Kitchen Tools That Will Make Plant-Based Eating a Breeze

Eating a plant-based diet is incredibly rewarding on multiple levels, but to truly enjoy eating your way through plants, it helps to have some kitchen tools on hand. If you’re eating a raw vegan diet especially, there are tools you could use every day that a typical meat and dairy eater may use once in a blue moon. Rethinking your diet also means rethinking your kitchen and how you prepare your own food at home. Here are some kitchen tools that will make any vegan’s life easier.

1. Dehydrator

Dehydrators are great tools for transforming vegetables into chips, preserving seasonal fruit, making dried veggies for future “instant soups,” and making dried fruit to use for trail mixes. See these 10 Best Fruits to Dehydrate and How to Eat Them and these 11 Cooking Tips for Dehydrated Vegetables. Some dehydrated fruit like strawberries have a consistency that will remind you of tasty gummy candy, but without the added sugar and preservatives!

2. Spiralizer, Julienne Peeler or Mandolin Slicer

It’s truly amazing just how diverse gluten-free and vegan pasta dishes can be. When you forget the white pasta and the meat sauce, you look toward whole wheat or brown rice pasta and a delicious vegan marinara sauce instead. But this meal can get stale, so you can switch things up by making noodles out of various vegetables like eggplant, zucchini and squash. This also makes your pasta dish healthier! Try this Gluten-Free Carbonara Spaghetti With Zucchini Noodles and this Sundried Tomato Pesto Zucchini Pasta with Corn, Beans and Spinach.

3. Hi-Speed Blender

Smoothies are almost a mandatory food item on a plant-based diet because they’re delicious, sweet and are an easy way to hide the bitter taste of greens while still obtaining their nutrients. Blenders give you an excuse to stock up on frozen fruit, which is typically more nutritious anyway since it’s harvested at the peak of ripeness. Just toss in that fruit, some almond milk and kale, and bam, you’ve got a simple, fast snack packing vitamin C, antioxidants, vitamin D, calcium and more. I use my blender almost every day for smoothies alone, but you can get much more use out of it: see How to Make Yummy Raw Blender Soups (with recipes) and How to Make Healthy and Yummy Food All Day Using Your Blender.

4. Chef’s Knife and Sharp Knives

A friend once told me that learning how to cook should begin with a knife skills course. While I have yet to enroll to have a chef teach me to slice and dice with sushi-making precision, I have obtained some nice knives, which changed my food prep experience. A nice, sharp knife makes all the difference. Dull knives are not only frustrating to use and yield poor slices, but they’re also dangerous, as the blade might slip and cut you. On a plant-based diet, will you be eating lots of fruits and veggies, which you’ll need to slice. A chef’s knife in specific is a great choice, allowing you to make more even and firmer cuts.

5. Food Processor

You can always use a blender for recipes that call for a food processor. But if you’re like me, you’ll be using both items frequently enough that it makes sense to have both in your kitchen. Use your food processor to make hummus, pesto spread, cashew cream, a cheesy sauce for vegan mac n’ cheese and so much more.

Lead image source: Gluten-Free Carbonara Spaghetti With Zucchini Noodles