthropomorphic / overly sentimental to do that. the moral argument gets the curtain pulled back and there's very little substantiating it. imo, at least. Curious if you can shed better light on your moral stance here tbh. im not die-hard on this subject and would happily update my views if convinced otherwise
I respect that you have a productive hobby interest in repairing items, and for the most part I share that. But I dont see anything wrong with throwing something away that could be salvageable. Once it stops working, it is just parts and material and I now become part of the demand for toasters. What's wrong with letting toaster specialists handle toaster demand? In the time it takes me to repair a toaster, the specialists can produce 100 of them. and thanks to people like me buying from them rather than doing it myself, they remain productive members of society and get to feed themselves. And I get a couple hours back to do something else to potentially improve society or my personal life.
All that said, I do think there is a lot more we can do with waste management to better deal with disposed parts and materials, though. A lot of how we handle disposed goods is definitely wrong. we mix materials with food waste and it makes everything gross and expensive to work with. food waste really should be a hard split from everything else but maybe one day
collect a bunch of similar materials from the dump and bulk clean them all into workable materials again with a pressure washer in the same amount of time.
Work an extra 2 hours, use the money to buy a new toaster, and spend the rest on food for the homeless.
the moral argument is bullshit. it's a waste of your time, and the only reason you dont think so is because you get personal enjoyment out of fixing things (i do too)
But seriously, my mom was furious. No YouTube required.
Just use a toaster oven. They're horizontal.
Should have been a couple of hours of his time
That's how we learn.
I still do dumb stuff all the time, it's just more complicated dumb stuff :D
But at least it is complicated and -novel- dumb stuff.
All sorts of crumbly, melty things can go in a standard upright toaster.
If so, why is he on there unsupervised?
Basic idea is to make the components separately:
1) toast two pieces of bread until they are dry and quite brown, this is important (to remove the water ) so that the bread does not heat up in the microwave
2) while it is toasting, cut up cheese for each slice, I use quarter inch thick 1“ x 2“ pieces, usually four per slice
3) after the bread is toasted, put them on a glass plate and butter them, then cover each with the slices of cheese
4) microwave 30s until the onset of melting
5) optional to add cold deli meat the sandwich after microwaving and combining
6) cut into fours and serve with optional dipping sauce
The dry toast and the melted cheese have a very good texture and taste and it takes about 3 minutes to make.
I make this for children often and add a bunch more cheese and meat so that four pieces of toast can be the main part of a simple lunch for 8 kids (each cut into quadrants).
Our 12-year-old recently tried to make himself "cheese on toast" by putting both cheese and uncooked bread into the (almost brand new, upright) toaster. Aaargh!
Cue the house full of smoke, a stern reprimand, then a couple of hours of my time wasted on removing every last piece of burnt greasy cheese from inside the toaster, followed by several empty runs with it outside to let it get properly hot and burn off the last of the fatty residues.
He was, at least, quite sheepish about his learning experience.