Raw To Toasted In 3.5 Minutes (Cookworks Single Sandwich Toaster)

Name: zoe_page_1

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Product:	Cookworks Single Sandwich Toaster
Date:	27.02.05 (715 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Quick and easy to use, versatile, cheap

Disadvantages: Gets hot during use

I am a bread fanatic, but in the winter months I need some heat in my meals, so turn to toasting. I love my Dualit toaster very, very much, and as such do not want to make it work too hard by using it twice daily, so save it for breakfast only and have to find some other appliance for my other meals. There are several ways of making toasted sandwiches. You can make a sandwich as usual, pop it in a snazzy toasting bag and drop it into a wide slotted toaster. You can make a sandwich as usual, wrap it in tinfoil and iron it (seriously!) or you can, as is more normal, use a sandwich toaster.

Mine is a white, Cookworks model that cost the very reasonable sum of £7.99 from T J Hughes in the summer of 2000, when I was stocking up on kitchen stuff in preparation of going off to university. Since then it has been used, on average, once a week and continues to serve me well. It is showing no signs of wear and tear beyond the slight fading of the Cookworks name on the top. It still heats as quickly as it always does, toasts as evenly and remains quick-wipe rather than proper-scrubbing-effort clean.

Toasters come in various sizes, from single sandwich makers to double or quadruple ones for big families / hungry people. Mine is just for me, so makes one nice sandwich at a time, and is nice and compact – barely 25cm by 15 cm, and quite low to the surface. When you initially plug it in a light comes on to let you know (a) it’s working and (b) it’s not quite ready for you yet. After a short while – a couple of minutes or so – it is adequately prepared for your bread based snack, and alerts you to the fact by giving a little ‘ping’ and switching off the light. This is useful when you’re in a different room or just have our back to it and might not notice the light going off. You open the jaws, place the sandwich on the bottom plate, and close the top down, snapping it into place. The light stays off until it feels it’s finished, and then flicks on, accompanied by another ‘ping’. However the toaster stays on at this point, so if you like your sandwiches more well-done than others you don’t have to go and reset it – it will keep heating and toasting and generally being useful until you go and unplug it – something I usually do after having opened it up and removed the sandwich.

The toaster does not have removable plates. I didn’t realise this was even an option until I was searching for it online and was offered a selection which have these. However as I eluded to earlier, I don’t tend to clean mine that much so you don’t need to remove them – a quick wipe with a damp cloth suffices. This may sound gross but I’m someone who also doesn’t wash pans after cooking pasta (they’ve just had salt water in after all) and who will drink from the same cup all day before rinsing it. And, the toaster doesn’t need a proper clean more than annually. I make my sandwiches with peanut butter, and a little burnt, old PB never hurt anyone. If I was using tuna or ham or something disgusting like that it might be a different story. The plates stay well lubricated – I used to prepare the toaster with a bit of butter or olive oil but have stopped doing so to no ill effect. Some people butter the outside of the bread but I find this makes it too fatty, and prefer the sandwich without. Literally, when I make one the only ingredients I need are a few teaspoons of peanut butter and a couple of slices of bread.

The toaster is, as indeed most are, slightly too small to fit in a whole slice of larger (Warburtons) bread. This is my bread of choice so I use it anyway and push the sealing edge and catch down over the overhanging bread, thus cutting it off. You could use smaller slices but I like bread that exactly fits the mould, so it’s easier to use large slices that get cut off than to opt for smaller ones and run the risk of having an ill formed sandwich, not sealed properly because the bread did not reach the edges.

Toasted sandwiches can be the ‘healthy’ choice when it comes to bread and fillings. The main reason for this is that you don’t need that much spread as the heat inside the maker makes whatever filling you choose go slightly runny and spread out. It’s the same principle as attacking cold toast with refrigerated butter and needing more of the stuff than if you’d gone for hot toast and spreadable butter. I also find I only need to butter / spread one of the slices, not both, which again saves on calories. As I’ve said, I tend to stick to one topic, but sandwiches, unlike my diet, are very versatile, and can be made with pretty much anything – cheese, hummus, bacon, beans. Generally speaking, the larger or bulkier the filling, the longer cooking time you need to make sure the contents are heated properly. The toaster itself is adaptable, though, and has a sprung hinge that adapts to fat and thin sandwiches.

Any negative points about the maker? The top and sides can get very hot when you use it (something it usefully informs you of on a sticker on the base of the unit) and if your hands slip off the main handle your fingers can get burnt – not badly, but still, no burn is a good burn. The machine is a good one for cooling quickly, however, and is generally ready to be put away (with or without a wash) by the time I’ve finished eating. The catch takes a but of getting used to as it’s rather stiff, but you really do need to fasten it when the sandwich is inside to get the best results. It also doesn’t cut the sandwich it half that well – but this is not something that has faded with time as I can’t recall it ever doing so. Not a problem if you own kitchen scissors or a knife, but something other brands boast about being able to do. It does, however, seal very well, and contents have never escaped out of the sides (the PB that escaped above came through the bread where I had been a bit over energetic with my spreading). The toaster also works well with different kinds of bread – white, brown, thin, medium and thick – but would probably struggle with hand sliced bread-maker stuff if you go for super chunky slices. The only other downside is that you can’t choose a browning setting – it heats to one temp and one temp only, and it’s up to you to extract the sandwich at the right point for you. I like mine slightly tanned with crispy edges but still more warm bread than anything else, and I’ve perfected the art of working out when this will be. If you’re new to the machine though, you can just keep opening it up to see how far it’s gone – it won’t cause it to sink or collapse or anything similar to what might happen to a cake or soufflé in an oven when you open the door.

Toasted sandwiches always seem a lunch or tea or snack food to me and I don’t tend to eat them for breakfast although there’s no reason you shouldn’t. I like them because they feel more filling than a couple of slices of toast – although this must be psychological as they’re virtually exactly the same. They’re quick to make – the title’s not a lie: my lunch today took less than 5 minutes to prepare, of which 3.5 minutes was the cooking time – and they’re a different take on traditional toaster toast.

Cookworks have many different sandwich makers available, in varying sizes and colours to suit all kitchens. Argos and Index have good selections, or look online. It’s not the classiest or most expensive brand out there, but it gets the job done, and I’ll be sticking with mine for a long time to come.

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