Tefal Toast n Bacon November 2009

The Tefal Toast n Bacon is a toaster with a difference - the see-through panel on the front drops down to reveal an oven inside. It’s the latest in Tefal’s range of combination toasters – we’ve already reviewed the Toast n Egg.

We haven’t tested the Toast n Bacon in our lab yet, so we can’t give it a Which? test score, but we tried it out to see if it’s worthy of some space on your kitchen worktop.

Grilling with the Toast n Bacon

Tefal says you can cook bacon, eggs, chicken, chips, fish and pizzas in the oven part of the Toast n Bacon. It can also be used to warm croissants and rolls, or to make cheese toasties, and the toaster part makes two slices of toast.

You won’t be blown away by the design of this gadget, and the build quality is a little on the clunky side. Having said this, we tried cooking a few things in the Toast n Bacon and were relatively impressed.

Bacon was grilled evenly, although the recommended timings in the instruction manual were a little on the optimistic side.

Which? researchers have reviewed the Tefal Toast n Grill

Cooking with the Toast n Bacon

Frozen chips were cooked through and came out piping hot, but again we had to cook them for longer than the 30 minutes recommended in the instructions. The chips were a little soft and lacked crispness on the outside, but overall it wasn’t a bad effort.

We tried to cook a small supermarket pizza and although the topping bubbled away nicely and the pizza came out of the oven hot, the base was a little soft. We left it to cook a little longer, but the edges of the pizza overbrowned and the base still wasn’t crisp enough.

We found the outside of the Toast n Bacon gets quite hot, so use oven gloves and be careful when you’re opening the door. We noticed an unpleasant burning smell the first time we used it, although this didn’t affect the food we cooked.

The oven isn’t noisy, but the element makes a clicking sound when it turns on and off - this happens throughout cooking as the thermostat regulates the temperature of the oven.

The toaster was the most disappointing part of the Toast n Bacon. We had to overlap our two slices of multigrain bread slightly to fit them in. The toast came out slightly stripy and unevenly browned. If you’re looking for a good quality toaster that browns bread evenly, go to our toaster reviews.

Cleaning the Toast n Bacon

Cleaning the Toast n Bacon was far easier than we expected. The crumb tray at the bottom protects it from oil and food splashes and can be removed and washed normally.

The grill can be removed for cleaning, and the front screen and casing can be wiped with kitchen cleaner and a damp cloth. You do have to wait for 30 minutes before cleaning the Toast n Bacon, as the metal parts get very hot and must be allowed to cool.

Toast n Bacon: Which? verdict

The Toast n Bacon may appeal to students, those living alone or anyone with a small kitchen. It may even deserve a place in your camper van or caravan, but it won’t replace your oven, and if your cooker has a decent grill you’ll probably get better results using that.

A good combination microwave, which has a grill and uses convection heat to cook food, is also likely to give you better results. Combination microwaves are generally bigger, too, so you’ll be able to cook larger meals

To find out more about the combination microwaves we recommend, read our microwaves review. If you aren’t convinced of the versatility of combination microwaves, watch our video on how they can be used to cook complicated meals such as roast dinners.

Think carefully before you rush out and buy the Toast n Bacon. It’s the type of device that may end up languishing, unused, at the back of your kitchen cupboard.

It costs £65 and is available online from www.homeandcook.co.uk

Pros: Easy to use, can toast and grill, quite easy to clean, doesn’t take up too much space

Cons: Not as versatile as a combination microwave