For Fatty Foods, Your Toaster Oven Is Probably Not The Best Bet

The toaster oven is one of those appliances you'll find in plenty of household kitchens because it can easily toast your bread in the morning and reheat your leftovers for dinner in the evening. Despite its wide functionality, which has expanded to include air frying (for some models), there are some foods you should never cook in a toaster oven. One item on the list is fatty and greasy foods, for a handful of reasons.

You'll want to avoid cooking fatty foods in your toaster oven due to potential safety issues. When fatty meats or greasy foods, like leftover fast food fries, cook at a high temperature, there's a potential for the fats to splatter in the enclosed space. Those splatters of fat and grease might hit any exposed heating elements and could lead to a fire. There's also the potential for a grease fire if the toaster oven's temperature exceeds the burning point of the fats and oils in the food.

While the safety issues are arguably the most important reason why you shouldn't cook or reheat fatty foods in the toaster oven, there's also the issue of the mess reheating your fatty foods will create. When the fat and grease pops up from the food, it will dirty the inside of the oven. The grease might also stain your tray if you don't cover it with aluminum foil first. It can be rather difficult to clean grease from the inside of the appliance, especially if you let it build up over time.

Not only will the residue look dirty and aesthetically unappealing, but lots of grease and fat can also attract pests like cockroaches — gross! That build-up might also prevent the heating elements from functioning properly, in turn leaving your morning toast undercooked. If you find that your toaster oven is a haven for grease build-up, follow our tips for giving your toaster oven a deep clean — and find another way to reheat greasy foods to prevent it from happening in the future.