ExecutiveChronicles.com | Small Kitchen Appliances That Every Kitchen Should Have | One potential upside of the Covid pandemic is that it put a lot of people back in their kitchens. While it’s true that you can make unhealthy food at home, home-cooked meals are generally healthier than takeout or eating out.
Of course, for all the people who ate out as their primary means of getting meals, switching to the kitchen likely meant discovering they didn’t have a lot of useful small kitchen appliances.
If you’re in that group or just want an idea of what other handy little appliances and tools are available for the home cook, keep reading. We’ll offer you a quick guide to some of the best and most useful small kitchen appliances you may want for your home.
Multi-Cooker
A multi-cooker may well end up as one of the best kitchen appliances you ever buy. For most people, a multi-cooker acts as a slow cooker and pressure cooker in one. That lets you eliminate one whole appliance from your home without losing its function.
Of course, multi-cookers do more than slow cook and pressure cook. They also let you saute and steam. If you’re feeling experimental, you can use them as a rice cooker or even cook up a batch of yogurt.
There are several brands of multi-cookers out there that offer generally similar performance. You can also find a lot of recipes online designed with a multi-cooker in mind. These devices can trim a lot of cooking time out of some traditional recipes.
Blender
The venerable smoothie blender has a long history in the kitchen. Many people grew up making homemade milkshakes in them, and they’re great for mixed drinks.
These days, though, the blender is often a critical component in healthy eating. You can use them to mix up protein drinks, vegetable juices, and fruit smoothies.
Living in a small apartment and don’t relish giving up that much counter space or soaking up storage in your cabinets. You can often get by with a personal blender that takes up substantially less room. You will likely sacrifice a bit in power and blending options, though.
Microwave
No modern kitchen is complete without a microwave. It’s an indispensable tool for quick reheating, a bit of defrosting, or making your ravenous children a fast snack. Plus, it’s pretty good at reheating coffee.
For the power user, you can also get smart microwaves that offer bells and whistles like convection cooking, which makes them a much more versatile appliance.
You can also get microwaves as part of kitchen appliance bundles or kitchen appliance packages.
Tankless Water Heater
Ever wasted time in your kitchen waiting for the hot water to finally make its way from your hot water heater to your kitchen sink? It can prove an annoying experience. It’s also not great for water conservation, since all of that cool and lukewarm water just goes down the drain.
A tankless water heater can solve hot water problems in the kitchen. While it may take ten or fifteen seconds for the unit to heat the water, you can install the unit under your sink. That means almost no wait between turning the faucet on and the hot water arriving.
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Indoor Grill
Outdoor grilling is a tradition and even a craft carried out in backyards across the nation. What happens when the weather gets cold or it’s raining in sheets? Grilling outdoors becomes problematic, if not impossible.
That doesn’t mean you must give up on all the benefits of grilling. An indoor grill won’t quite replicate an outdoor barbeque, as there’s no smoke or charring.
Still, indoor grills have their own benefits. For one, they typically direct fat and grease off the cooking surface and into a tray. That means less fat and grease for your burgers and steaks.
You can even use them to sear veggies or even fruit if you’re adventurous. Like paninis? You can use an indoor grill to heat them to perfection.
Mixer
If you like baked goods and — let’s face it — almost everyone does, you’ll need a mixer in kitchen. Mixers come in two main flavors.
The more common option is your basic handheld mixer. Those are the ones with the two detachable beaters. These mixers work best for tasks like mixing up some cookie dough or a box of cake batter, whipping eggs, or whisking together a salad dressing.
The main advantage of these mixers is that they don’t take up a lot of room, making them ideal for small homes and apartments. The disadvantage is that they often lack the power for heavy-duty mixing jobs.
The other main option is a stand mixer. Your basic stand mixer typically comes with one or more metal bowls that sit in place on the mixer base. They come with a variety of attachments, such as a dough hook, flat beater, and a wire whip.
These mixers take up more space, but they bring the power you need for tasks like making bread or whipping up large batches of cookies.
Food Processor
A food processor overlaps a little with a blender, but it has some distinct features that can make one worth the investment. You can switch out the blade attachment of most food processors so that it can slide, grate, shred, and chop. This opens up options you simply don’t get with a blender.
Small Kitchen Appliances and You
There are countless small kitchen appliances out there vying for your attention. The problem is that most homes come with a finite amount of kitchen counter and storage space. That generally means you want appliances that can get several jobs done for you, handle several kinds of foods, or support your overall cooking efforts.
The appliances listed above generally meet those requirements, making any of them or several of them excellent options for inclusion in your kitchen.
Looking for more kitchen or cooking tips? Check out the posts in our Travel & Lifestyle section.
