>>Would you be able to write a list of all the handy kitchen gadgets you own that help in your food preparation and preservation?<<
Sure, I’ll be happy to. I’ll preface by saying I’m not into gadgets – if I don’t need it, I don’t want it around. So my list won’t be very long.
Pressure canner – I think this is the most valuable kitchen tool I have. It doubles as a pressure cooker, making cooking beans or any other food super quick, and it enables me to can any food I can think of. That means I can buy lots of fruit, vegetables, or meat when the price is right and have a safe method to preserve it for using at my convenience at a later time. It wasn’t an expensive purchase, and even combined with the cost of all the jars/lids that I bought, it didn’t take us more than a couple of months before the free/inexpensive food we were able to take advantage of because we had a way to deal with it that we recouped our expenses. The more expensive the food you can, the faster you recoup the costs. Being able to can meat at sale prices has been a major money saver. I have the Presto 23 quart model.
Canning jars – this connects with the above. In addition to obviously using them for canning, I use them for making kefir soda and making lacto fermented vegetables. Also good for storing grains, nuts, etc. They look nice on the shelf. 🙂
Dehydrator – another very valuable food preservation tool. Also saves us lots of money but I can’t say that we’ve recouped our costs yet. I’m planning to give it a good workout this summer and fall to take advantage of cheap produce – I didn’t have this model yet last summer and relied mostly on canning as a preservation technique. I have the Excalibur 9 tray version.
Apple peeler/slicer/corer – this was very useful for us when we were able to get many, many pounds of free apples; it made processing the apples for canning much easier. If you don’t need it for a lot of apples, it’s not necessary at all. I have two, one from Pampered Chef and one from a company that I can’t remember – I paid $6 for one and $7 for another. Hopefully I’ll have the chance to put them to use again this fall!
Food processor – we eat a lot of vegetables and this saves lots of time in preparing them. I got a manual one to replace the electric one when it broke, but some kind of fast way to slice/chop/shred vegetables is very helpful for me. Since the manual model chops and grinds but doesn’t slice and shread, there’s still room for me to get the electric model, which I’ll only do when the price is right.
Grain grinder – because I like the nutritional aspect of freshly ground flour, this is a valuable addition for us. We have the Nutrimill.
Blender – useful for making smoothies, homemade mayonnaise.
Handheld blender – I keep my main blender pareve and like being able to blend dairy soups with this.
Good set of knives – I wouldn’t have put this on the list if you asked me a month ago. But I just bought a new set since the knives we got as a wedding gift started to break. The new ones are lousy even though they are the same company that made the originals and I really see what a difference good knives make (if anyone has recommendations for good knife sets in a moderate price range, please share!).
Griddle – this covers two burners on the stove and makes it possible for me to cook pancakes much faster than in a regular frying pan since I have more surface frying area.
There are other things I have which are useful, like a manual cherry pitter or a waffle iron, but they fall into the category of convenient but an extra. You have to be careful about spending lots of money on unnecessary kitchen items. Even if you get them for free, there’s the hidden cost of the space they take up. To me, they have to be very useful to justify the room in the cabinets they use. There are things like breadmakers that I don’t personally find to be of value that others swear by, so there’s really no universal list of what everyone needs.
If I had to recommend two kitchen tools that I think are worth buying for the person interested in saving money on food, it would be the canner and dehydrator. Since I got these, I feel like my food costs are going down while the amount I can buy goes up. But you have to have an idea what you’d do with them once you get them! They won’t save you any money sitting on the shelf.
Avivah
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