Spark Doable

If you have space for cooking gadgets, they can become overwhelming and take over the kitchen, or they can be life saving.

Here are some kitchen tools that we have tried out over the years and actually replaced once the old or lesser versions wore out.

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T-fal 3.5L Deep Fryer

You must have this if you have a wings lover in your house. Works great as a full time keto meal generating machine (That is, if you have a wings lover, remember? Wings every day? Yum!)

We honestly avoid deep frying breaded items because it burns up in the oil. Breaded items are better in the air fryer, which we also have! Caveat, we don’t actually have to worry now that this new model has an easy draining method for the oil. Old versions didn’t have it! Hooray!

Seriously, cleaning the deep fryer used to be the worst part, so we avoided it, but now it’s just a flick of a switch, and it’s like magic.

Technicals: It fits just under a gallon of oil. We use peanut oil. You can just let it sit there. We don’t put it away, but it does come with a bucket for filtering that I suppose you could use as storage, but who doesn’t want wings every day?

Midea Heat Xpress 7.8 Qt Air Fryer

I love fried cheese sticks, egg rolls, breaded chicken tenders, tator tots. Let me be honest, reviews and youtubers say you can cook full meals, but we had an old Philips XL air fryer before, and it burned up and filled our house with smoke when we cooked sausage or raw chicken. Delicious, but a mess, and did I mention the smoke? It was severe because this was the daily cooking machine. Still is.

We stick to breaded items now though, and it’s great. I did resist getting one at first because I hate special tools and machines, but it’s so much faster than preheating the oven AND faster than cooking in the oven. It doesn’t heat up the whole kitchen like the oven. It is also cool to the touch.

Picky kids always love chicken nuggets (and fish sticks! Hey, variety, lol). It’s just too easy to pass up.

Plus, this one fits nicely into the dishwasher, unlike our older one. Although if I’m being honest, I only washed it right out the box, and it still does great because we don’t cook anything that drips.

We got our current one at Sam’s Club, but here’s the one I would have tried if I had to use Amazon: Cosori 6 Quart Basket Air Fryer

Other favorite cooking gadgets:

Crock Pot Slow Cooker, mainly used in our house for beans. Cook on high for 6 hours or low overnight. Also good for slow cooking roasts or chicken that you want to shred. Dump in salsa and go! They make electronic button versions now, but mine is old, and simple still works.

Instant Pot Pressure Cooker Mine is old, but this one looks similar. It works great for chili (if you don’t like cooking at the stove all day long), chickpeas / garbonzo beans (surprisingly good on rice with Greek Seasoning!!!), and boiling eggs perfectly! You can also pressure cook rice or meat for shredding, but I use my Zojirushi rice cooker and Crock Pot for that.

Zojirushi Rice Cooker makes PERFECT rice every time, and if you like trying different kinds of rice, it has water level markers inside it. You can even supposedly use it for oatmeal, cakes, and other weird things. I just use it for rice. I don’t have time for monitoring my rice.

The last gadget I like best is the Ninja Smoothie Blender because it has an auto blend button you can use every time. Again, my model is a little older, but this one looks close. The cups are a good size and comes with a drinking lid with flip top to close it. I like using coconut water for the liquid, and frozen fruit works great, so nothing ever spoils if I get tired of smoothies for a while.