In my opinion, the best kitchen tools are the ones that make it easier for me to make and eat healthy foods.
I’ve always been a minimalist and enjoyed not having a lot of stuff. But after moving from one side of the country to the other 6 times now, Phil and I have become super-minimalists.
For something to have a place in my kitchen, it has to get used a lot, and it has to have a real purpose. I’m much more interested in quality than quantity.
I think of these tools as investments in my nutrition and health, so it’s all about the value to a healthy eating plan for me. Most tools don’t make food healthier, but they make it easier for me to prepare healthy foods so that I eat more of them.
1 – Good Knives
One of the absolute best kitchen tools I have is a good set of knives. They make such a huge difference in the speed and control I have in food prep. I’m always reminded of that when I travel and have to use cheap and/or dull knives.
Calphalon is one of the best value on some really high quality knives. If you take care of them properly, and use them on a wood or bamboo cutting board, they’ll last for a really long time. If you’re short on cash, just buy a paring knife and a chef’s knife – they’re much more useful than a full set of cheap knives.
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2 – Sprouting Jars
Sprouts (like alfalfa or clover) are an excellent part of a healthy eating plan, and making your own at home gets you the best nutrition. Phil and I used mason jars for sprouting for a long time. Eventually, we realized that the sprouts we made in our sprouting jar (we use an Easy Sprout) were better quality because they had better drainage and airflow. They also make it a lot easier to rinse, so we’re more likely to do it when we’re supposed to.
The Easy Sprouters only cost $15, and if you compare that to the cost of buying sprouts from the grocery store it’s well worth it. I now have 3 sprouters, so that we can keep batches going continuously. Go to sprouting.com to find the Easy Sprouter, and you can order sprouting seeds there as well.
3 – Blender
A blender serves a lot of functions in my kitchen, and that makes it really worth the cost (not that they cost much). I use it to make daily green smoothies, and I pile a ton of fresh sprouts and/or greens (lettuce, kale, chard, etc) in there. I get a lot more greens in our smoothies than we would eat in a salad.
Before I had a food processor, I also used my blender to make dips and bean spreads. You can also use it to grind nuts and seeds. I usually do flax, but also if I want to make a sunflower seed cheese, ground almonds for cookies, or grind rolled oats into flour.
So those are just three of my best kitchen tools – the ones that have a lot more value to me than their price tags.
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