Maintaining a healthy diet is mostly about what you eat. However, how you prepare your food also plays a role. Some kitchen gadgets cut fat from your diet. Others encourage you to eat more fresh fruits, veggies, and herbs.
If you want the cooking accessories in your apartment to promote healthy eating, here are a few that deserve space in your kitchen.
Oil Mister
Cooking oils protect cookware, prevent food from charring, and add flavor. They are a vital component to many a dish. Used in moderation, most cooking oils are not terribly unhealthy. But the easy-pour tops that most containers have make it far too easy to use more than necessary. An oil mister enables you to cover an entire pan or other surface with cooking oil while using only a fraction of the oil you would pour from a bottle. In essence, it helps you cut fat from your diet without making a conscious effort to do so.
If you like this concept, you may also consider a portion control salad dressing lid.
Salad Spinner
A few years ago, the salad spinner was a novelty item found in few kitchens. Today, it’s a kitchen essential for home cooks who prepare salads with any regularity. Once you discover how quickly and easily a salad spinner helps you dry those leafy greens, it’s hard to turn back. Salad spinners are also good for spinning excess water out of pasta, rinsing and draining berries and beans, washing broccoli, and a handful of savvy clothes-cleaning tasks.
Food Processor
A food processor enables healthy eating by making salad chopping, fruit pureeing, and soup preparation speedy and hassle-free. If your kitchen isn’t already equipped with a functioning food processor, change that ASAP.
Juicer
Juicers are more accessible today than they were ten years ago, but they’re still expensive. If you buy fresh-squeezed juice regularly, however, the costly up-front investment of a juicer can pay for itself in just months. With a juicer in your kitchen, you also have the advantage of knowing exactly what’s in your juice. You’ll discover you really can juice just about anything, and find it easy to incorporate more easy-to-digest liquid nutrients into your diet.
Herb Mill
Chopping herbs can be tedious, especially when following a recipe that calls for a lot of them. Herbs processed through the mill are the perfect size for most dishes. You may also find you buy and use fresh herbs more frequently when you don’t have to bear the responsibility of chopping them yourself.
Tea Infuser
Almost everyone prefers loose-leaf tea to bagged tea. It’s generally of a higher quality, and almost always offers more nutritional benefits. But fishing those leaves out of your mug once your tea has steeped long enough? Now that’s no fun. With a tea infuser, you can get the best of both worlds: Healthy, flavorful tea leaves without the mess.
Garlic Press
Garlic is nutritious, heart healthy, and boosts the immune system. Most of us like garlic, but sometimes the thought of dicing it keeps us from adding it to a dish. With a garlic press, you can spare yourself the annoying task of dicing it and keep your fingers from absorbing garlicky acids. Evenly crushing garlic also helps you get the most from what you cook with. All you have to do is put a clove in the press and squeeze the handles together, as many times as there are cloves to crush.
Not only can healthy cooking taste great, with the right kitchen gadgets it can also be easy and fun. Go on a kitchen shopping spree or be on the lookout for these helpful food prep tools, and observe how your kitchen habits change once you have them.
What are your favorite kitchen gadgets?
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View All Posts by Jason Ernst