You Do Not Need That Appliance

Recipe writers own a lot of equipment. You probably do not, and you probably do not have anywhere to put it. Here is what to do instead, appliance by appliance. Keep this page open when you are cooking from somewhere else.

Instead of a high powered blender

A Vitamix costs $400 to $600 and takes a full corner of counter.

For smoothies: a $25 personal blender does this well. This is the one job where a cheap blender is genuinely fine.

For soup: you usually do not need to blend at all. Choose ingredients that break down on their own. Red lentils, split peas, and potatoes all fall apart into a thick soup with nothing but a spoon. When you do want a smooth soup, mash it against the side of the pot or run it through a regular blender in two batches, filling it no more than halfway and holding the lid down with a towel. Hot liquid expands and will blow the lid off a full blender.

For sauces: whisk them in a mug with a fork. Peanut sauce, tahini sauce, salad dressing, and yogurt sauce all come together this way. The trick is adding the liquid a tablespoon at a time instead of all at once.

For hummus: buy it. Homemade hummus without a food processor is grainy, and store brand hummus is about $3.

Instead of a stand mixer

A stand mixer is $300 and weighs 25 pounds.

For whipping cream: put the cream in a jar with a tight lid and shake it for 3 minutes. It works, and you will feel it in your arm.

For creaming butter and sugar: leave the butter out until it is genuinely soft, then work it with a wooden spoon or a fork for about 4 minutes. Softening the butter properly does 80 percent of the work.

For bread dough: knead by hand for 8 minutes, or use a no-knead recipe. No-knead bread requires zero equipment and about 12 hours of waiting, and it is better than most bread you can buy.

For a hand mixer: a $15 hand mixer covers almost every job a stand mixer does at home scale, and it lives in a drawer.

Instead of a food processor

A food processor is $80 to $200 and has five parts to wash.

For chopping vegetables: a knife. It is faster than you think once you have chopped an onion twenty times, and there is nothing to clean.

For shredding cheese: buy it shredded, or use a $6 box grater.

For breadcrumbs: put stale bread in a bag and hit it with a pan.

For pesto: chop everything very finely with a knife and stir it together with oil. It is chunkier and it is honestly good. Or buy a jar for $4.

For mashing beans: a fork. This is the better tool for the job anyway, since you want texture.

Instead of a rice cooker

See our page on cooking rice in a pot. One pot, one lid, 18 minutes, no appliance.

If you eat rice more than four times a week, a $25 rice cooker is a reasonable buy. It is one of the few single purpose appliances that earns its counter space through sheer frequency.

Instead of an Instant Pot

An Instant Pot mostly saves time on dried beans and tough cuts of meat.

For beans: cans. A can of beans is a dollar and is already cooked. Dried beans save maybe fifty cents a can and cost you two hours.

For soup and stew: a regular pot on low heat. It takes longer and needs no special equipment.

For rice: see above.

Instead of an air fryer

An air fryer is a small convection oven. If you have a working oven and a sheet pan, roast at 425 degrees and you get most of the same result.

The exception: if your apartment has no oven, a bad oven, or an oven that heats your whole studio to 85 degrees in July, then an air fryer is a legitimately good buy for a small kitchen. That is a real situation and it is worth the $60.

Instead of a tofu press

Wrap the tofu in a clean towel, put it on a plate, and stack cans on top for 15 minutes. That is the entire function of a twenty dollar device.

The general rule

Before you buy an appliance, count how many times you will use it in a month. Under four, do not buy it. Over eight, buy it and put it somewhere you can reach, because an appliance in a high cabinet is an appliance you do not own.