3 Helpful Kitchen Appliances

I can not believe how many different kitchen appliances and gadgets exist.   It was mind boggling the last time I walked through Home Outfitters.  Did you know that you can get containers to keep fresh almost every type of vegetable?  How many different appliances there are to make a grilled cheese or Panini.  You can't use a frypan, that would be too easy.  Boil an egg you must have an egg boiler.  How did Grandma manage to get food on the table?

If you are like us than cupboard and counter space is at a premium, and you have to be careful with your kitchen purchases.  The following are 3 kitchen appliances that have helped reduce my guesswork in the kitchen and my stress.  They have proven worthy of the cupboard space they consume.  We use them regularly, they are easy to wash and involve little or no assembly.

Digital Kitchen Scale:

Countless recipes measure ingredients in grams, ounces, pound and kilograms.  Eliminate the guess work and get a digital kitchen scale.  It is so quick to use and with the tare function you can weigh in a bowl or measuring glass.  We bought a Polder Brand kitchen scale that can handle up to 3 kilograms years ago and was well worth the $20 we spent.  The one we have uses 3 AAA batteries and I think I have changed them once in 5 years.

Digital Kitchen Scale

The kitchen scale has also allowed us to buy meat in bulk and then use the scale to portion out sizes into freezer bags for our favorite recipes.   If we need a pound of ground beef for a recipe it is there for us.     

Hand Blender:

My wife grew up in a home where soup was frequently part of lunch or dinner especially in the colder months.   Whereas I always had the convenience of reaching for a can of Campbell's soup and throwing it in a saucepan and a box of saltine crackers.   After years of her suggesting we make soups we finally did and we tried to puree it in our blender.  You have to transfer the soup in batches, and It was a real pain and just more dishes to wash.    

A friend suggested a hand blender and we have not looked back.  We bought a $40 Cuisineart as it was the least expensive and it is really easy to wash.   If you want to make vegetable puree/cream soups it is so easy to just blend in the pot.  I also use it to make hummus and other smooth dips. 

Hand Blender

The one caveat is I have gone through two Cuisineart hand blenders because the motor has a tendency to overheat and melt the drive shaft plastic coupling.  Thankfully, I had the receipt and the Bay has no hassle returns.  So, I have learned that you have to blend for a minute at a time and let the motor cool for a minute before continuing.  Now we regularly eat homemade soups and they taste far better than anything out of the can.  A lot healthier too.

Digital Meat Thermometer:

This little piggy loves Roast Beef and prefers it medium rare.  This piggy is also a cannibal and loves roast pork as well.  When I first started cooking I was reluctant to cook large pieces of meat because I wanted to do it perfectly.  Large cuts of meat are expensive and I do not want to undercook it and make my guests sick or overcook and dry-out dinner.  This meat thermometer has taken out the guess work for me and with its long probe is great for roasts.   You can see the temperature and you have a alarm to tell you when it is getting close to cooked.  This thermometer is my second by the same company and I got it from Canadian Tire.  The probe will go after several years and you can buy a replacement  or a few dollars more a whole new thermometer.  I think I paid last time $25.

As a present from me to me years ago I went out and bought the fanciest wireless meat thermometer on the market.  Not only could it only tell me what temperature the meat was, it could do it in 6 languages and a 100 feet away.   So, I could be sitting in another room and keep an eye on dinner.  The darn thing took several reboots to work the both times I wanted to use it. It could not pick up the wireless signal from the meat probe and it was a waste of time getting the darn thing to work.  I suspect that there were too many other wireless signals causing interference from our condo neighbors.  My advice is if you decide to the bells & whistles model you make sure the store has a good return policy.  I got my money back and the salesperson was surprised because they loved the one they used at their house.  

Do you have a kitchen appliance you can't live without?  How about one that you haven't used more than once?  Add your comments below.