Cooking is not always easy or fun. Want to reduce the pain of cooking? Some tools can make cooking so much easier, you wouldn’t want to leave your kitchen.
You are watching an episode of your favorite cooking show and you see those amateur chefs using groundbreaking kitchen technology, which makes cooking look exciting. You look up for such a tool online and find out you absolutely can’t afford them. Feeling disappointed, you give up on homemade food.
This is quite a common scenario. You want to enjoy cooking but hate having to do things like cutting vegetables or grinding pastes. Watching fancy chefs with three sous-chefs or a variety of expensive tools can make cooking look easy, which often isn’t true.
If you want to enjoy cooking, you need affordable, useful tools. Here are a few tools you can buy to help revive your passion for cooking.
A Slicer
Professional chefs make slicing look like a piece of cake. For most of us, mere humans, slicing is not fun or easy. People often say that slicing gets accurate and easier with practice.
What if you hate it and avoid it at all costs? What you need is an affordable slicer.
You will find different types of slicers in the market, which are cheaper than buying a food processor. You can get a good quality mandoline slicer under $50-60, which will help you cut vegetables with ease.
However, if you hate cutting meat, go with a meat slicer. This versatile tool can cut meats, vegetables, etc. Doing your research will help you find a quality slicer under $100.
A Cast-Iron Skillet
There are some cooking tools every home cook should have. Perhaps no cookware is more essential or versatile than a cast-iron skillet. There are so many reasons why every home chef should get this classic tool.
First of all, it gives you an equal heat zone all across its surface. It will prevent you from getting undercooked food.
Nonstick cookware is made of Teflon which releases toxin when you cook on high heat. Your cast-iron skillet is naturally nonstick and safe to use at any temperature. It will get extremely hot and stay hot for a long time.
Your cast-iron skillet is not only cheap, but it will also last you forever if you take good care of it.
Food Thermometer
Checking whether food like vegetable has cooked well is as simple as popping a piece into your mouth. But, it is not the same for all food.
Having a food thermometer you are not only preventing undercooking of food but also overcooking. It is generally unsafe to undercook meat, eggs, seafood, casseroles, and especially poultry, it can become a huge health hazard. Undercooked meat is extremely unsafe and can give you a terrible food poisoning.
A food thermometer is an incredibly useful gadget if you want to make perfectly cooked dishes. For example, you can get the right doneness of meat. By knowing the temperature of your food at the present state, you can figure out whether it has cooked evenly or not.
Hand Mixer
If you have ever seen the famous chef Nigella Lawson make any dessert, you will find that she always uses a large stand mixer. It makes mixing dough, beating eggs, mixing anythings on high-speed a piece of cake. Alas, they are expensive!
However, one cheaper option that can help you get the mixing done quicker than your whisk, spatula, or hand, is a hand mixer. You can get a good quality hand mixer under $40.
This tool is so useful and versatile, you can get a lot done with it, especially when making desserts. You can beat eggs, thicken cream, make mayo and even mix the dough. A single hand mixer can make cooking less tedious and more enjoyable.
Cutting Tools
Whether you get a slicer or not, every house needs some kind of classic cutting tools. Having one good all-purpose knife is extremely important. But perhaps more important than a good knife is owning a knife sharpener.
If you already hate cutting, a blunt knife will make it ten times worse. Don’t throw away your knife every time it goes blunt, buy a knife sharpener instead. You can get one in under $20 and it is a great investment, as it means you can keep one good knife for a long time.
A proper cutting board is a must-have as it gives you an easy-to-clean even surface for working. Try getting a large one to give yourself more working space.
Silicone Baking Mat
Most people use a cutting board to roll and knead the dough. However, your average cutting board is not large enough for working with large dough, particularly when making bread, pizza, etc.
If you want to enjoy baking, having a silicone pastry mat is a necessity. You will find silicone mats as cheap as under twenty dollars that are nonslip, nonstick, quite large with measurement marks on them.
The measurement gives you the ideal sizes to roll out your dough for pizza, bread, pies, etc. Some also come with a measurement for cutting dough evenly. They are easy to use, clean, and don’t take up much space. It makes rolling the dough so easy, you won’t shy away from baking.
Kitchen Scale
People often think owning a kitchen scale is unnecessary. It takes up space and we usually know the weight of the food we buy from the label on the package of the food. A kitchen scale is way more useful and versatile than that.
Dieters who are trying to get the right amount of nutrition understands the necessity of knowing the right weight of the food. Especially if you are into baking, which always needs the accurate measurement of ingredients, this tool is essential.
Kitchen scales are cheap, but be careful when buying one. If you get one that is too cheap, it may not last long. You can easily find a good quality kitchen scale for under $25.
Final Thoughts
Cooking is fun but often needs attention to detail. If you love cooking but find the preparation work tedious and time-consuming, you don’t need to quit cooking, you just need the right tools. Not all cooking tools that make cooking easy are expensive.
The cheap tool mentioned here is worth the money you spend on them. Using these will make cooking easier, fun, and more satisfying. At the end of the day, good cooking is about dedication. These tools simply make being dedicated to cooking a lot easier.
I’m a 20-something stay-at-home mother and wife. I have an amazing husband, a beautiful daughter, two loving dogs, and a lazy cat. I wouldn’t change my life for anything! I love to read, listen to music, cook and blog!
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