VIDEO: Small Appliances

All right, we are back with the Essential Workers of your Kitchen series. Today we're focusing on small appliances. I know that they're called “small” appliances, but the reality is when you have a million of them the space adds up. So I am pretty picky about what I have. I don't have a million, you know, quesadilla makers and things that are just like pointless with only one purpose. Most of these things I use all the time.

Let's start with blenders. I have just a regular blender. This one's a KitchenAid. I'm not particularly brand loyal, but i will say i do own a Vitamix and hardly ever use it. I find that there's not much that I'm doing with a blender that a regular blender can't handle. I've had this, along with almost every appliance you're going to see here, for about nine years. I got a lot of them when I registered when I got married. They're all still in perfect working condition. This guy can handle a lot, but it's not perfect, it can't handle everything. But for your basic soups and things like that, no big deal. We don't make smoothies, as I've talked about on my account a million times, so I can't really speak to its smoothie making. But we do sometimes make cocktails and it can blend a good cocktail. The only other blender that I recommend is going to be a stick blender or an immersion blender. It's nice because it doesn't take up much space to store since it comes apart. You can blend things in the pot, so this is great for things like soup. It doesn't get as smooth as a real blender is going to do but it's a lot less messy and it definitely suffices for a lot of different recipes. I think a stick blender is worth having, especially given the fact that it can be just scooped up – I store mine in a gallon size Ziploc bag.

All right, let's talk about mixers. I do have a KitchenAid stand mixer. I don't use it a ton. It's beautiful, it actually sits on my counter, and it’s kind of a display piece. But the reality is I just use my hand blender way more, or as my mom calls it, my “mix master.” I believe that is a brand name from like 1970. Mine is a KitchenAid, not a mix master, but it's just your basic hand mixer. I use it mainly for baking cookies, that sort of thing. It's good to have. It's also great for doing whipped cream or whipping eggs if you wanted to make like a meringue or something like that. And again, pretty small amount of storage space so that's a win for me.

Okay, food processors. Every time i go to talk about a food processor off the top of my head i can't think of anything I use it for, which is crazy because I think I use it like three times a week. It's just super useful. So like this week I used it to make pesto. You could use it to make things like homemade Larabars. I use two different blades pretty regularly. This is going to be your standard blade, that's what I'll use for something like pesto. But i also use this blade. This is awesome for shredding things. So if you want to shred a ton of Parmesan cheese or cheddar cheese or maybe you want to shred potatoes to make latkes or potato pancakes. You can shred onions. Basically you just feed things through this little opening and you can shred all sorts of stuff. So I would say I probably use this blade more, but I definitely get a lot of use out of the shredder blade as well. They all come with the food processor. Most of my appliances are not super brand loyal but I will say the Cuisinart food processor works great. I've had no issues with it, and again, it's pretty old – about nine years. I do have a small food processor also. I don't think you need this, the large one would be the bigger priority. But the small one is awesome for small things like salad dressings, mayonnaise, and stuff like that. It only comes with the one basic blade, but what I love about it is it has these little holes in the lid. That means if you're making an emulsion like a mayonnaise or a vinaigrette you can turn it on and pour the olive oil into the top while the machine is on. It makes for perfect, creamy, emulsified dressing. So for that reason alone I really do like it. You can do that with the big guy too, it's just how often am I making salad dressing in this quantity? Pretty much never. So this guy gets a lot of use for that.

Okay let's go to the big the big guns. Slow cooker. This, to me, is one of the first things you need. I think this is even older than how long I've been married. This is one of the first appliances I owned. Everyone should have a slow cooker. Is meat in the slow cooker the most delicious meat you've ever eaten? No. Everything in a slow cooker kind of tastes the same at the end of the day. If you stick beef in here, you can put any amount of seasonings it's all going to taste like stew or pot roast. But it works, it breaks down big cheap cuts of meat into tender meat. And best of all you can use it when you're not home. So this guy is a lifesaver for me. I'll prep it at night, I'll throw the insert in my fridge, and then in the morning I turn it on and I go to work. Now obviously I don't go to work that much anymore because of all the quarantine, so I have been getting more use than usual out of my Instant Pot. My old complaint about the Instant Pot was that if you're a working person with kids I don't find that I can get a dinner done in the Instant Pot from when I get home from work to when my kids need dinner. We all eat together at like 5:30 or 5:45. Most recipes in the Instant Pot do take close to an hour because there's a time frame where it has to come up to pressure, then it cooks, then it has to come down from pressure. So while it's faster than a slow cooker – by all means, an hour is faster than eight hours – it’s an hour where you kind of have to be home. Now that we're home a lot more and I work from home four days a week I am getting a lot more use out of the Instant Pot and I will say, I am pretty addicted to doing my hard-boiled eggs in the Instant Pot. All said, technically I think you can get away with just the slow cooker. That's all I had for years and I really had no complaints. I pretty much only bought the Instant Pot because everyone was buying one. But now that I own both, I do think being able to do a meal in just an hour with really tender meat is pretty cool. Also you can cook straight from frozen in an Instant Pot. You cannot do that in a slow cooker because it would be in the temperature danger zone for too many hours and you could possibly contaminate your food. So yeah, it's got some unique capabilities.

And then one other appliance that I think is underrated is the rice cooker. I actually have two rice cookers, a big one and a little one. I used to use the little one a lot when it was just John and I. Now I usually need a larger quantity so I use the big guy. I'm actually in the market for a new big one because this one uses a non-stick lined pan and I really try not to use non-stick items in our house. So I’m in search of a new large rice cooker. This smaller guy uses a metal pan so that's going to be a safer substance, but I will say the rice sticks to this a lot. There are some on the market made of clay and I'm looking into possibly testing those out. But I love a rice cooker. I really only cook rice in it, sometimes oatmeal, it's really just for grains. But compared to doing it on the stove where you have the liquid boiling over making your stove a mess, you have to kind of pay attention to it… This is truly set it and forget it. You flip it to “on” – I mean they don't even have multiple buttons – it’s just “on” and “warm.” You flip it to “on,” you walk away, it keeps it warm until you're ready for it. It's so, so, so, so easy. I would never want to live without my rice cookers. I love, love, love them.

A couple last little superfluous things that you don't “need” but I wanted to mention because they're pretty cool. This is a Foodsaver which is like a vacuum sealer. We use this all the time, partly because we do buy a lot of our meat in bulk and this keeps it from getting freezer burned. We also will freeze whole meals. We'll make almost like homemade Lean Cuisines. Like if we make a lasagna we'll cut it into squares and put them through this and then put them in the freezer. And then when you cut open the square you have a single serve portion of lasagna. It's totally cool. I'm going to be honest, I don't know how to use it. John always does it. But I get the sense that it's really easy. We really do use it a lot. We've also been kind of experimenting with sous-vide and this is a good way to package the food if you're going to cook it sous-vide style.

Last but not least, this is my ice cream maker. You don't “need” this, but I think you should get one. It's on my website under gift ideas because this, combined with this amazing ice cream cookbook by David Lebovitz and the storage containers that I use to keep the homemade ice cream makes the most amazing gift. It's so easy to use. The only caveat is you do have to have space in your freezer for this bowl. You could just put it in right before you want to make ice cream but I find that people forget and then their ice cream doesn't turn out very well. I actually store this in my basement freezer 24/7. That way I can make ice cream whenever I want. But the rest of it is pretty lightweight, easy to store and it makes phenomenal homemade ice cream.

So that's it. I have a few other small appliances that I didn't feature because I just don't think they're necessities. These are the ones that I absolutely think anyone who's going to be doing a lot of home cooking will be better off if you own them. So happy shopping, and happy cooking!