I own a Vitamix, a Zojirushi rice cooker, and a Zojirushi Home Bakery Supreme. I also own the instant pot max, and an air fryer by Sur la table. Between these appliances they help me make 90% of my food at home. The food is relatively easy, especially once you get the hang of the recipes, and they taste incredible!
Now for full disclosure up front: I sell Vitamix machines for a living. But that’s not the reason or focus for this post. Heck, I would recommend y’all get a used one or refurbished over buying one from me. I just love them too death and use it way more than most people or even other employees lol.
So anyway, aside from obvious things like air frying frozen foods, what do I make with these kitchen tools? You name it.
1: Indian curries and masalas over perfect basmati rice. (Instant pot and rice cooker)
Even though the rice cooker is not made for basmati, it can make it! Just add more water than for Japanese rice and it’s incredible. Curry is also tasty with Japanese sticky rice.
Butter chicken curry (Instant pot): https://littlesunnykitchen.com/instant-pot-butter-chicken/#wprm-recipe-container-19632
Photo of curry made as meal prep: https://photos.app.goo.gl/ub6wETH8VuHv2zJv5
Paneer masala (stovetop or instant pot, and Vitamix): https://www.indianhealthyrecipes.com/paneer-butter-masala-restaurant-style/
Basmati rice in the rice cooker: https://www.teaforturmeric.com/perfect-basmati-rice-in-a-rice-cooker/
2: Homemade mixed no-filter nut milk (Vitamix).
I’ve been making this so much lately. It’s my own recipe I developed and it’s amazing. I use 40 grams of nuts/seeds and 40 grams of sweetener blended with water and ice for 2 min on high speed for a qt/liter of finished delicious nut milk. It’s so smooth I don’t bother filtering it! You can even make it extra dense and just mix with water afterwards! Even better if the nuts are soaked overnight but that’s optional. Literally tastes better than any other milk beverage to me. Animal or plant based. It’s heavenly. I really like a mix of hemp/cashews/walnuts/almonds with honey and monk fruit sweetener. You can change the ratios to your preference if you want unsweetened or extra sweet. And nuts store in the cupboard for months so you have virtually unlimited milk ready to enjoy without needing to run to the store!
3: Homemade bread (bread maker).
Now it’s been a while since I’ve had any bread maker at all. I didn’t enjoy the bread my Mom made with hers when I was a kid. So I was turned off of getting one. But someone here recommended one to me and so I did some research and ordered a used Zojirushi bread machine off eBay for about $120. Less than half the price of new! Works great! I was blown away by how homemade fresh bread tastes an hour after baking when it’s cooled but still warm. It’s like a cloud. So chewy and soft with a crunchy crust. Best thing ever! I enjoy the 10-grain multigrain recipe the most. Incredible toast (air fryer). Incredible PB&J sandwiches. I even grind my own whole wheat flour in my Vitamix. Though it’s optional of course, but a big advantage of that is whole wheat berries (that’s what the whole seeds are called) last way longer in the pantry than ground flour does. So the bread is fresher every time you make it.
I spent some personal free time combining the zojirushi cookbooks into a single document that gives deduced amounts for 1, 1.5, or 2 lb loafs. Fair warning though, I haven’t tested all of these and one time I made a “1.5 lb loaf” and it was over 2lbs lol. But overall the recipes work well otherwise.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1MPlgoXD-uhJgIgdFiOeyBR9B5XQRa-nH/view?usp=drivesdk
Photo of bread: https://photos.app.goo.gl/RRsq4CCP6SZSx96n8
4: Japanese sushi style poke bowls (rice cooker/air fryer).
Okay guys. I love sushi rolls. But they’re expensive. Making sushi style poke bowls gives almost all the flavor of sushi for a fraction of the price! I love California rolls and crunchy rolls (basically California rolls with fried shrimp added). So I just buy a sheet of imitation crab (like 2lbs for 10 bucks), portion it out and freeze it in ziplock bags in 8oz portions. When I want a poke bowl I cook Japanese rice in the rice cooker, thaw a fish portion in the microwave, chop some ripe avocado/cucumber, air fry and chop up some fried shrimp (I get mine from Costco) and layer them all together before drizzling Japanese mayo, Sriracha (you can premix the mayo with the Sriracha but that’s optional), and hoisin sauce on top. Delicious! Easy! Economical! Decently healthy! Especially healthy if you use quinoa or brown rice instead of white!
Here’s a picture of one I made without the shrimp: https://photos.app.goo.gl/KNVnYKbAKnzp6gbCA
5: Homemade probiotic cultured dairy products (instant pot).
Let’s face it. Store bought yogurt sucks for many reasons. It’s expensive when it’s well made, and it sucks when it’s not. So why not make your own? Think it’s too hard? It’s freaking easy! The instant pot with the yogurt function makes it easier than ever! Get 4 wide mouth pint mason jars and leak proof plastic lids. Wash and sanitize them and a spoon in the instant pot on high pressure for 1 min. Pull them out while hot with tongs. Let them cool. Open a new plain 6oz yogurt with live cultures (I like fage), put a single spoonful of yogurt in each jar and fill just a little with a freshly opened bottle of UHT dairy (milk, half and half, heavy cream) and stir to make a sauce like texture before adding the rest of the dairy. Put the lids on and place the jars in the instant pot. Fill the pot with water at least halfway up the jars before putting on a lid. Turn on yogurt mode for at 8 - 12 hours and come back to yogurt that lasts MONTHS in the fridge unopened. About 2 weeks once opened. Use in smoothies, on top of pancakes (especially the cultured heavy cream), you name it! Delicious!
Here’s pictures of what mine looked like when I made it last year. 7.5% milk fat because I mixed whole milk with cream. It is solid enough to hold upside down! 😄
https://photos.app.goo.gl/bf6o2DHnuXoZRUY49
6: Pasta dishes (instant pot).
The instant pot makes one pot pasta dishes easier than ever! I like making a lasagna flavored dish with regular short cut noodles. I’ll saute and drain the ground beef and empty it into a bowl. Then add a can of tomato sauce, spices, frozen (thawed) veggies, add the meat back, dry noodles, and enough water for the noodles to absorb it all. Place the lid on top and let it rip! Hi pressure for about 5 - 8 min is usually enough. Then open it and give it a stir, add in any cream or cheeses now or layer them in a dish for presentation. Either way is delicious! The veggies on bottom are important though as they help prevent burning.
7: Breakfast smoothies/juices (Vitamix).
I grew up with a cheap blender and a juice extractor. It was alright. I didn’t really care all that much about the texture so the cheap blender was okay. I hated the juicer though as it was so much work to make it (so slow), and to wash it. And it was so wasteful with all the pulp!
These days I care a whole lot more about having perfect texture in everything and the Vitamix does that for me for smoothies. Frozen or fresh ingredients, with or without liquid, large or small pieces, seeds or seedless, doesn’t matter. And juices are so much easier. Instead of 30 min to an hour juicing/cleaning and throwing away so much of the produce as wasted pulp, I can throw in 20 oz of fruit with a few oz of greens, some seeds, lemon/jalapeno/ginger, and a ton of ice and water. Blend that for 90+ seconds and it’s so light and tasty and smooth. Feels great to eat healthy and not be wasting food or my time making it.
My favorite recipes:
Coconut pineapple banana smoothie: https://joyfoodsunshine.com/pineapple-smoothie/
Blueberry Grape smoothie: https://www.worldofvegan.com/grape-smoothie/
Spicy green juice: https://lifeisnoyoke.com/green-juice/
Ginger delight smoothie: https://makeitperfectly.com/blend/recipes/0610ec25-4470-11e6-9451-737e7b3299f1
Blueberry apple vanilla smoothie: https://makeitperfectly.com/blend/recipes/052c4872-4470-11e6-9451-aba68ee12963
Blueberry ginger smoothie (I prefer it with almond butter and plain water): https://makeitperfectly.com/blend/recipes/0610ec11-4470-11e6-9451-4358a187685f
Mighty mango imitation (personal recipe): https://makeitperfectly.com/blend/recipes/17cf02cc-592f-11e8-8aca-0f9073a3583b
Watermelon juice: No link. Just watermelon!!! Freeze about 8oz of watermelon and blend with 24 oz of cold fresh watermelon for 1 min on high speed. Increase the ratio of frozen to fresh watermelon for a more icy texture!
Photo: https://photos.app.goo.gl/ASxnYG4cTVMFPbqN8
8: Soups (air fryer/Vitamix).
I don’t really need to say much here. Roast the veggies in the air fryer. Blend them with water, cheese, milk and flavorings for 6 min until hot. Optionally instead of waiting for the Vitamix to heat it, you can use a kettle to quickly boil water and add that with dry milk for the same thing but much quicker, done in 1 min. Then optionally add more roasted veggies and cheese and pulse to give it a nice texture.
Broccoli cheddar soup: https://www.vitamix.com/us/en_us/recipes/broccoli-cheese-soup (Remember to roast the broccoli and add extra after for texture. Also try mixing different fancy cheese’s, or more than one type of veggie!)
9: Seasoned rice (rice cooker).
Rice cookers aren’t just amazon for plain rice. Make a seasoned rice recipe, optionally with some frozen veggies/meat mixed in!
This can be a meal on its own and it’s SO GOOD.
https://www.africanbites.com/seasoned-rice/
Literally just toss every ingredient into the rice cooker with or without adding veggies or chicken and press start. It’s almost TOO easy!
10: (continued in a comment below)
I briefly owned a bread maker. The bread quality wasn’t great, and it took too much effort to prepare/clean the machine. YMMV.
I own a cheap espresso machine. It has an integrated hot water and steam wand. Making a single serving Americano is fast and the drink can be frothy with basically no time or effort. 11/10 with creama.
If you aren’t getting good bread from your bread machine, you’re definitely doing something wrong. Bread machines are pretty simple and peaked in the 90s for the most part. I have one of the cheapest ones on the market from the 90s and the bread that comes out of my kitchen blows away everything at the grocery store for a fraction of the price. I make sandwich breads, pizza dough, English muffin dough, pretty much anything and it’s all good.
I think the big thing people get wrong is not weighing their ingredients. You just can’t make consistently good bread with volumetric measurements. The hydration of the dough (ratio of flour and water) is very important and a cup of flour can vary a lot.
There’s also a ton of very low quality recipes out there. Even the book that came with my bread maker is pretty terrible. If you don’t want to get in to the science of it, just stick to King Arthur recipes. There’s a ton of bread maker specific ones and they often have modifications for bread makers in the other recipes.
Ingredients matter a lot as well. Besides the fact that higher quality ingredients produce higher quality food, flour isn’t interchangeable. So if you’re using regular cheap all purpose flour instead of bread flour, the amount of water it absorbs is different and you’ll get bad results. You can get decent enough white bread from cheap AP flour but you need a lot less water. It will be basically wonder bread though, nothing mind blowing.
In terms of effort, I guess this is subjective. But I just started some whole wheat bread and it took about 5 minutes to weigh the water, salt, yeast, whole wheat flour, bread flour, and gluten. The cycle takes a few hours and my baby will have bread for lunch for the rest of the week. And it doesn’t contain any sugar or brominated flour like every whole wheat bread at the grocery store. Also with a decent loaf of bread is pushing 8-9 dollars at the store, this saves a lot of money. This loaf cost less than a dollar even using high quality flour.
I make artisanal bread by hand, takes about 10 minutes total effort–less than a bread machine when you include cleanup–and I eyeball the ingredients. It was a big upgrade for me from the machine.
The Zojirushi bread machines are very nice but you don’t need one if you want to make excellent breads and jams. For the most part, the technology in bread makers peaked in the 90s and I’ve never seen a thrift store that didn’t have an entire aisle of them dirt cheap.
I have a late 90s Breadman I paid 20 bucks for years ago (which is expensive but it was new in box) and it’s paid for itself many times over. It makes great sandwich bread and I use it to make all kinds of doughs for other bread products. I make a nice Italian loaf, English muffins, pizza dough, etc.
It paid for itself the first month I had it. Never really felt the need to upgrade.
Actually, while regular bread makers do work, the zojirushi models, when tested head to head with cheaper models, come out ahead every time.
Did you post in c/frugal telling people they should get a $300 bread maker just to make bread? Plus here’s 9 other things you can make with these 4 other appliances…
Our household recently picked up a Zojirushi bread machine. We must eat gluten free for medical reasons and GF bread from the supermarket is very expensive around $9 for a mini loaf of bread that crumbles and molds. We are finding it very cost effective to make our own breads.
do you need a specialized breadmaker? or just an oven would work?
I stopped using a bread machine because it was too much work. Fussing over the recipe and cleaning the bloody thing, plus it is always no-stick coating inside with all the lovely forever chemicals.
I do a slack ‘no-knead’ dough (5 min work) then 8 hours later bake at high temp in a preheated cast iron dutch oven that I got used.
Everyone raves greedily about the results and it’s very forgiving to work with. Cleanup is simple, and the bread lasts 3 days on the cutting board, cut side down. Freezes really well, too.
Cost is three cups of flour and maybe some oats plus a little instant yeast and salt, and 450F of oven for 40 minutes.
yea - the vitamix too is like $300. This is probably over $1k worth of kit. Holy shit I didn’t even know they had $300 rice cookers!
They have $10 blenders and $10 rice cookers… they work great… people know that, right? The cheap rice cookers work PERFECT every time and have practically no parts to break
The extra cost is directly from gadget companies knowing that the cheap version is perfect, and they add functions and flair to increase profit. Understandably, if you work in R&D and need some job security, making bluetooth work in a microwave may keep your department afloat for a little while.
Noble pursuit of elegant design and business? Nope, but if people are willing to buy it, then there’s nothing stopping them from doing it.
I totally agree… except for the high power blender. Those are a different category from cheap blenders, they do recipes impossible without the power. Nut milk is a good example, where if you drink a lot of the stuff you can pay off the blender in under a year with savings.
Never owned a rice cooker. A pot and lid works just fine.
Sure. If you want to spend more time making rice that has a high chance of burning or being overcooked or undercooked, and that you’ll have to put leftovers in the fridge right away, and that you have to remember to turn off when it’s finished etc. Then yeah, a pot and lid works fine. To me, the time savings and the improved quality of the rice together make the premium rice cookers more than worth the investment. Every grain is perfect, not undercooked and crunchy or overcooked and soggy. No burned rice. Just set it and forget it and have perfectly cooked fluffy warm rice ready to eat all day long.
When rice actually tastes incredible every time, you tend to eat it more often. I know I make way more rice now than I did before I got mine.
Honestly, I just use the instant pot to make rice. 5 minutes on manual with 1:1 rice:water ratio is all you need. A rice cooker feels redundant unless you eat rice every day in which case, maybe.
Rice in the instant pot is fine, but it’s a bit more hands on. The rice cooker makes it perfect automatically every time after you put the ingredient in and just press a button. You can also keep the rice warm the entire day so you can make some for breakfast and just use it throughout the day, hot and ready to eat! The convenience of not needing to babysit the rice, put leftovers away right after making it, no chance of burning the rice, every individual grain cooked perfectly etc. It’s worth it. When you have equipment that makes something, normally mediocre, exceptional every time you end up eating it way more often.
Edit: I realize the instant pot has a keep warm function too, but I often make something in my instant pot to go with the rice so it’s better to have a rice cooker for that reason as well.
Ok, Vitamix I can agree with, solid product and the choice of most restaurants.
High end rice cooker is worth it if you actually plan on using the features. Timers for rice and oatmeal can be convient. If you don’t need that get a cheap one.
Bread maker, don’t waste your money. 95% of people it will just sit in the closet. The bread is not going to be gourmet quality. Honestly if you want fresh bread buy a kitchen aid mixer and make it from scratch.
Instant pot, it can be convenient for speeding up cooking. If you’re using it for the occasional dried beans or tough meat it might be worth it. It can work as a crockpot, but if you don’t need pressure cooking just buy a crockpot.
Air fryer, honestly only use this for junk food. It’s not something that will elevate your cooking. You can get an instant pot that does crockpot and air fryer if you really want one.
As others have stated, work on base techniques and not gadgets. Outside of a stand mixer and a good blender none of these tools are very useful for most people. Buy the tool that helps you cook, don’t buy the tool and find an excuse to use it.
