Appliances that save you time in the kitchen

Life is busy with all that living entails. So most of us simply don’t have the time to spend hours in the kitchen. However, this doesn’t mean you have to settle for unhealthy take-out every night or bland, hastily put together dinners. Choose between these appliances that save you time in the kitchen, while still preparing tasty, healthy meals. 

Steamer

Few cooking methods can compare to the speed and efficiency of steaming. With either a standalone steamer, or a microwave steamer, you can cook food in mere minutes. It preserves nutrients and requires no oil or butter – keeping your kilojoule intake down.

If you want the speed that steaming offers, but still want the taste that a roast or stir-fry gives, pre-cook your ingredients by steaming, then continue the last few minutes of your cooking with a frying pan or oven  to get the flavour you want.

Slow cooker

Despite what the name implies, a slow cooker is a real time-saver. Before you leave for work, simply chop up your ingredients and throw them in the cooker. Then forget about dinner and go about your day, until you return, hours later, to the rich, fragrant aroma of a ready-prepared meal.

Pressure cooker

Imagine making a beef stew in 15 minutes. A pressure cooker is a healthy, delicious way to cut cooking time by up to three quarters. Without going into all the physics of it, the high pressure of the cooker translates into a much higher cooking temperature than would otherwise be possible.

Freezer

One of the most useful appliances to keep cooking time down isn’t cookware at all, but the freezer. When you cook, prepare double, or even triple portions. Freeze and defrost at your convenience.

It’s not only whole meals you can freeze, but ingredients as well. Rather than cooking legumes like lentils and chickpeas anew each time you want to use them, cool the whole batch and freeze what you don’t use in packaged portions. This also applies to rice. Then later when you’re cooking, you have ready-prepared ingredients, which is a real time saver.

With the right tools and cookware, you can prepare a wholesome meal for you and your family in minutes. So there’s really no need to rely on take-out any longer.