Choppers for Meal Prep
Choppers are great kitchen aides that can cut down produce and other ingredients into workables slices. They are perfect for meal prepping salads and other vegetable forward dishes, but their main benefit is how quickly they can guide cooks through the prep work of preparing meats and produce for cooking.
Prep work can be some of the most time consuming aspects of cooking and is often overlooked as a quick task when it often involves a larger number of small instructions to follow. For meal prepping, we want to be as efficient as possible and choppers can help us achieve that by providing uniformly cut ingredients that require less knife techniques.
Choppers also minimize messes, keeping ingredients contained so that they don’t spill out onto the counter or cross-contaminate. Nothing is better than a clean and efficient kitchen. If your meal prep time is taking too long, consider choppers for great shortcuts.
Dicer
Dicers are presses with sharp blades for cutting ingredients into small cubes, usually falling into a catch tray underneath. They are great for ingredients like onions and apples which are frequently diced in many recipes.
The ‘dice’ is the final step in a julienne cutting process. It is when long, slender strips of ingredients are cut perpendicular, creating small cube shapes. Because it is the final step in julienne cutting, dicers are great considerations that will lead you to faster results.
Dicers come in a wide assortment of styles that can fit anyone’s meal plans. The most common examples are the handheld versions that are typically used to core apples, but larger varieties are perfect for instantly chopped salads.
Mandoline
Mandolines are quick-cutting devices that grasp ingredients to slide across a blade. Depending on how produce is angled, cooks can create a variety of shapes, but mandolines typically cut ingredients into julienne.
Because julienne cutting is an iterative process, it can take time to get vegetables down to the shapes that you need them for cooking. This prep time is some of the most time consuming moments of cooking, making mandolines ideal for meal preppers in a hurry.
Mandolines aren’t just for vegetables either. Go to the deli counter of any grocery store and you’ll see larger varieties in the back slicing pieces of meat for sandwiches and rolls. Cold cuts and cheese? Why not consider a charcuterie board for meal prep?
Spiralizer
Spiralizers work by grasping ingredients onto a spinning wheel that is pushed into a blade. This creates a unique pattern that is circular and curly, perfect for frying up exciting textures that would normally take an unnecessary amount of time to produce manually.
Far from rustic, spiralizers give a modern twist to ingredients, elevating your food to the next level without the countless hours of patience. The tangly, noodle-like cuts pair perfectly into salads and stir frys.
Spiralizers can either be manually powered or electric. The choice comes down to preference. An electric-powered device will be a lot quicker while sacrificing some control over the cuts while a hand-cranked spiralizer could help cooks achieve more delicate results.