I’ve been doing a lot more cooking lately, and I’ve acquired some nice new toys which have all had a lot of use. I love my new heat-resistant spatulas, my bigass cast iron skillet, and my ice cream maker (which I didn’t buy, but borrowed long-term). I usually cook for myself or for 1 roommate.
I already have the requisite knives, spices, pots, pans, mixing bowls, cheap food processor, blender, and so on. I have limited space in my apartment, so I can’t collect everything I might like, so I need to know:
Do I really need a crock pot?
Do I really need a pressure cooker? (I might at some point want to do canning, and I presume a pressure cooker is a requirement.)
Do I really need a stand mixer? I drool over the big $300 Kitchen Aids, but they take up so much counter space, and I have virtually none.
If you are going to do lots of slow cooking, yeah you need a crockpot. You can get small ones. I know you can slow cook on the stove using a big heavy pot too, but personally that makes me uncomfortable.
I’ve never canned anything but apple butter, which doesn’t take a steam cooker, so no idea.
A stand mixer is unbelievably awesome, but unless you’re going to be doing a LOT of baking and mixing, you probably don’t want to give up the counter space. (I’ve moved ours to the top of the fridge, but now that counter is taken up by the microwave. Something about the possibility of dropping hot food on my face and trying to balance the damn thing when I needed into the cabinet behind it.)
Of the three, for me at least, the crockpot would come first. It’s wonderful to come home to smell of MEAT and know you’ll have yummy leftovers for the rest of the week.
I wouldn’t buy anything until you feel like you really really want it.
If you want to do much canning, you’ll need a canner. I’m not sure if you can use a regular pressure cooker for that or not. I know that most I’ve seen wouldn’t hold very many jars at once. The only thing we can is tomato salsa, and we just water-bath that.
I have a pressure cooker, but very rarely use it. There are Dopers that use theirs all the time. I keep meaning to do more with it, but haven’t gotten around to it (see below re weekday cooking).
I use my crockpot more often, and would use it much more if I cooked more during the week. (Since I’m the last one home, I don’t do much cooking on weekdays.) If you’re only cooking for one or two, check out the new small ones. I saw a one-quart and a two-quart (WITH removable crocks, thank you!) at WallyWorld the other day for under $15. Of your list, this would be the first thing I’d get.
I didn’t have a stand mixer until quite recently and didn’t really miss it. Unless you’re doing really heavy-duty mixing or baking a lot, I’d wait on this. We got the woman-child a “mini-stand” mixer when she moved out, but I doubt she’s used it. It was a regular electric hand-mixer that had a little stand to hold it. I’m sure it’s fine for cake batter and basic stuff like that, but wouldn’t do any stiff or heavy doughs.
[on preview]Love my immersion blender! I’ve never tried to use it instead of a mixer, though. Blender, yes; food processor, yes; mixer, no. Will it actually do that?
There are pressure canners, pressure cookers, and combination pressure canner/cooker units. I don’t know if standard pressure cookers can be used as canners, and yes, size will be a limiting factor too. I’ve only done jelly/jam canning which can be done in a water bath, but if you’re doing anything other than that, you’ll want a pressure canner of some kind.
My response to the other questions is essentially, “I’m not sure, do you?” If you love baking, especially bread making, a stand mixer may be an unnecessary luxury (the “real bakers knead their own dough” group or the “I’m using a long-rise no-knead method” group) or a wondrous invention that means you make bread a lot more than you would otherwise. Similarly, a crockpot is useful if you like that sort of thing. With food prices lately, I’ve been using it to stew up big batches of marinara sauce, cooking beans from dried, etc., and freezing the food in individual portions for later use. These tools are what you make of them.
Personally, I have two crockpots (one big 6 qt oval for when I’m making food for groups, one 3 qt for regular cooking) and a stand mixer. I make bread when I have the stand mixer, I didn’t when I didn’t. For me it makes baking more enjoyable. I use the crockpots not only for everyday-style cooking, but also for keeping food warm at parties. I even cooked a bone-in turkey breast in the large crockpot when I hosted my inlaws for Thanksgiving! (I inverted a little ceramic ramekin in the bottom and placed two thick carrots along the length of the crock, on either side of the ramekin. I poured a little chicken broth in the bottom for added moisture, prepped the breast with herbed butter under the skin the same as I’d done for the full turkey, and put it in the crock to slow cook. After a while I stuck a probe thermometer in the breast and cooked until done.) Today I used my smaller crock to cook dried chickpeas, so I could do other stuff around the house and not have to worry about watching them, boil-overs, etc. I cooled them, separated them into 1 cup measures, and bagged them in freezer bags for later use.
Crock Pot - Keep it - many different meals can be prepared from one unit.
Pressure cooker - I could live without this one. I never use ours, although my wife insist on using it for pre-cooking chicken. I find it just as easy (and tastier) to use a stew pot.
Mixer - Stand mixer can be replaced by a smaller hand held mixer until you have more kitchen space…
Crock pots are great for prepare and forget meals, but since my wife works at home, we don’t use it much any more. We used to use it a lot, though. Probably less of a necessity.
We use the pressure cooker all the time, especially in cooking fresh beans, which are excellent when cooked to onion and bacon. It is also good for tenderizing stew meat. My garden beans will start producing in a few more weeks, so it will get heavy use.
Mixers are good for bread making and all sorts of baking.
We use all these things more often than our ice cream maker.
Another fan of crock pots - anything that you can prepare a meal the night before, and plug in in the next morning before work gets my vote.
As for the expensive Kitchen Aid stand mixer - I got one for Christmas two years ago, and have used it exactly never. It weighs a ton (I can barely lift it), and takes up waaaay too much counter space (it currently resides in a dark corner of the back porch. It may be moving to the basement – or maybe to Craig’s list.)
Don’t have much feel for the pressure cooker - I’ve heard you can do wonderful no-stir risottos in them (see Crescent Dragonwagon’s Passionate Vegetarian for details). Hasn’t convinced me to buy one yet, though.
Pressure cooker - never used one, probably never will.
Stand mixer - You can have my Kitchen-Aid when you can pry it from my cold, dead fingers! The only thing more useful in oh so many ways is the food processor. Dump your cheap one and get something solid.
I don’t think you need a crock pot, especially if you have space issues. But, people seem to love them.
Certainly don’t need a pressure cooker.
Stand mixer is nice to have if you ever start doing a fair amount of baking. Cookies, cakes. We use ours for pizza dough. But, we never got one until we had more counter space, and a gift certificate to Williams Sonoma (which, though otherwise expensive, still sells the kitchenaids at the same price as everyone else).
Nope. My immersion mixer has a whip attachment. I use it to whip cream, make batters, etc. I have a breadmaker for the heavy stuff, but my Braun and its multitude of attachments can handle most anything.
I’d vote no on both the crock pot and the pressure cooker. I have whole books of crock pot recipes but they are almost all adapted from other recipes which either call for braising or baking. You use a dutch oven and low heat in the oven to do nearly everything you would cook in a crock pot.
Now a Kitchen Aid is wonderful. We use it for bread, batter, cookies and fillings for pasta. I don’t think it takes up much more space than a crock pot.
I have one of the Braun multi-mixers and think it’s great for someone who needs a hand mixer, immersion blender, and chopper for small tasks. These days I pretty much only use the immersion blender attachment, though. I have the stand mixer for most other mixing except tiny jobs - and for those I might just take a fork or whisk and do it by hand. The chopper is nice but the effective capacity of the bowl is maybe a cup before you worry about leakage. I bought a full-size food processor recently which will take over tasks the chopper couldn’t handle, and for smaller jobs I’ll just use a knife. I might use the chopper bowl for chopping an onion or two, as my eyes go berserk while cutting onions with a knife.
You need a pressure cooker if you are canning things that require it. That is NOT most jams, jellies, pickles, preserves. It’s things that have insufficient acid on their own - meats, etc.
I use my pressure cooker sometimes but wouldn’t consider it essential. I use my slow cooker often enough that I WOULD consider it essential, especially for company.
I use my stand mixer a ton, but I bake. That’s mostly what I use it for, and I’d say you don’t need it if you don’t bake but if you do bake it will make your day.
Does the whisk attachment handle solids? It looks like a great tool, but not really comparable to a stand mixer in any way. That being said, it would probably handle the needs of a great many home cooks, the majority of whom have very little need for the power of a KitchenAid stand mixer.
Solids like pieces of butter? Yes. I do no baking, other than bread, and for that I use my breadmaker. But for whipping cream, beating eggs, making salad dressings, stuff like that, it can’t be beat. And it stores easily in a drawer!
I use my crockpot all winter for porridge, but it’s put away now. I have every kitchen appliance and gadget known to man and god and I don’t use the half of them: thank heaven I never did buy a pressure cooker, just another thing to take up space. What would I really miss? My Cuisinart food processor and my Braun immersion blender.
If I was starting out as a cook, I would adhere very closely to this rule: do not buy anything that has only one use.
You really NEED only a good paring knife, a good chef’s knife, a cast iron skillet and one stock pot. I think everything else is a luxury, and some are pretty nice luxuries.
Another cool crockpot use: At bedtime place a peck or less of cored/peeled apples in the crockpot. Set on low. In the morning you have applesauce! You can refrigerate or eat warm. You can eat as is (chunky) or you can whisk so that you have smooth applesauce. Different varieties of apples can be used for different tastes.
(Personally, I leave the skins on. And no, do not add water, or anything else)