Nowadays, no one has the time to spend hours working in the kitchens, laboriously preparing food for their loved ones. Everything is dealt with urgency and haste these days, even cooking and baking. You might love to cook and prepare your family’s favourite food in the kitchen, but there are tons of appliances and gadgets that can make your job easier and faster. That’s, why this top 10 appliances modern kitchens need guide, will be important to choosing the best ones to buy.
Modern kitchen appliances are designed to be sleek, lightweight and fast; they are also supposed to save your time, effort and space. Blenders, mixers, processors, ovens – these appliances have been a part of our kitchens for decades, but they are even speedier and more powerful now. Besides, there are other appliances we simply can’t live without in the kitchen, and you can use them to become extremely efficient.
Read on if you want to know about the ten most important appliances that we need in our kitchen these days.
- A Food Processor
A simple food processor is going to save you hours in the kitchen finely chopping your vegetables and herbs. They’re perfect for chopping your onions without bringing tears to your eyes, mincing garlic and ginger without stinking up your hands, and even fruits for your salad.
With most food processors, you can change the setting of the attachment that comes with your appliance to get minced or chopped vegetables, cut cucumbers and carrots into juliennes, or get finely grated cheese. Ingredients for salads and stir-fries are going to take minutes to prepare instead of hours; these processors are also easy to wash under running water and take up very little space on your kitchen counters.
- An Air Fryer
Even a few years ago, we all used a pan or a skillet for frying. Everything that came out of or parent’s and grandparent’s skillet required a lot of oil and were extremely unhealthy. However, that’s no reason to stop eating French fries, homemade fried chickens and vegetable pakoras, not if you have an air fryer in your kitchen.
With air fryers, anything you put inside these appliances is deep-fried with the help of hot air circulating inside the enclosed drawer, without the need for air. It works just like a convection oven, but food fried inside an air fryer comes out with a crispy outside layer, as if you’ve fried them in oil. You can get the taste of deep-fried chicken, onion rings or French fries without any need for oil; you can add a teaspoon oil in your frying if you want the extra texture and taste, but it’s not necessary.
- A Cold Press Juicer/Regular Juicer
You might feel the need for a juicer in your kitchen if you love to drink freshly squeezed juice every morning with breakfast. Although you can use your blender to make juice, you can only get the freshest juice from your favorite fruits from a juicer.
There’s a difference between a regular juicer and a cold press juicer; the latter is the healthier option. A cold press juicer takes longer to eradicate juice from any kind of fruit, but what you get is the freshest and the healthiest fruit extract, minus the pulp. All the nutrition stays inside the juice that you drink, instead of getting washed away with the pulp. If you use a regular juicer or a blender for the same reason, the juice that is extracted from the fruits gets heated in the process and all the nutrition is ruined. Only with a cold press juicer, which works slowly and extracts the maximum amount of juice from a fruit.
- A Steam Oven
Cooking with steam is considered to be one of the best ways to cook these days, instead of the traditional ways with heat or fire. Cooking in steam over keeps all the nutrition sealed inside the food, as well as the original flavor of your ingredients. Besides, steam ovens are faster than convection ovens or stoves and are fast becoming popular with young couples and working parents.
Steam ovens look just like a microwave oven or an electric oven, and they take up just as much space. You simply need to fill up the oven reservoir with water that is turned into steam by the oven, which is circulated to cook the food you put inside. Whatever you cook in a steam oven keeps all the vitamins and minerals intact from the ingredients you are using, and are also more delicious. You can cook with little or no oil in a steam oven, but the food comes out tastier than if boiled.
- A Coffee Maker
Coffee makers have become just as important as ovens or stoves in a kitchen, if not more. Even people who don’t cook in their kitchen at all has a state-of-the-art coffee maker to start their day. With the right coffee maker, you won’t have to stop at your favorite café on your way to work, because your coffee will be ready at home whenever you want a cup of it.
There are a number of coffee makers available in the market based on how you like your coffee: a drip coffee machine, a percolator, an espresso maker, a single- or a double-cup machine. There are coffee machines for the single person (one to two cups per slot and espresso) and for the whole family (different types of coffee in large batches). The more professional-looking coffee makers are quite expensive, but you can use them to not just make espresso, but also cappuccino, café au lait, and even hot chocolate. Most importantly, all modern kitchens need a good coffee maker for the whole family.
- A Smart Refrigerator
Even the smartest refrigerators in the world have one function: to keep your food cold and fresh. Smart refrigerators also do the same, but you get a few advanced features with them, such as a notification on your phone when someone leaves the door open, the power to control the temperature of your fridge with an app, notification when the fridge malfunctions or when the temperature has been changed, etc.
Some smart refrigerators can also be controlled with your voice, via Alexa; you can use your voice to change the temperature of your refrigerator. Although these features are not exactly something crucial for your cooking, it can be a novelty to have a smart refrigerator in your kitchen.
- A Microwave Oven
Contrary to popular belief, a microwave oven is not just to heat up your leftover food but can be used for some other activities in the kitchen. These days, most microwave ovens come with multiple features and modes, and you can use it to make curries, bake cupcakes and cookies, make lasagnas, grill chicken and vegetables, make omelets and soups, and many other recipes.
Microwave ovens are also used for thawing meat, fish and other frozen food straight out of the freezer when you don’t have a lot of time on your hands. If you use a microwave oven to cook anything, most of the nutrition stays inside the dish as opposed to cooking them on the stove. You don’t need as much oil when cooking inside one of these ovens, especially if you are trying an Indian or Asian cuisine.
If you own a smart microwave oven, you can control it with your voice instead of having to push a lot of buttons, as well.
- A Dishwasher/Smart Dishwasher
If you love cooking or if you cook regularly, you can be quite lost without a good dishwasher to help you clean up. With a dishwasher installed into your kitchen, you won’t have to use too much elbow grease to keep your pots and pans clean and sparkling.
With a smart dishwasher, you can control the whole appliance with your smartphone. By downloading the appropriate app, you can turn on (and turn off) your dishwater from a distance, lock it up so that your young children or pets can’t get their hands inside and get alerts when the dishwasher is low on detergent. Besides, smart dishwashers have sensors that can sense the amount of dirt, food and grimes on the plates and bowls inside, and adjust the water spray according to them.
- A Blender
These days, blenders are completely different than what they were used to be. With some of the strong and versatile ones, you don’t have to stop at making your favorite juices and drinks. With the modern, powerful blenders, you can even make hot soup, smoothies, drinks with crushed ice, sauces and dips. These blenders can also be used in the grating, finely chopping vegetables, or blending herbs, spices, ginger and garlic for your recipes.
- An Instant Pot/Slow Cooker/Multi-Cooker
An instant pot is actually completely the opposite of a slow cooker! While the instant pot is a modernized pressure cooker that helps you to cook faster, the slow cooker takes hours to get a simple recipe down. However, both appliances are extremely safe and use very little electricity; they are also a great help in areas where you don’t have access to cooking gas.
With slow cookers, you can gather all your ingredients inside the appliance before you leave for work, and come home to a hot, cooked meal. On the other hand, instant pots can get done in minutes where it would have taken a person-hours to finish cooking.
These modern appliances won’t make your life easier in the kitchen, our lives are completely impossible without them. Having these in your kitchen, whether you cook regularly or occasionally, is going to save you a lot of space and effort, as well as the time you can spend with your family and loved ones.
