Your kitchen is not complete without these items
Say wine, snacks or haute cuisine and the gourmands at online food magazine FavorFlav know where to drink, how to eat it and what to cook. This time our cheffies serve you: kitchen appliances you can't live without.
What plug-in items make cooking easier? Which kitchen gadgets come out of their cupboard the most? Without these five, we have no life.
What you like to eat determines which kitchen machines you want to have. Addicted to smoothies? Buy an expensive blender. Always burning or making mushy rice? Invest in a rice cooker. Do you have chef aspirations? Then the sous-vide machine is probably on every evening. Aside from those personal preferences: here are five appliances that everyone (yes, you too) can use to cook faster and easier.
Grill
A contact grill with ridges. Don't just use it to make the perfect toastie, but also to grill zucchini, eggplant, and other vegetables or to get perfect stripes or squares on a juicy burger without a barbecue. Of course, you can also heat a grill pan, start the barbecue, or use the grill of your oven, but a good contact grill works faster and cleaner. Plus those perfect toasties.
Stand mixer
Almost everyone starts their cooking career with an electric mixer, whether it's a cheap mixer from Hema or a retro mixer from your parents' kitchen cupboard. At some point, the cord is stiff, the beaters are bent (you shouldn't have stuck a spoon in there), and those mysterious stains, is that blood or fermented cake batter? Enter: the stand mixer. Easy, because hands-free. No more juggling when you want to add a thin stream of oil to your homemade mayonnaise, pouring hot sugar syrup into your Italian meringue, and no more frozen shoulder from whipping butter and sugar until white and creamy. Treat yourself to a real KitchenAid (heart) or keep an eye on Lidl and Aldi for a good fake.
Slow cooker
How much work is it really, a stew or a simmering curry? Almost none, but you do need to be home all day to stir the pot occasionally. The solution is the slow cooker. In the morning, all the ingredients go into the pot at the same time, and then both the pot and its owner go their own way. Cooking time up? Then the slow cooker switches to warming mode. Another advantage: the temperature of the slow cooker is lower than that of the smallest burner on a gas stove, so the boeuf bourguignon becomes even softer and the broth even more flavorful.
Kettle
Childish kitchen tool? I don't think so. Use it just like Jamie Oliver and turn on the kettle when you're going to cook. The water for boiling rice, pasta, or vegetables heats up faster. Need to blanch something quickly? Kettle. Letting couscous soak? Kettle. People with sturdy freezer bags and an expensive kettle that you can set to a temperature can also use it as sous-vide. Student tip: you can also boil eggs in it.
Hand blender
Not just for baby food or when your braces have just been tightened, because no hand blender stays in the cupboard longer than a week. When purchasing, pay attention to the length of the cord (where is the outlet and where is the stove?), choose a hand blender with a metal chopping foot (can withstand heat and doesn't discolor from beets or curry sauce), and take along a handy chopping bowl. If we take stock of an average week: guacamole, chopped nuts, salad dressing, zucchini soup, tuna sauce for vitello tonnato, banana-strawberry-coconut smoothie, cauliflower rice, and aioli. No, seriously, how can that be done without a hand blender?
