How many articles exist on the internet telling busy people how they can work 12 hour days, and still get enough exercise, enough sleep, see their friends, and eat well? I haven’t actually Googled it, but they certainly seem to be in their millions. However, for most of us, trying to find that work-life balance is hard enough, so what if we live on coffee and pop tarts.
Whether you are frantically busy, or just really enjoy not having to fluff around in the kitchen longer than you need to, there are so many gadgets on the market that make your life easier. While our Great-great grandparents would marvel at our electric refrigerators, we take them completely for granted (until the power goes off without us knowing). Yet to that we can also add our slow cookers, microwaves, stick blenders, food processors, deep fryers, air fryers, and Instapots.
Picking Your Cooking Method
Do you need them all? Probably not. So, which are going to work best for your lifestyle? Strangely, that is going to depend not only on what your lifestyle is like but also what sort of foods you prefer to consume and what your climate is like.
Slow cookers are fantastic, but if you live on fresh salads, they may not be your best bet. However, an Instapot pressure cooker may be just the thing to add a protein boost in the form of freshly cooked beans or chickpeas to your salad. While an air fryer can’t be beaten for keeping hungry teens fed at an all-night gaming LAN party.
Why Does Cooking Method Matter?
Other than choosing a method that is going to make your life easier, certain foods respond better to different methods. For example, a 2012 study found that cooking beans using a pressure cooker (Instapot) resulted in barlotto bean, chickpea, faba bean, and white kidney beans had higher levels of resistant starch and lower levels of slowly digestible starch than if they had been cooked in the normal stovetop method. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3550881/ Resistant starch is essentially fiber, so it helps digestion. However, onions cooked by the same pressure cooker method have less of insoluble dietary fiber components.
So, while you may remember being served overcooked cabbage or gray broccoli, it is not just the length of time that can determine the nutritional content of your food. Most people understand that deep-frying food, although delicious, isn’t really going to improve your health – not even if you’re using coconut oil. However, that doesn’t mean that it can’t become an occasional treat food… but the bigger question is do you really need your own fryer, or are you better off making it a true treat food that you only have when you pick it up.
Best Appliances To Get
Let’s look at your lifestyle and ask a few questions to help you work out which small cooking appliance would improve your life the most.
- Do you like to prep food?
- Do you particularly care what it looks or tastes like?
- Do you have a horde to feed or just one or two people?
- Do you have time to cook?
- Are you the only person making meals (most of the time)?
- Do you have a preference for plain and simple food, or do you go more gourmet?
- Are you health conscious?
- Do you like to try new recipes or stick with old favorites?
There is no right or wrong answer here, it’s just to help you think about your own personal habits.
Slow Cooker
These are good if you are pretty organized or like to do meal preparation ahead of time. If you search online, you’ll find several blogs from moms that do a month’s worth of meal prep on Sunday each month, put everything in the freezer, then each morning pop a meal into the slow cooker. By the time they’re home the meal is pretty complete. You can also use them for making fresh porridge overnight ready for breakfast when you wake up.
If you are a planner, these can be great, but as you need to think at least 4 hours, often up to 12 hours, ahead if you like to live your meal planning a little more on the edge these probably aren’t for you. If you get one to try it out and discover that it just doesn’t get the use, bear in mind that it actually makes an excellent mulled cider or mulled wine next time you have a Halloween party.
Instantpot Pressure Cooker
It is surprising that pressure cookers have gotten a bit of a bad rap from years gone past. They can be a little scary looking, but modern variations are safe and easy to use. So why would you want to? Well, the main reason is that they cut the cooking time of any meal down by at least half.
Anything that you would normally cook in a microwave, conventional oven or even slow cooker, can be done in an Instapot. This means that you can meal prep ahead of time if you want, or you can just throw together a meal when you get home and have it ready while you relax.
Looking at the health aspect of this method, a study in 2012 (see here) looking at different cooking methods found that cooking your humble garden pea in an Instapot reduced the level of anti-nutrients they contain. This means that the natural vitamins and minerals contained in a pea become easier for the body to access if they are cooked using a pressure cooker rather than boiled on the stove or in the microwave.
Microwave
While these caused an exceptional buzz when they finally came onto the domestic market, they are now a commonplace item found in most kitchens. However, after the initial thrill, most people tend to use their microwave for reheating leftovers (or cups of coffee) or for defrosting frozen meals or meat.
Microwaves certainly make life easier, but the quality of food that they cook can be dubious. However, if you have a few instant TV dinners in the freezer then those nights you come home unprepared, unable to get the energy to so much as the order in, then your microwave will come to your rescue.