A cooking system positionable on a support surface includes a housing having an internal cooking compartment and an opening formed in the housing for accessing said internal cooking compartment. At least one heating element is provided for heating said internal cooking compartment. The heating element is operable to heat the internal cooking compartment while the opening is at least partially exposed to an ambient environment to allow fluid transfer between the ambient environment and the internal cooking compartment. An output from said at least one heating element is variable across said internal cooking compartment during operation of the system.

A grilling apparatus for bacon or other thinly sliced meat. The apparatus includes a base with sidewalls extending from opposite ends of the base. A pair of doors are coupled to opposite sides of the base and movable from an open position to a closed position. A pair of grill plates are removably connected to a corresponding one of the doors. A heating element extends from the base between the side walls. A removable grill is placed over the heating element between the said side walls. When the doors are in the closed position, the grill and the grill plates form an enclosed space, so that when power is supplied to the heating element, heat generated by the heating element is provided by convection to the grill and the grill plates.

An improved tortilla toaster that batch heats on two sides simultaneously up to six tortillas where each tortilla is held an optimal distance away from heating source and the oven is unloaded by barrel-rolling the oven assembly so as to avail of gravity and tortilla shape to unload the oven.

A heating assembly for a cooking appliance, such as a toaster or oven. The heating assembly can have one or more elements arranged to emit radiation in a wavelength range of 0.75 to 10 microns with a radiative flux of at least 3,000 to 5,000 Watts/sq.cm at a distance of 10 cm from the plurality of heating elements, and/or to emit visible light in a wavelength range of 570 to 800 nanometers, and/or emit radiation in a wavelength range of 0.75 to 10 microns with a ratio of the radiating area to the total area of each heating element being 5% to 25%, and/or emit radiation in a wavelength range of 0.75 to 10 microns toward a cooking space with a ratio of a total radiating area of the plurality of heating elements to an area of the cooking space receiving the radiation is 1% to 20%.

A cooking system positionable on a support surface includes a housing having an internal cooking compartment and an opening formed in the housing for accessing said internal cooking compartment. At least one heating element is provided for heating said internal cooking compartment. The heating element is operable to heat the internal cooking compartment while the opening is at least partially exposed to an ambient environment to allow fluid transfer between the ambient environment and the internal cooking compartment. An output from said at least one heating element is variable across said internal cooking compartment during operation of the system.

A grill for cooking and grilling food includes a housing which defines an internal grilling space and a first side wall (6). A second side wall (7) is situated opposite the first side wall. The grill includes a cover wall (4), a rear wall (9), and a base plate (3). The internal grilling space has a vertical grilling zone. At least two radiant heaters (1, 2) are introduced inside the internal grilling space, situated opposite the first and second side wall (6, 7). The radiant heaters (1, 2) are preferably gas burners. A grilling basket (5) can be introduced vertically between the two radiant heaters (1, 2). The cover wall (4) has an opening (4) through which the grilling basket (5) can be introduced into the internal grilling space. The front side (8) of the grill comprises a viewing opening.

A toaster heating assembly (55A, 55B) including: a frame (60); a panel (65) at least partly supported by the frame (60); a spacer (80) mounted to the panel (65); and an elongate heating element (93) having a plurality of spaced apart elongate heating element portions (95) supported by the spacer (80), so that the spacer (80) is located between the plurality of heating element portions (95) and the panel (65) to provide a gap (94) between the plurality of heating element portions (95) and the panel (65).

A toaster appliance comprises a main platen and a pair of Calrod-type auxiliary heaters. A pair of heat reflectors are operatively associated with the Calrod-type auxiliary heaters so as to effectively reflect heat back into central interior spaces of the toaster appliance and for simultaneously preventing heat from escaping into outer interior spaces of the toaster appliance. In addition, dampers, automatically biased to their closed positions, are utilized at both the infeed and outfeed locations of the toaster appliance so as to effectively retain the heat within the interior of the toaster appliance and to effectively prevent the loss of such heat from within the interior of the toaster appliance as a result of such heat tending to otherwise escape from the interior of the toaster appliance.