Our stove quit working and for various reasons we are thinking about just buying small kitchen appliances for cooking instead of buying a new stove. We're planning on purchasing an electric skillet, hotplate and a toaster oven to begin with. I was wondering if anyone fixes meals this way and if you have any suggestions for the best small appliances to get.
I would say stick to small appliances these days because I think stoves are becoming outdated. You can go and buy a convection oven. Not the convection microwave, but the oven. It's about the same size as a standard microwave, but you can do everything that you can do with a regular size oven. When I found out about this, I was super happy. I watched lots of videos about people cooking things like full size turkeys, baking cookies, and this thing is the size of a microwave. Real life easy bake oven. Much cheaper as well, plus it's not gas.
When our last stove went out, we dealt with a really great electric skillet and a really awesome, large toaster oven. We never even missed our stove at all! The toaster oven was so versatile that we even baked things like cakes and full trays of lasagna in it. Stoves are not something that are no longer the must-have they used to be.
Get a good toaster oven and you should be fine. It does depend on how many you cook for, because if it is a family it could prove to be time consuming. Maybe also a good grill or waffle iron as you can make some great dishes from those. I know at college I had one in my room and could cook snacks on it.
Our stove is a gas range. But we have a small electric stove in the storage. When the LPG tank goes empty and the delivery would take time, at least we have a fallback with that one-burner electric stove. We also have a rice cooker and a microwave which can save the day in case of a problem with the stove. But how about roasting? We have a charcoal roaster that is best for broiling fish or roasting meat. By the way, that one-burner electric stove was the very first appliance we bought when my husband and I moved to an apartment. It's still working until now.
We ended up getting a nice electric skillet and a hotplate and these two items seem to be working pretty well for us so far. We'll probably get some kind of toaster oven eventually but will have to wait a little while on that. When we were shopping for these appliances we noticed they had big counter top ovens at Walmart. I didn't know these existed and I thought they were so cool. Even though we don't have the counter space or the funds to purchase one, I thought they were really neat. Thanks all for your suggestions.
When I was growing up, our home was not wired for 220 electric, and it had only had a wood cookstove in it before, and that was gone. We used an electric skillet, and made almost all of our meals in that. We also had an electric cooking pot that was similar to a crockpot, except that it had an actual temperature guage on it, so you could set it for whatever temperature you wanted to cook with. It was also able to be used as a deep fryer; but we seldom did that, and jusst used it like you would use a crockpot. Now, we have Ninja Cooking system that my daughter gave us as a present, and we love that. It is expensive, but will replace almost everything that a stove does. We bake whole chickens and roasts in the Ninja, make soups and meat loafs, spaghetti, and just about anything else you can think of. It even makes desserts ! We tried one of those crockpot cake recipes in the Ninja and it came out delicious. I would definitely recommend at least checking out the Ninja Cooking system, and I think we have a thread about them somewhere on this forum if you do a search for it.
I'm learning a lot from this post. I didn't know that ovens and stoves are considered outdated, and I never knew you could do so much with a convection oven and some of the other appliances. My only concern is, are these type of appliances better suited for a small family (4 or less people) or could a large family use them too?
When we were renovating our kitchen I went 12 weeks without a stove. I was able with a lot of thought and creativity to make meals for my family of 4 using a microwave and toaster oven. It definitely can be done but I bought quite a few canned goods that could be heated in a microwave or frozen foods that could be put in the toaster oven. We also were able to BBQ since it was summer so that was a great help too. The crockpot was also useful at this time. Although I didn't use it that much since it was summer and I find crockpot meals more for winter time. I don't own an electric skillet but I would have really enjoyed cooking on that. I think it really depends on how much you cook and your abilities.
We have a toaster oven; but we seldom use it, and actually, we seldom use the oven either. In the summer, it is so hot here that it is silly to heat the house up even further by turning on the oven, and in the winter, we mostly make soups and stews and so we cook those in the Ninja. We could actually do without our stove and not even miss it, I think. I use it for cooking something quick and small, like frying an egg, or making a hamburger patty; but if we didn't have the stove, I could do that in the electric skillet just as easily. So , except for a few things where having the stove is handy, we would be perfectly fine not even having one, and when we do need to bake somethiing, then we probably would use the toaster oven.
When we had problems with our oven in the past we got a used toaster oven to use, crockpot and we also cooked outside, bbqing or on the fire pit ALOT. I personally can't see how stoves and oven are outdated, but I also cook a lot and love my stove and oven haha. There is ways to get by without them though! I personally would miss mine, and I also am not a fan of electric type stoves, skillets, I only like cooking on gas stoves.
If you live somewhere that you can use an outdoor grill a lot then you've got an easy way to cook a lot of things on that. I'd recommend also having some sort of indoor cooking appliance too though. I've got a toaster anyway, but I also have a steamer which was great for cooking vegetables in. You can use boiling water to cook noodles such as egg noodles or rice noodles too, so just a regular tea kettle can cook those.
When we first moved into our place, no appliances were included. We didnt have the money to go out and buy a new one quite yet, and I have children to feed. So we used the microwave quite often, and you can buy electric skillets at walmart for about $10 and it made my life so much easier! I could cook almost anything in it. For baking, you can buy an electric oven. Works great!
There are many things which can be cooked with even just a cooking pot. Soups are easy. So are steamed dishes. You can even cook porridge in a cooking pot. Just put some cabbages in with the rice. Somehow, the cabbages stop the pot from cooking until the rice is dry.
I combine stove and gas for my cooking. I use gas more it's easier for me to manage and fine on my cooking utensils. In addition to using stove you can get the actual cooking gas and burner which is cool for any food. In addition there is the choice of electric cooking pots
When I was growing up, we lived in a house that was not wired for 220 electricity, and there was no place for a stove anyway. Originally, the house had had a wood cook stove since it was an older house, and no refrigerator. Now, we had a refrigerator that was in the same place that the original stove had been. My mother made all of our meals with an electric frying pan and an electric cooker that was like a crockpot, except it had a temperature control that was adjustable. it could also be used as a deep fryer when cooking oil was put in it; but we just used it for soups and stews or to boil potatoes with. There was no such think as a microwave back then; so everything we cooked came from those two appliances. We could not back anything; but other than that , we could cook just about anything that we wanted, and we just bought any baked items we needed already made. It didn't take up much room, and it worked fine, and probably even saved on electricity.
Would you believe that when our stove got busted, we were cooking in a makeshift stove made of 3 big rocks with firewood as fuel? But that is for an emergency case only. With the regular cooking, we used to have a 1-burner electric stove that sometimes go berserk with "ground" that we get a shock once in a while. And with that, we were done with electric stoves. Our stove now is the regular gas range with an oven. We would have tried the conduction cooker but it requires special pans and pots so we forgo with the idea.
In the past when our cooker died, we was left with nothing to cook with and ended up having to just rely on a microwave, kettle and toaster to do our cooking. Luckily for us we only had to wait a few days till we got a replacement but when you've got a couple of young children to provide for as well, those few days seemed like months! I don't think that there's any doubt that these days we are spoiled and are used to just simply being able to cook in the oven or on the hobs whenever we want, and it's only when e don't have those appliances that we realise how much e actually rely on them.
I was going to suggest a hot plate and toaster oven (plus microwave if you don't have one). I did a lot of cooking using these appliances when our stove was out years ago. The hot plate was around $20 and the toaster over was around $40. You can't get a new stove for that amount, even used. I did have a crock pot at the time as well, but these are the ones I relied on the most. The hot plate and toaster oven really supply the same things as a stove/oven, just on a smaller scale and at less of a cost. They also come in handy if you have a gas stove (and use propane) and either can't afford a fill up or have severe enough weather to keep the gas company from showing up. Toaster ovens are just handy to have anyway. You can use them for small, quick, things instead of the oven.
You can visit the website called Instructables.com and do some research on the gasifier stove which uses only a few pieces of wood and produces a hot flame. There is also the option of using an insulated basket padded with cottonwool and enclosed in a black after. You simply have to cook your food briefly on an improvised stove and then cover it in this basket to continue cooking in the heat entrapped by insulation.