Kitchen Needs

The evenings are properly dark now. You get in, you’re hungry, and the idea of chopping, frying and washing up three pans feels like a lot. Ordering in feels like giving up. There’s another option, and you can have it on your worktop in three clicks.

A deep-fill toastie maker gets you a hot, proper feeling dinner in about five minutes, with one thing to wash up afterwards. It goes well beyond cheese on toast, too. Load it right and it does a decent impression of a proper meal.

The gadget: a deep-fill toastie maker

The one we’ve got our eye on is the Breville Ultimate Deep Fill Toastie Maker (VST082). Breville say it has 20% more filling space than a standard toastie maker, which is the whole point if you’re trying to fit a proper meal between two slices rather than a scraping of cheese. It runs at 850W, has a ready to cook light so you’re not guessing, and a cut and seal system that presses the edges shut and slices the sandwich into two neat, sealed triangles.

The plates are non-stick and lift out, and Breville say they’re dishwasher safe, so there’s no scrubbing a hot plate by hand. For a small kitchen, the detail that matters most is that it stands upright with the cord wrapped underneath, so it stores on its end rather than lying flat and eating up a shelf. It comes in black, stainless steel or white, according to the listing.

Good to know: it’s a two slice machine, so it makes one sandwich at a time. Fine for one or two people eating in shifts, less fine if you’re feeding a houseful. And because the plates seal the edges shut, a filling that’s too wet or too generous can still force its way out and drip onto the hotplate, so go easy on runny sauces until you know how full is too full. We haven’t used this one ourselves. The details above come from Breville’s own product page and the Amazon listing, so it’s worth a read of the current listing before you buy.

Five fillings for a proper dinner, not just a snack

The trick is treating it like a small oven rather than a school lunchbox. A few combinations worth keeping ingredients in for:

• Leftover roast chicken, stuffing and a spoon of gravy, kept thick enough that it won’t leak.
• Baked beans, a slice of ham and grated cheese, drained well so it doesn’t turn the bread soggy.
• Mashed potato, cheese and a few spring onions, basically a toastie shepherd’s pie.
• Tinned tuna mixed with a spoon of mayonnaise and sweetcorn, pressed flat before it goes in.
• Sliced apple, a thin layer of soft cheese and a scrape of honey, for the nights you want pudding instead.

None of that takes longer to prepare than five minutes, which is really the whole promise here. Butter goes on the outside of the bread, not the inside, and the machine does the rest.

Why it earns its place in a small kitchen

There’s no oven to preheat, no grill pan to scrub, and no extra chopping board. One machine, one plug, one thing to wipe down after. Stood upright in a cupboard or on its end at the back of a worktop, it takes up less room than a single saucepan lying flat, which matters when your kitchen doesn’t have room to spare.

It’s not a replacement for actually cooking most nights. But on the evenings when the alternative is toast on its own or a phone call to the takeaway, it’s a decent middle ground, and it’s done before the kettle’s finished boiling for your tea.

A quick note on the pictures in this post: they’re illustrations of what this type of product generally looks like, not photos of the exact item, so the real thing will look a little different.

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