A lot of people love warm and fresh meals. The taste of a freshly cooked dish can make just about anyone happy. However, not everyone has the time to prepare their food. Cooking can be rewarding, as much as it can be time-consuming. Dicing ingredients, boiling broth, and drying vegetables—you may need all the time in the world to do all these three times a day, every day.
Luckily, there are many ways to save time and energy before preparing every meal. From simple tools like vegetable peelers to specialized blenders, your food preparation will be just as enjoyable as consuming the finished product. Check out these ten must-haves in your kitchen to help you save time and energy in preparing your meals.
10 Kitchen Must-Haves That Will Save You Time and Energy
1. Peeler
If you are a fruit or vegetable lover, you know the struggle of peeling every produce without wasting every bit of that juicy flesh. Peeling produce using a knife can often pose challenges in terms of accuracy. Sometimes, it’s hard to get the correct positioning on your knife. You may even peel the flesh along with the skin accidentally.
No one likes to waste food, especially now! If you experience this mishap often, you may need to go out of your way to peel those produce thin and clean.
A peeler saves you lots of time and effort in scraping the skin of produce like cucumbers, potatoes, and pears while reducing the chances of cutting yourself. Do you get these accidents often? Perhaps you need to learn the basics of kitchen safety.
2. Pressure cooker
Meats are delectable when eaten tender. However, not everyone can buy a tenderloin cut every grocery run. So, people opt for going traditional when tenderizing meat, such as boiling it extensively. But in this time and age, who has the time for that?
You don’t need to wait hours to enjoy a good stew. Instead of waiting long, a pressure cooker may help. It can expedite the cooking process of hard foods like meats, beans, and even potatoes through intense heat and pressure.
3. Slow cooker
Many people think that saving time is just about expediting the cooking process, but there are also pros to slow cooking. A low-temperature setting helps tenderize foods while keeping the flavors packed. Using a slow cooker when trying to save time may seem counter-productive. However, the best part is setting a time to end cooking.
Setting the time your meal finishes cooking allows you to go about your day. You can do chores, work, and exercise, knowing your meals will be ready when you return.
4. Food processor
Sometimes, the preparation is more time-consuming than the actual cooking. Different recipes require various preparations that are not very exciting. Food preparation is no walk in the park when you are cooking a delectable meal with multiple ingredients.
A food processor can cut your preparation time. It can dice, knead, grind, and do other preparation methods using a multi-purpose blade. Many say that it works similarly to a blender, only it’s more specialized towards meals.
5. Mandoline
As our beloved Julia Child said, “It’s hard to imagine a civilization without onions!” Most cooking involves onions, and this ingredient always needs chopping.
Many cooks and chefs lost and bled their fingers in pursuit of precise ingredient cuts and shapes. Due to this, there is a need for the extra effort in chopping ingredients. With the peeling and chopping involved, taking one’s time to be extra careful can be time-consuming. Thankfully, a mandoline can slice vegetables uniformly with minimal effort.
6. Four-sided grater
Graters are excellent tools for shredding cheeses and raw vegetables. Unfortunately, one uniform hole size does not fit all your shredding needs. But all hope is not lost.
A four-sided grater widens your grating choices. Opt for a stainless-steel material when choosing one to maximize your grating quality.
7. Airtight containers
It may leave you questioning what containers have to do with cooking efficiency. As long as you keep them visible, you can save time by finding what you need at a glance.
Airtight containers prolong your ingredients’ freshness by protecting them from insects, dirt, and air. It also saves you from messy accidents in the kitchen. If you want a seamless cooking process, remember to pay attention to your food storage as well.
8. Good quality knives
Good quality knives may not be the cheapest kitchen finds. But let’s face it: it can be immensely annoying and time-consuming to dig into food ingredients with blunt knives. Instead of seamlessly chopping things, you’ll spend that time grunting and trying harder to get those perfect cuts, which may not turn out nice.
It’s always worth investing in the best kitchen utility knives. Not only will they last longer, but they also get the job done swiftly and satisfactorily.
9. Salad spinner
Those who love salads struggle with the thorough cleaning process of leafy greens. Often, it’s not enough to wash it manually. The water may slide down those green cuticles. However, it doesn’t always equate to cleanliness. And a nice, good rinse is necessary to eat salads free from dirt and micro-parasites.
But here’s another problem, vegetables need to be dry so the dressing will stick better. So, what’s the solution? A salad spinner.
This must-have kitchen item thoroughly cleanses greens while drying them before salad preps. This way, you can eliminate all the water, and the greens are ready for eating.
10. Blender and immersion blender
Many often use blenders for iced beverages, but they are also perfect for sauces, purees, and crushed nuts. If you don’t have a food processor, a blender can be a reliable alternative to turn solids into fine bits and pieces of food.
You can choose from multiple blender types. Still, nothing beats the classic countertop blender. This blender can add flavor to your masterful culinary creations with just a button press. An immersion blender is another type known for its ease of use and time-saving when cleaning. It acts more precisely and can blend seamlessly in bowls and cups.
Eliminate your food preparation anxiety
Some people opt not to cook because of the tediousness of the food preparation process. Others see cooking as an annoying chore. Thankfully, there are tools to reduce preparation and cooking time without sacrificing quality. With these tools and equipment, you can diminish all the bad experiences associated with cooking by working smarter than harder!
How many of these things do you own, and which ones do you want to add to your kitchen? Whatever you own, hopefully, these items can help you create indulgent flavors for every morsel.