Kitchenaid KMT223CU Toaster Review

In case you don’t want to read my long-winded story below, the toaster is a winner and is worth the extra money over the cheap ones… See it at Kitchenaid.

A few weeks ago Patty was moving the toaster, which we store on top of the refer, when it did a header to the floor. My beloved $30 west bend 4 slice toaster was just sitting there in shambles on the floor with a twisted chassis and the panels all popped out. After a couple of weeks of no toaster, I finally decided to go see what was at the local supersize store and was greeted by a shock. They only had 2 toasters, one for $50 and one for $100. What!, toasters are cheap, there was no way I was going to shell out $100 just to lightly burn bread. Moving on to a different store, I was greeted by a plethora of toasters. Stainless, white, 2 slice, 4 slice by about 10 different brands, this was more like it. My daughter and I pulled levers & looked at the specs. Most of them had sloppy levers, a number of the cheapest ones had fewer wires to cook, and just looked like they were assembled by someone who had an all nighter at the local pub. I finally came to the conclusion that this wasn’t going to be a $30 toaster, so it was time to evaluate just how much it was worth to me to replace the 2nd most used appliance in our kitchen. When we came upon the Kitchenaid products, a little light didn’t go off in my head, no chorus of heavenly angels sang, nor was I struck blind by a shining light from the heavens. It was the same toaster that I’d walked away from at the “toilet paper sold by the pallet store” earlier…The Kitchenaid KMT223cu is a digitally controlled toaster. Since it’s digitally controlled, the cooking time is reliable and repeatable, something I was NEVER able to get out my old toaster. The quality of this unit is excellent, the cooking wires are nicely spaced at about a 3/8″ apart and aligned nice and straight, the fit and finish is good, and it’s almost all metal! It has a dial knob for cooking levels and 3 buttons for different cooking methods-Bagel, Defrost, & Reheat plus one to cancel. I grabbed a bagel and popped it into the slot, hit bagel and a wonderful thing happened, it cooked! I’ve never had a bagel button before, never thought I needed one, but it was a smart button that only applies heat to the inside cooking elements and toasted  the faces leaving the backside unburnt and soft! The topper? It made a perfect golden brown bagel the first time. I never stopped to think about it before, my old toaster really was a piece of junk. You couldn’t just push it down and let it go, you had to cook halfway then rotate the pieces and cook everything again. Funny how you just do things without thinking about it, putting up with poor craftsmanship and operation since you’ve never been exposed to anything any better…I shouldn’t be surprised, we use a stand mixer from KA the last 20 years and it just works. Many of our clients have opted for Kitchenaid refers as alternatives to the Subzero’s of the world and have been very satisfied. And I now own the perfect toaster