Meal Prep Made Easy: Must-Have Kitchen Gadgets - Ask a Nutritionist

Transcript:

BRANDY: Hello and welcome to Dishing Up Nutrition's midweek segment called “Ask a Nutritionist”. My name is Brandy Buro. I'm a Licensed and Registered Dietitian here at Nutritional Weight & Wellness. On today's show, I'll be answering a question we received from one of our Dishing Up Nutrition listeners.

So today's question is, what are the best small appliances or kitchen tools to help make healthy meal prep easier and quicker? Well, this is the million dollar question, because I think all of us are trying to figure out how to make healthy eating fast and easy, because when you are trying to eat real, whole foods, because that's the best thing for your health, cooking is definitely going to be part of that equation.

So I'm going to share with you a few kitchen tools and appliances that I consider essentials in my kitchen, but they've also helped make cooking just a lot more efficient and easy for me. And just to give you a little bit of a background, I am somebody who really enjoys the process of cooking, but I don't always have the luxury of preparing an elaborate meal every night.

You know, I have a full time job and a pretty active life outside of work. So that means I don't have time to cook from scratch every day. But there was a time when my job was actually cooking. I was a personal chef for a while that cooked healthy meals for families. So I'm bringing some experience about how to prepare a lot of good tasting, healthy food under a time crunch.

So I just want to share a few things that I learned during that time that maybe you can apply in your own kitchen as well. So the first few tools that I want to mention are tools that do not require a lot of skill to use, but they do make preparing a recipe a lot easier, especially when it comes to some of those more tedious tasks of cooking.

Invite an extra set of hands in the kitchen if possible

I think beginner cooks and even children could use a lot of the tools that I'm going to suggest to you. And I think the best way to save time is invite an extra set of hands in the kitchen to help you prepare some of the ingredients. So do not take this task on all by yourself if you don't have to.

Kitchen tool #1: garlic press

Let's talk about what some of these kitchen tools are. The first thing I want to mention is a garlic press. If you don't already have a garlic press, I really think it's time you do. They're pretty inexpensive, they don't take up a lot of space, and it makes mincing garlic pretty effortless. This is going to be one of the most valuable tools in your kitchen. For me, most recipes that I make start with garlic. So I am always needing to mince garlic and it's one of my least favorite tasks, but with the garlic press, it's pretty easy.

And I think this is a really clever way to get your kids involved in meal prep. This is actually something that I will assign to my partner if he's just standing around in the kitchen when I'm cooking. But it is such a big help. I'll mince a few extra heads of garlic, save it in a glass jar. I'm definitely going to use that sometime later in the week. So get a garlic press. You won't regret it.

#2: zester or microplane

The next tool I want to mention is a zester or some people refer to it as a microplane. Microplane is a recognizable brand that makes zesters or basically it's a grater that grades food very, very fine. So this is another handheld tool that's going to fit in your utensil drawer pretty easily, also very inexpensive. I use my zester all the time to mince things like ginger. I'll even use it for garlic sometimes, but I'll also use it to zest citrus that I'll throw in dressings or marinades.

I'll also use it to grate some Parmesan cheese to use on top of soups or roasted vegetables. You can even use it to grate spices like cinnamon and nutmeg. So there's a lot of different uses for this, but it's a very small kitchen tool that can help you infuse a ton of flavor into your recipes without relying on a ton of salt or a ton of sugar.

#3: citrus juicer

Another handheld kitchen tool that I love is a citrus juicer. Something that I use several times a week, it's the handheld juicer that I use, not one of those electric ones. And I like this because it just fits in my utensil drawer. It doesn't take up a lot of space.

And the one that I have is large enough to juice lemons, limes, and small oranges. So there's a little more versatility there, but it just makes juicing citrus to use in marinades and salad dressings and sauces just really fast and easy. And again, it's simple to use. So anybody could help you do this.

#4: salad spinner

My next tool is a salad spinner. Just thinking of salads and all those salad dressings I'm making, maybe you've picked up that I eat quite a few salads. They're just one of my favorite meals that's fast and easy to prepare. It's also a great way for me to meet my vegetable goal for the day. So I find myself using my salad spinner quite a bit throughout the week to wash my fresh greens, to rinse and wash my fresh herbs.

And I can dry them really quickly using the salad spinner versus waiting for them to air dry. So my salad spinner is actually collapsible. So it just kind of folds down into a flat little shape that stores really easily in my cupboards. I've had it for over a decade. It's something that's going to last, but it's kind of a workhorse of the kitchen because I'm constantly using it.

#5: food chopper

So the last little handheld tool that I want to mention is a food chopper. So this is basically a really small kitchen appliance that can help you chop ingredients really quickly without using a knife. So if you haven't seen one of these, I just want to describe it for you. The ones that I like are manually operated, so you don't need an outlet, which I love, and basically it's where you place the food that you want to chop like an onion or some carrots in the container that it comes with. And the lid for that has a blade attached.

So, you push down on the top, there's kind of a button on the top, that you push down, the blade pushes into the food, and that blade is kind of constantly rotating until the food is chopped. There are some electric versions of this as well, but like the manually operated version.

It's a really great option for chopping onions, carrots, celery, which is basically the base of any good recipe, especially soups. You could also use this to make a quick fresh salsa or pico de gallo. Or I could see it working well to chop up nuts to top your salads or your yogurt.

But again, a wonderful way to get more people involved in your meal prep, especially kids. But I think it would also work really well for folks who are maybe dealing with arthritis or maybe who are recovering from an injury where they don't have full use of both hands, but they still need to cook for themselves. So just a great option to get more people involved and maybe save a little time in the process.

So we have just reviewed some of my favorite kitchen tools that I consider essential and have helped me save a lot of time with some of the more tedious tasks of cooking. But I think these tools are also easy enough that even a new cook or a kid could use them.

So I hope you got a few new ideas to use in your own kitchen. We need to take a quick break, but when I get back, I'm going to share some kitchen appliances that have been big game changers for me in my meal prep, but I'll also point out a few kitchen staples that you absolutely need in your kitchen to make meal prep as painless as possible.

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Welcome back to “Ask a Nutritionist”. Today I am talking about kitchen tools and appliances that can help save you time in the kitchen or at least make the process a little easier on you. So I just reviewed a few of my favorite handheld tools. Now I want to talk about some kitchen appliances that I think are worth the investment.

Kitchen appliance #1: blender

So the first on my list is a blender. A high quality, high power blender, I would say is one of the more underutilized kitchen appliances out there. It's absolutely a must have if you are making smoothies. But I think smoothies are actually one of the fastest ways of making a well-balanced meal or a snack.

In just five minutes, you could put together a really great tasting breakfast and maybe make extra while you're at it so that you've got breakfast ready the next day or a couple snacks already made. So that could be a little bit of a time saver right there. But I think blenders, beyond smoothies, can be really useful to make sauces, soups, dips, salad dressings.

Most recently, I just made a quick chimichurri sauce by combining some fresh herbs, a little bit of garlic, olive oil, a little lemon juice. And that made a delicious sauce that I just put over plain grilled chicken. So a boring chicken breast was just transformed by this really fast chimichurri sauce that I made in like two minutes in my blender.

I've also made a really good vegetable dip. I'm just using some olives and some seasonings. You can also make your own hummus in the blender; much cheaper to make your own hummus versus store bought, and you can actually control the quality of ingredients when you make your own so you can have a lot of fun with making different dips with your blender.

I will say that it pays to get a high quality blender, a high powered blender that is truly going to blend all of your ingredients until they're smooth. Trust me. I have had blenders that just cannot handle blending frozen fruit or I'll get big pieces of spinach in my smoothie. It's just not worth it. So invest a little bit more in the blender that's going to make it worth the effort.

The one that I've been using is the Ninja, and I think that works pretty well. A lot of my coworkers use the Vitamix and really love that and swear by it. I would also take a look at the volume that it holds and make sure that you can fit three or four smoothies in it. So we're looking at maybe 50 ounces capacity. Something to think about, but think of other ways you can use that blender beyond just the smoothies.

#2: air fryer

So the next appliance I want to talk about is the air fryer. I think the air fryer is the ideal way to make a really quick and effortless meal for, I'd say one to three people. I use it all the time in my home. I can also see this working really well for college students or maybe “empty nesters”, so disclaimer, this is not an ideal option if you are cooking for more than three or four people at a time.

I would not say it is a high volume cooking tool, but I do really love to use it to cook my protein options. It cooks very quickly and it cooks very evenly and the end result is just delicious. It works really well for fish, so I'll often do like a salmon filet or mahi mahi in my air fryer, but I also love it for chicken legs or chicken wings.

I've made the Nutritional Weight & Wellness version of healthy chicken nuggets in the air fryer, and they just get really crispy and delicious. I also really like to use it for a really fast batch of roasted vegetables. So things like broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts are really good in the air fryer, sweet potato wedges. I think it's an amazing way to transform potato wedges into something that's very convincing as a French fry. It gets a great crisp on it without having to deep fry it. So we love that. I especially love to use my air fryer to reheat leftovers. It is so much faster than heating the oven up and I think it tastes a lot better than reheating in the microwave.

#3: pressure cooker

The next appliance I want to mention is the multi-use pressure cooker, a very recognizable brand is the Instant Pot. So there's a lot of brands out there of this type of appliance, but I think that what they all have in common is that they are basically a pressure cooker that can also be used as a slow cooker, a steamer, and most of them also have a sauté function. So I find this to be a time saving tool when it comes to recipes that may typically take several hours, like maybe a roast or a stew, but it basically cuts the time in half.

I can easily do it in my instant pot in about an hour and a half on a weeknight, which is awesome. I also really like it to transform tougher cuts of meat into something that's really tender and flavorful. So things like chuck roast or skirt steak. I've even made goat in my instant pot. So all of these cuts of meat are usually a little more affordable and they work best with the low and slow method, but with the instant pot, you can do that in just a couple hours.

You can do so much with it. You can do hard boiled eggs. You can make stews and chili. I also have used it to batch prep wild rice, which normally would take over an hour, but with the instant pot, you can do it in 20 minutes or so. I also like it as an option just to expand my cooking surfaces when I'm doing like a big meal prep day.

So if I'm doing a lot of batch prepping or I'm making several recipes all at once, having the Instant Pot as another option to maybe do a roast while I'm also cooking a bunch of roasted vegetables in the oven, it's just giving me another cooking surface to use, which is an efficient way to cook.

I will say there was a bit of a learning curve to operate the Instant Pot. So I didn't pick it up naturally. I kind of needed a little coaching. I needed to watch a few videos to figure out exactly how to do it. So I will just say it's not the easiest thing to use, but once you figure it out, It's a pretty versatile way to cook.

#4: slow cooker

And for that reason, I do want to give a shout out to the humble slow cooker. It is another great time saving tool for similar reasons as the instant pot, but it is super easy to operate, very easy to learn how to use, and it is a very passive way to cook. So you basically put all the ingredients in that slow cooker, you turn it on, you set a timer, and you can basically forget about it.

Walk away for 8, 10, maybe even 12 hours, and it's going to work its magic. Like the Instant Pot, it also provides an additional cooking surface if you are multitasking and using the oven for other things. And again, it's a great way to cook tougher cuts of meat because it's going to cook things on a really low temperature for long periods of time, so it'll become very flavorful and very tender.

And again, it's a passive way to cook. While most recipes for the slow cooker do require eight hours of cooking time, the active time from you is pretty minimal. You basically just set it and forget it. You don't have to babysit it. You can leave the house. You can go to work, run errands; do whatever you need to do.

When you get home, it will be ready when you get back. What I like to do is I'll prepare all the ingredients for a slow cooker recipe maybe on Sunday night when I have a little bit more time and then I'll just throw everything in the slow cooker Monday morning. It's cooking all day, then I get home, I have a wonderful meal waiting for me, with leftovers to spare.

So, I love doing that. I will also say this is my preferred way to make bone broth. You know, bone broth by nature is better the longer it simmers. So the crock pot is perfect for that. I'll save bones from my roast chicken and then I'll make a big batch of bone broth that I can use in my soups and stews, or even just sip on like a really comforting warm beverage.

You could also batch prep wild rice and dried beans in the slow cooker. It's just a great option again for that passive cooking. So that kind of wraps up some of my favorite kitchen appliances. Some kitchen tools that I have found make a pretty big difference in my efficiency in the kitchen and just ease of preparing certain ingredients.

Rounding out kitchen essentials (#1: quality chef's knife)

But I do just want to point out a couple of kitchen essentials that you absolutely need to round out, your kitchen supplies. First of all, you want a quality chef's knife and you want to sharpen it often. It's very dangerous to be cutting with a dull knife, and I think it's just kind of frustrating to be using a dull knife because it's that much harder to cut and chop vegetables. So get a chef's knife, get a sharpener, take them in to get sharpened.

#2: cutting boards

Of course, you want several cutting boards. I would get one that's specifically for meat and then a couple others for vegetables. And it's great to have a few cutting boards so that when you're working in the kitchen, you can use one. And if you have those helpers, they can also have their own cutting board.

#3: sheet pans

So just make it as easy as possible for your kitchen helpers to help you. I would also invest in a few sheet pans. If you think you're fine having just one sheet pan, I highly recommend getting three, if not four large sheet pans. This is what makes batch prepping possible for me. I use sheet pans primarily for roasting meat and vegetables. Which I think is one of the easiest cooking methods that there is to learn.

So you can basically prepare a large volume of food all at the same time. It is very efficient. Roasting doesn't require a lot of hands on attention once it's in the oven, and you can work on a different recipe while it's baking. So you can get another sheet pan full of vegetables or a different type of meat ready to go into the oven while the others are cooking and just rotate them out. Very efficient.

#4: glass storage containers

One other essential I consider it essential is glass storage containers. Hopefully you are getting in the rhythm of making batches of food, doubling or tripling the recipe so that you have leftovers. Transfer those leftovers into glass storage containers. They can go directly into the refrigerator or the freezer and then back into the oven or the toaster oven or the microwave to reheat so there's no need to transfer that to a different plate. I think it's a big time saver and it's a lot safer than using plastic storage containers.

Conclusion & recap

So that concludes my top favorite kitchen tools and appliances that I think have made meal prep a lot easier and faster for me. So I hope that you've taken a few of these tips, try them out, see how they work, and don't forget to ask for help. Please get in the habit of delegating some tasks to your kids, to your partner, to your roommate, to cut down on some of that meal prep time.

So many aspects of cooking do not require a lot of skill. They don't require a knife. They're really easy to learn. And honestly, everybody eats. I think everybody should learn how to cook. And honestly, that's how I learned how to cook just by helping my mom out in the kitchen. And it all started with her inviting me to do that.

Well, that's it for today's episode of Dishing Up Nutrition's “Ask a Nutritionist”. I hope you picked up a few new tools or ideas that you can use in your own meal prep routine. And if you found this episode helpful, be sure to leave us a review on your favorite podcast app so we can help even more people discover the connection between what they eat and how they feel.

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