[QUOTE=pulykamell]
No. Unless you plan on doing a lot of slow cooking and want the ease of turning on the thing before you go to work and then having a meal ready for you when you come home. It’s very useful, but not necessary. I personally just use an enameled cast-iron dutch oven (which I bought at Target for $20 on clearance, just as good as the expensive Le Creusets from my experience so far. I’ve had it for two years, and haven’t noticed any hotspots or chipped enamel). It’s far more useful for my purposes.
Once again, no. Nice to have around, but not really a requirement. Speeds up the cooking of a lot of foods, but not a requirement for canning at all.
I’d have more regular use for this than the other two, but you can just as well live without one.
You don’t need any of those three. It’s more a question of what type of cooking you will do, and what will save you the most hassle or time.
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What pulykamell said.
I do not now, nor I have I ever owned a pressure cooker, and I cook practically every day. Not necessary at all to me, but how often do you think you would use it?
I do own a crock pot, but mine can also be used as a deep fryer and has adjustable temperature settings on it, so it does a bit more than your average crockpot. I don’t use mine a whole lot, but it does come in handy on a hot summer day when you don’t want to heat up the house with the oven, for instance. If you prefer to ‘set and forget,’ you could find a crock pot a useful item.
Out of the three things you mentioned, I do think the stand mixer is going to be the most useful - most people have already mentioned baking, but KitchenAid stand mixers do A LOT more than just mixing. You can get all kinds of attachments for them - shredders, slicers, juicers, grain mills, meat grinders, sausage makers, pasta rollers/cutters, ice cream makers - they are multi-purpose tools. My stand mixer is actually an old Kenwood model which came with a blender attachment and a catalog full of a whole slew of other stuff.
In the end a stand mixer may actually end up saving you a bit of space if you buy an attachment for it instead of purchasing a separate standalone item. They are heavy, but that’s a good thing. You don’t want to be mixing up a large amount of heavy dough and have the thing rock itself off the counter.
One thing about the planetary gear type mixers, though - they don’t do a great job at whipping egg whites, so you might want to keep your hand mixer around. That’s what I use for egg whites - it does a better job in about a quarter of the time.