Mandoline, knife, and dishwasher. I’m a sucker for thin sliced cabbage
Probably the air fryer and the Korean stone pot.
for appliances, probably a tie between kettle, rice cooker, and air fryer.
for gadgets, my phin filter (it’s a vietnamese coffee brewing tool, cost me like $2 and i have used it every morning for over 5 years!)
Dishwasher. I hate washing dishes by hand.
Maybe not the most glamorous thing—I mean, there are people out there who take their specific kitchen knife or stand mixer really seriously—but in terms of the actual improvement to my life, I have a hard time saying that anything else competes.
They’re also a lot more efficient in water and (depending on how you heat your water) energy usage.
I am with you! Lets add the fridge to the list too haha I would say that one is even more important and also a lot more used.
But otherwise would I also pick dishwasher
electric kettle
Kettle with a keep warm setting
My blender, I love that thing.
My hand made for me chef’s knife.
Same. It was absolutely worth the money.
Gotta be my cast iron pans.
But for the unexpected item I can no longer function without: it’s the boiled egg slicer.
I have to agree with cast iron pans, especially old ones. They’re versatile, durable, and I don’t have to worry about Teflon flaking off.
I’ve heard carbon steel is great too, but I love the properties of cast iron so I don’t feel the need to get anything else.
Ditto. I love cooking with my cast iron, best pans I’ve got. The carbon steels were super nice too, but I liked the raised edge design of my cast iron just a little bit more!
Carbon steel is great, but honestly the main advantage over cast iron is weight and that most modern cast irons (I’m looking at you lodge) have a surface that is a lot rougher. Neither is better than the other, but those differences can make some difference in what you’re trying to accomplish.
Also, and this is very personal experience and could very well be that my seasoning on the lodge I have is not great, but I find that I can stir cook some tomatoes on carbon steel and the seasoning remains great, but I get a metallic taste when doing the same on my cast iron.
They’re just good pans. They’re not that hard to take care of, though I screwed one up by blitzing it to 600F on the BBQ by accident, but I’ve pretty much cleaned it up and it’s back to normal rotation.
Even my expensive non-stick flakes. It’s inherently disposable.
I miss my cast iron. Got a set of rusty saucepans and a rusty frying pan in a garage sale about forty years ago. Scrubbed and cleaned and seasoned them and used them to feed the family, took some camping and cooked over a campfire, they were so durable and reliable. Gave them away a few years ago when they got too heavy for my arthritis to be able to handle them.
Sorry to hear about that, have you considered getting some Carbon Steel? They’re thinner and therefore lighter but have very similar performance and characteristics
Thank you, I’ll go looking!
boiled egg slicer
So what do you use this for? I mean, what do you use the egg slices for?
I put them on salads and toast
I love my “As Seen on TV” egg cooker. Up to 14 perfectly boiled eggs every single time with minimal effort.
Toaster oven.
Probably my Mocca Master.
The best gadget are bowl scrapers. I use them more often than knifes.
yes! i think mine was < 1€ and it’s super useful.
i really hate it to throw away food and this device (not even silicon, just boring white plastic) makes it super easy to empty all kind of bowls and pots.
Food processor. I have issues with my hands and the ability to slice, chop, and blend items with minimal hand use is just fantastic.
Toss up between the fine conical strainer and the microplane…
$25 breadmaker I got at a thrift store. I buy local fresh wheat flour in bulk and make two delicious loaves a week for my family. Total cost is like 15 minutes of labor and less than 50 cents in ingredients. I’ve made well over 200 loaves in this thing by this point and have saved at least a thousand dollars in crappy storebought bread.
Actually, as much as I love my breadmaker, I think the best answer here might actually be my Instant Pot. I use it almost every single day for basically every hot meal under the sun, and its magical ability to fully cook dry beans in less than a half hour is such a huge money and time saver on top of everything else it can already do.
(NOTE, however, that kidney beans are still mildly poisonous when cooked this way in an Instant Pot - they need the full, extended cooking session to become fully safe to eat. We usually just use the Instant Pot for pinto and black beans.)
