A Food Processor

A good food processor is an absolute must in any kitchen, cutting down on valuable preparation time.

Ideally, you want one where you can change the blades so that it can be used for a number of different functions.

As well as the obvious stuff you can use a food processor for, such as slicing vegetables and grinding meat, there are also all kinds of things that you probably never even considered too.

For example, did you know that you can use your food processor to shred/grate cheese, make hummus, guacamole, salsa or even dough and ice cream?

Check out this blog post from SELF for some inspiration on some of the best ways to use your food processor and you’ll see just how much easier it could make your life in the kitchen.

A Slow Cooker

The advantages of owning a slow cooker are actually very similar to owning a sous-vide machine, helping you to make great food while fitting around your busy schedule.

They can be used for a number of different meals, but they’re ideal for using up leftovers, which you can simply throw together into the cooker to create a soup or casserole.

Much like a sous-vide machine, slow cookers work at much lower temperatures and over a longer period of time than traditional cooking methods, softening the connective tissue of meat and leaving you with a much more tender end product.

But again, similarly to sous-vide, one of the best things about a slow cooker is that you can leave it unattended to cook while you go out to work or get on with other things, and it’ll be ready for you when you get back.

They can also be handy for batch cooking lots of meals in advance, ready to be reheated throughout the week.

A Juicer

A juicer is obviously ideal for squeezing fresh fruit juice such as orange, grapefruit, lime and lemon, but they can also have some other great uses too.

Recipes often call for the likes of lemon or lime juice and a juicer saves you a lot of hard work trying to extract the juice manually and it also means that you’ll get a lot more juice out of them than you would by hand.

They’re also great for making your own fruit juices (such as orange and grapefruit), which always tastes a lot better when it’s been freshly squeezed rather than bought from the supermarket, but you can also use them for a whole range of other things, such as making pesto, hummus and more.

A Salad Spinner

A salad spinner (also known as a salad tosser), is used to wash and dry your salads and other fruit and veg and uses centrifugal force to separate water while allowing any dressing to stick to the leaves without dilution.

They usually come with a removable strainer which means you can use them to drain pasta and other ingredients too and you can even just use the main bowl to serve the salad in as well.

One criticism is that, for what they are, salad spinners can be a bit bulky and difficult to store, so try to find a collapsible one.

A Mandoline

A mandoline is a quick an easy way to slice, shred, cube and julienne vegetables, which can be a tricky skill to learn at first.

A mandoline allows you to carry out all of these tasks with just one tool, but it also ensures a much thinner slice than you would be able to achieve by hand too, as well as ensuring that all of the slices are uniform in thickness too.

They should also come with a built-in safety guard to make sure that you avoid injuring your fingers!

A Rice Cooker

Seeing as rice is one of the most-used ingredients, it makes sense to invest in a specialist tool to make cooking it that little bit easier.

Rice can be easy to get wrong, whether you accidentally allow it to boil over, leave it too long and end up burning it or allowing it to dry out without enough liquid, but a rice cooker helps eliminate all of these problems.

They’re very easy to use, with measurements marked to show you exactly how much rice you need to put in and they don’t require your constant attention like rice usually does.

These are just some of the many kitchen tools that are out there that could make your time in the kitchen that little bit easier and simpler, and while there are plenty more out there to try, these are some of the ones that we believe will actually serve a purpose in your kitchen, and won’t wind up gathering dust at the back of the cupboard.