Ask Lemmy

This tiny rice cooker:

https://www.choice.com.au/home-and-living/kitchen/benchtop-cooking/articles/mini-kmart-rice-cooker-review

I live alone, so it easily makes exactly two meals worth of cooked rice (tonight's and tomorrow's)

Or I can just make one whole meal, with rice, frozen veg, satay sauce, and peanuts, or any other variant of a one-pot rice cooker dish. Super simple operation, just one button .

Easy to store away when I'm not using it, which is rare. Only cost $15.

It was a Technology connections video that convinced me to buy one. I then bought another one, a 12-cup rice cooker, for meal prep.

For me it's our Tefal easy fry dual air fryer. It's changed our lives. We barely use the oven anymore.

A sharp knife. If that doesn't count, my knife sharpener then.

Sink with running water, not having to go pump water.

Gadget? My upright mandolin, I can cut stuff so perfectly and fast and zero risk of hurting myself. I’m great with a knife but it’s still a fantastic gadget. Appliance? My brevil toaster oven that does so much stuff and does it all well

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.

Garlic press. I love garlic

I like my bench scraper so much that when I moved house recently to a temporary place with minimal kitchen space, it was one of the things in my "kitchen bare essentials".

I mostly use it for scooping up stuff from a chopping board to transfer into bowls or a pan. It's also really good for baking, especially if you're working with a high hydration dough.

Mostly though, it just makes me feel good. I feel powerful when using it, even if the efficiency gains from it are probably quite minor.

I haven't seen this one mentioned yet: Chef's Press. They're interlocking stainless steel weights.

I was a bit nervous buying them as they aren't cheap and I wasn't sure how often I would use them but they've proved to be one of my most used kitchen gadgets. I use them a few times a week.

They're great for keeping steaks in contact with the pan when searing or keeping bacon from curling up. I use them to weigh things down in water for thawing or cooking in the sous vide cooker. They're good for pressing cheese or tofu.

They have built-in handles that make them easy to pick up, stack, and interlock.

They're dishwasher safe.

Perfectly designed for their job.

Toss up between the fine conical strainer and the microplane...

My hand made for me chef's knife.

Toaster oven.

Food processor. I have issues with my hands and the ability to slice, chop, and blend items with minimal hand use is just fantastic.

Fridge. I’m always using it.

electric kettle

Most loved? My knife. It's a good knife. It can dice strawberries, it can peel potatoes, it can cut tomatoes.

I am personaly not a fan of kitchen gadgets. Many of them are less versatile reinventions of knifes. Nothing wrong with using them, but I am not the target audience, me thinks. :)

Fuck... I just realized my potato peeler is likely one of these less versatile reinventions of a knive. sigh I got got.

$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 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.)

Dishwasher. I hate washing dishes.

My most used and favorite (non dishwasher or refrigerator) appliance would be our Cuisinart toaster oven / air fryer. Favorite gadget would be our hand press juicer. Don't use it that often but when we need to it makes quick work of it.

My wife would say her favorite appliance is her Profitec espresso machine and her prized kitchen gadget is the Staub cast iron enameled oval Dutch oven I got her for Christmas years ago

Zojirushi rice cooker Cuisinart mini food processor/chopper Nice carbon steel Japanese knives

Gotta be my cast iron pans.

But for the unexpected item I can no longer function without: it’s the boiled egg slicer.

Hard to pick the top one, so I'll list three in no particular order:

• My victoryknox kitchen knife
• My cast iron skillet
• My dishwasher

The best gadget are bowl scrapers. I use them more often than knifes.

My half-dmsized bread maker, hands down.

I just chuck in the Ingredients, turn it on every other night before bed, and there's fresh bread in the morning (or 1 day old bread the other days).

It costs basically nothing to use if you buy giant bags of flour, and its super easy. And if you want, you can get creative, but you don't have to.

Homemade bread is so much tastier and cheaper than bought bread. It stores rather poorly though.

Edit: technically I use my bread-slicer 4 times as often.

Tesco rice cooker. IYKYK

Big ol end grain cutting board

Salt pig

Espresso machine

Ninja blender and air fryer. Separate units 😅

My best kitchen thing is a small hand-cranked coffee grinder. I don't drink coffee any more, but I still use it for grinding things such as flaxseed.