Our Top 5 Essential Kitchen Tools For Healthy Eating
JAMES COLQUHOUN
The key to vitality and spring-in-your-step sparkling health is really very simple. It all starts with cooking wholesome, fresh and nutritious foods. That said, putting this into practice does not always seem so simple! In our time-poor society, cooking may feel like a mammoth task to pack into your busy schedule. Studies have shown declining trends in home cooking, with a lack of time cited as a major barrier to whipping out that apron.
Furthermore, roughly one-third of Americans claim they don’t know how to cook, even if they wanted to!
These statistics have worrying implications for the health of our nation. Lower levels of home cooking are strongly associated with a higher fast food intake. After all, if you’re not eating at home, what are you eating instead? However, ‘fast food’ isn’t always time-saving and convenient as it first seems - certainly not if you factor in travel, ordering time and the financial costs. Most importantly, though, life is altogether so much easier when you feel well and energized. Every whole foods kitchen can be easily equipped with the right tools to make your own healthy ‘fast food’. Here’s our
Top 5 Essential Kitchen Tools To Entice You Into Cooking Your Way To Vibrant Health!
#1 BUY A BRILLIANT BLENDER
If you’re feeding a family and can utilize some more advanced features such as flour milling, we recommend a high-powered,multifunctional option such as a Vitamix.
#2 WHY A JUICER IS TOTALLY JUSTIFIED
A daily juice is your 15 minutes nutrient express to vibrant health. It delivers vitalizing nutrients into each cell and primes your body to work well for the day. With roughly 90% of Americans not eating enough fruit and veg, juicing is one of the easiest ways to boost your intake.Juicing literally extracts the nutrients from your produce and concentrates these vitamins and minerals into one convenient glass. We highly recommend a good quality, cold pressed model and personally use the Hurom Juicer. The Hurom gently extracts maximum nutrients, whilst maintaining the enzyme quality of your juice.
This means that you are getting a high-yield, nutritious juice that can last in the fridge for up to 24 hours. This saves the need to prepare a juice fresh daily and cuts down time in the kitchen! A juicer requires no cooking skills and is something anyone can use, no matter how confident you are in the kitchen. The easy clean system of the Hurom makes tidying up no-fuss and is a great time-saving additional feature.
#3 PREP WITH A FOOD PROCESSOR
If you’re not too confident with your knife skills, or simply don’t enjoy labouring over the chopping board, a food processor will change your life! This appliance is like having your own personal sous chef to prep your food. It will revolutionize your approach to cooking and save you so much time in making healthy meals.
A good quality food processor will slice, shred, chop or puree just about any food you can think of. Our favourite food processors by Cuisinart will shred cheese, chop your fruit and veggies, whizz up bread crumbs, puree baby food, make nut milk and even knead your dough. Salads and stir-frys are unbelievably quick and easy when you take out chopping time! Simply wash your produce, remove unwanted skins and seeds and let your Food Processor take care of the rest.
#4 GET SHARP WITH A KNIFE SET
If you already cook on a regular basis, you will understand the frustration of using a blunt, inefficient knife. When your blades are poor quality, the knife edge slips easily (dangerously close to fingers!), bruises fresh produce, and inhibits how fast you can cut up your food. By contrast, when you have a sharp, high-quality knife set at your fingertips, cooking becomes faster, more convenient and a whole lot less stressful!
So what do we use? Our chef friends have always recommended good quality knives that last, and one of the best out there come from Wustof. Take a look at their 12 piece starter knife set here. You’ll never squish a tomato again!
#5 LEARN SOME SPIRALIZER SKILLS
This is one handy kitchen tool that the kids will absolutely LOVE! (The big kids will enjoy it too.) Spiralizers transform basic vegetables into fantastic, squiggly spirals that make healthy spaghetti or noodle substitutes. Also, the spirals look simply stunning in salads and stir-frys!Spiralizers are cheap, easy to use and make a brilliant asset build your veggie intake. Most models are very safe and can be used as a kitchen activity the little ones will adore.
Large, stand-alone models typically come with various attachments to make ‘spirals’ of different shapes and sizes. They are ideal for making larger meals to feed a crowd in a hurry. Alternatively, you can also purchase smaller, handheld spiralizers. These are better suited for making a small quantity but may only have one ‘spiral’ design option. The Food Matters team love using a handheld one just like this one from Kitchen Active, but at home, we like to use the Paderno Tri-Blade World Cuisine Tabletop Spiralizer. It gives you three options for your veggie noodles and it’s lots of fun to do with the kids.
These are just some of the kitchen appliances and gadgets that make healthy eating much more fun so if you’re looking for some inspiration for healthy eating, start with updating your kitchen tools. It certainly makes a difference!
What Is Your Favorite Kitchen Gadget?
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James Colquhoun is the filmmaker behind Food Matters, Hungry For Change, and Transcendence Seasons 1 & 2 and founder of Food Matters and FMTV. Along with Laurentine ten Bosch, James founded the Food Matters community following the release of the 2008 documentary, giving people the tools (films, books, articles, and guided programs) to take charge of their own health. From here, FMTV was born! It was designed as a place where you can access vital information by watching all of your favorite inspiring documentaries, expert interviews, & recipe videos in one place, and in early 2020 FMTV found it's new home on Gaia.