My Essential Kitchen Appliances
Food Processor - I honestly do not know how I lived before I had a food processor. It is used weekly for snacks, mains, sauces, dips, mashed potatoes...everything!
Why I love it?
Variety - I can use it to blend up beans or cooked foods, make pesto or rice cauliflower. It is needed for some dishes over a blender as a blender requires more liquid. I do not have a Vitamix so my blender is only really good for soups, dressings and smoothies. Some things you want to keep on the dryer side though, and that is why I love the processor. You can also make homemade nut and seed butters and energy balls and hummus.
Cleaning - it is quite easy to clean as there is only a blade and container. I find it very easy to get into all the tricky-to-clean spots and I am at low risk for cutting myself
Fav recipes - Chickpea cookie dough, kale pesto, sweet potato thyme mash or banana ice cream
Blender - I use this mostly for my salad dressings and tea lattes. It is a long time staple in everyone’s home for smoothies and they come in all shapes and sizes. I honestly do not use mine for smoothies that often, I use mine a lot for savoury recipes. In my case, I use a glass blender so I can blend hot soups and add garlic without worry of cracking or lingering smells. No one wants a garlic smoothie..
Why I love it?
Smoothness - a blender can breakdown a sauce better than a food processor and makes soups and dressings much more uniformly consistency.
Frothiness - blenders can also act as a frother and gets more air into the recipe. I use this to whip aquafaba for eggnog or make frothy lattes with coconut milk
Fav recipes - earl grey latte with coconut milk, collagen and ashwagandha or roasted tomato soup
Dehydrator - this is a new favourite of mine and is key to preserving fruits and veg. I use it when I have fruit going bad, or if I do a large haul from an orchard. It saves a ton of money on dried fruit and you know that that quality is great, with no added sugars or preservatives
Why I love it?
Long term storage - the dehydrator also allows me to dehydrate vegetables from the garden to have over the winter. I dehydrated beets, carrots, potato, garlic and onion and we make our own dehydrated meals while camping. Its also a great way to preserve the vegetables if they are about to go bad
Hearty snacks - since all of the water is take out of the product, the nutrient density in dehydrated foods is super high. I like to make flax based crackers that are very filling and good on the go. Dehydrated fruits are also very filling and full of fibre so they do not spike the blood sugar as much as some other hearty snacks like protein bars. Just be mindful that there is a higher sugar quantity in dehydrated fruits over fresh per volume so if you have blood sugar issues, be careful. On the flip side, dried fruit is a great way to fill glycogen stores for athletes and easy to store on long runs or hikes.
Fav recipes - dehydrated apple chips with cinnamon, dehydrated prune plums or flax and veggie crackers