What I'm Loving: New Kitchen Appliances
I’ve always been pretty candid about the fact that I am not the cook of the family — while my husband cooks for passion, I’m more of a cook for survival kind of gal. And to be clear, this isn’t because I can’t cook, it’s really just because I don’t have an innate passion for it. Give me a cookbook or a recipe, and I’ll follow it without a problem, but it won’t necessarily be made with soul or love.
That said, being in the kitchen for me is more of a chore, so now handling all of the cooking, I knew I needed to do a few things:
Make it easier for myself
Make it something my daughter and I could enjoy together
Make it as painless as possible
As a self-professed tech junkie, and blessed with a pretty snazzy new job title, I turned to technology to up my culinary skills. Over the years, my husband and I have accumulated a gaggle of cookware and electrics in our kitchen — from pots & pans to cookers & blenders. After finally deciding to tackling our pantry and starting an avalanche of organization in our kitchen, I decided it was also time to consolidate and simplify our kitchen tools.
Here’s a quick inventory of what we owned:
Are you exhausted yet? Because I got exhausted just thinking about it.
Getting them individually, piece by piece, they seemed necessary and far from excessive — and yes I know it could be worse — but stepping back and taking a holistic look at my kitchen, having all this single function appliances seemed ridiculous! One of the first two things to get replaced were the toaster oven & keurig coffee maker. While they were useful, they were simply no longer useful for our lifestyle.
We replaced the toaster oven & keurig coffee maker with a new double slice toaster and programmable drip coffee maker, both from Target’s Made By Design Brand. While not the most robust appliances, in terms of bells & whistles, both were exactly what we needed. Now there was the question of tackling everything else.
My first instinct was to tackle what would effect our everyday cooking. After tossing the toaster oven, I immediately grew tired of using our large oven for our very small family. It was a waste of time & electricity, and an overall burden. Next, I knew I’d have to find some way to consolidate the rice cooker, slow cooker, pressure cooker, and air fryer, without sacrificing functionality. I was using our air fryer weekly, if not daily, and while I wasn’t using the rice cooker (like at all), I knew I’d use the slow cooker & pressure cooker more if they weren’t just so damn big!
Breville Mini Smart Toaster Oven
At work, I watched day in and day out as the staff used the Breville Smart Oven Air with Convection to make everything from quick bread to potato chips to a 14lb turkey for Thanksgiving. After doing my own research on the Breville brand & specifically, its different countertop ovens, I knew this would be the perfect alternative to using our big ol oven. I went with the Breville Mini Smart Toaster Oven for its small footprint, noting that it was still robust enough for our needs — the larger models also include air frying and convection features that weren’t a necessity for me.
Since purchasing the Breville Mini Smart Toaster Oven, I’ve used it almost daily to make scones, brownies, chicken parmesan, pizza, and yes, even toast…just to name a few I don’t know that I would’ve made even half of those at the frequency that I was cooking if I had the daunting task of needing to pre-heat our traditional over and having it heat up the whole dang kitchen.
The best part of having the Breville Mini Smart Toaster Oven is that it is perfect for our current small kitchen but will also perfectly suit us in a larger home as well.
Instant Pot Duo Evo Plus Pressure Cooker
Now the larger task at hand, as I previously mentioned, was to consolidate the rice cooker, slow cooker, pressure cooker, and air fryer. I was over it — having all those appliances — and quickly realized the Instant Pot family was exactly what I needed. To be quite frank, had the Instant Pot been around at the time that we purchased the rice cooker, slow cooker, and pressure cooker, we probably would’ve simply gotten that from the start. But here we are.
I decided to replace the rice cooker, slow cooker, and pressure cooker with the Instant Pot Duo Plus Mini because I would get the same 9-in-1 Multi-Use Programmable features as the larger machines, but the 3-quart capacity would be perfect for us. That was before Instant Pot released their new Duo Evo Plus in a 6-quart and 8-quart. In addition to what was already attracting me to the Instant Pot family in the first place — the customizable & programmable features, and multi-use pressure cooking — I realized for a difference of LITERALLY $20, I could get the newer model with twice the capacity. Would it be bigger? Yes. But seeing as to how I would be using this one appliance to effectively replace three larger appliances, I figured I could spare the space.
With it, I got a few accessories, including the Ultimate Instant Pot Cookbook. Since getting the Instant Pot Duo Evo Plus Pressure Cooker (it’s been like a week at the time that I’m writing this) I’ve only ever tried three meals — all three from the cookbook. If you follow my Instagram stories then you know one may or may not have ended up on my kitchen floor, but the other two were a hit and super easy to make!
Breville Hot Choc & Froth
Where some people buy clothes as part of their retail therapy, I buy home goods…and, in total transparency, that’s exactly what this purchase was.
For the longest while, my coffee experience consisted of my coffee maker — be it the keurig coffee maker or the programmable drip coffee maker — warmed up milk or creamer using our microwave, and a handheld frother (similar). I would also be using the same microwave and hand frother to make hot chocolate. This is probably a classic case of having a first-world problem, but I wanted to create a better (and more convenient) experience for crafting my coffee and hot chocolate.
After having already fallen in love with the Breville brand, I knew that I wanted to get either the Breville Hot Choc & Froth or the Breville Milk Café Electric Frother. Both were contenders because they were Breville, but more importantly, because they were both capable of making hot chocolate, in addition to hands-free frothing.
The tie breaker? We had a clearance Breville Milk Café Electric Frother model in store when I was having a really shitty day. I immediately bought it, came home, and made hot chocolate for baby girl and I — hers with marshmallows, mine with Bailey’s Irish Cream.
I have used it every single morning, alongside some new creamers and coffee syrups from Williams-Sonoma, and OMG! My mornings have gotten exponentially better and cheaper ever since!
While I could probably have a field day buying up all the kitchen electrics and upgrading our remaining small appliances — like what’s left on that list up there — I could also stop right now with the Breville Mini Smart Toaster Oven, Instant Pot Duo Evo Plus Pressure Cooker, and Breville Hot Choc & Froth and feel totally complete!
I haven’t used our stovetop in weeks, except for making breakfast and using my cast iron. Whether we’ve been baking up a new dessert or trying a cookbook recipe, my daughter and I have basically done it all in our new Breville Mini Smart Toaster Oven and Instant Pot Duo Evo Plus Pressure Cooker. The Breville Hot Choc & Froth is all about creating an experience, one that even my daughter now enjoys by picking out my creamer & syrup in the morning, and pouring the hot chocolate shavings in at night.
Where’s everything we replaced?
So glad you asked.
The toaster oven got tossed and the double slice toaster is in the pantry. The keurig coffee maker is currently for sale in my Poshmark closet, which is where I sold the rice cooker, and I use our programmable drip coffee maker daily! The air fryer, waffler maker (similar), hand mixer (similar), and personal blender are all also in the pantry; I pull em out to use as needed. I thought about selling the slow cooker and the pressure cooker, but decided with the holidays around the corner, I’d feel much better about donating them instead.
I do have a running wishlist of items I’d love to see in our kitchen eventually, but I am in no rush because for the first time in a long time, I feel like I have exactly what we need for how we live.
During their deals days, I had snagged the Cravings by Chrissy Teigen 2pk Aluminum Frying Pan Set from Target, and have been super happy with the way those two pieces have performed, so I’ll slowly finish purging our old cookware for a few more pieces from the rest of the Cravings by Chrissy Teigen Aluminum Cookware Collection.
I also have a few cookbooks that I turn to when I want to feel like I have my life together in the kitchen, and while there have been lots of mishaps, my daughter is always happy with her meals and I’m seldom feeling overwhelmed with all this new culinary responsibility. I can’t help but think that having these new appliances have contributed to my lightened anxiety in the kitchen.
Over on my Instagram stories I share some of my cooking/baking adventures…just in case you want to follow along with how I’m fairing with my new toys! I’m no food blogger by any stretch of the imagination but hey, you might see something you like.
