Top 7 Small Appliances in the Krock’s Kitchen

Please subscribe to our YouTube channel for more content!

MEET THE KROCKS: We are a married couple who started on a life-changing whole food, plant-based weight loss journey in June 2018. To date, we have lost over 260 pounds combined and we aren’t done yet! Read Our Story

Follow our Journey:
YOUTUBE | FACEBOOK | INSTAGRAM | PINTEREST | TWITTER

If you checked out our Top 10 Tools & Gadgets, you probably realize we have quite the collection of kitchen stuff. We got a ton of really great stuff when we got married back in 2011, and we have continued to grow our collection of kitchen “junk” 🙂 for the past 8 years of marriage. But what do we actually use the most while following a whole food, plant-based (WFPB) diet? In this post, we are going share our Top 7 Small Kitchen Appliances! Be sure to watch the video to hear us chat about each appliance and check out the list below for more information.

We purchased all of these products with our own money (or received them as gifts from family & friends). We are providing our honest opinions and reviews of the products. If you see something you like, we have provided links to purchase. We do get a small portion of any purchases made through the links on our website, at no additional cost to you. All of the proceeds will go towards creating more content for our readers and viewers to enjoy!

#7: Electric Spice & Coffee Grinder

We have never really been coffee drinkers, so we never thought to buy a coffee grinder. However, when we began our WFPB journey, we started using flaxseed and wanted to be able to grind them at home. We found this Krups Electric Spice & Coffee Grinder and discovered that it is actually a nifty tool to have in the kitchen!

Brian loves to experiment with different spice blends, and he often uses this to grind them into a powder. We use it for the spices in our Italian Tofu recipe. Having the ground up spice powder helps us coat the tofu more evenly. We have also used this to grind up dehydrated mushrooms. We add the mushroom powder to soups and other recipes like our Spicy Refried Pinto Beans. It adds a nice umami flavor and is a great way to get the health benefits of mushrooms if you don’t like eating them fresh.

Click here to view “KRUPS Electric Spice & Coffee Grinder” on Amazon

#6: Stand Mixer (& Attachments)

We got a stand mixer as a wedding gift and I am amazed at how much it can do! I love baking and have used it as a mixer throughout the years. However, our favorite use for it these days is actually trying out some of the fun attachments you can get to go with it!

The first attachment we love to use is a spiralizer. We like to make zucchini noodles to use as a pasta swap! It comes with a bunch of different blades, so you can also use it to peel, slice and core.

Brian’s favorite attachment is the vegetable sheet cutter. This thing is crazy! You can turn vegetables and fruits into long, thin sheets. It is amazing how much you can get out of one apple or zucchini. We have used it to make zucchini sheets for veggie lasagna and we’re currently working on some recipes for the apple sheets!

Click here to view “KitchenAid Classic Series Stand Mixer” on Amazon

Click here to view “KitchenAid Spiralizer Plus Attachment” on Amazon

Click here to view “KitchenAid KSMSCA Vegetable Sheet Cutter” on Amazon

#5: Instant Pot

Instant Pots are all the rage right now. I put off buying one for quite a while because I thought it might blow up… The good news is, there are a ton of safety features to make the Instant Pot a lot safer than your standard pressure cooker. Still, please read and follow the instructions carefully for this one!

We mostly use this to cook dry beans and rice. It takes a bit of trial and error to figure out the exact ratios and times to cook at, but once you get it figured out, this thing is amazing! You can cook dry beans in way less time and without soaking them for hours. It produces perfectly cooked rice in just minutes. We are slowly switching over to using this to cook our beans instead of buying a million cans (we go through a LOT of beans)!

There are ton of other features we haven’t even tried! You can saute right in the pot and cook soups a lot faster. The one down side to the Instant Pot is the size isn’t great for making the HUGE batches of soups we normally make. We will keep experimenting and share more uses and recipes for this one in the future!

Click here to view “Instant Pot 6 Qt 7-in-1 Multi-Use Programmable Pressure Cooker” on Amazon

#4: Food Processor

Our food processor is another one we’ve had around since we got married. Now that we cook 99% of our meals at home, it is getting a lot more use.

Before we got our Vitamix, we used this instead of a blender. If you don’t have a super high speed blender, a food processor usually works a lot better than a standard blender. We used it to make hummus, nice cream and more. If you aren’t in the market to spend $300 on a high speed blender, a good food processor can go a long way in the kitchen for a lot less!

Now that we use our Vitamix for most of those jobs, the food processor has been great for shredding carrots for our weekly salad prep. It also came with a slicing blade that is great for slicing peppers and other veggies.

Click here to view “Cuisinart 9-Cup Food Processor” on Amazon

#3: Electric Kettles

When Brian wanted an electric kettle years ago, I thought he was crazy. You can just boil water in a pot or heat it up in the microwave, right?! I’ll admit, I was wrong. Having this electric kettle around has been great! Brian drinks a lot of iced tea, and he uses this at least once a day to boil water. We also use it while cooking. If you are water sautéing vegetables, it is nice to have a kettle of hot water ready in case you need extra.

Click here to view “Cuisinart 1.7-Liter Stainless Steel Cordless Electric Kettle” on Amazon

We also got a cute travel kettle! It comes in handy when you are staying in a hotel but aren’t sure what you’ll have access to. When we travel, we will take it along and maybe a few of Dr. McDougall’s Lower Sodium Soup Cups. This way, you always know you’ll have a back up option in the hotel room when you are traveling!

Click here to view “Gourmia GK360 Travel Foldable Electric Kettle” on Amazon

#2: Griddler

I will admit we have had this Griddler for several years and up until a few weeks ago, we didn’t get a ton of use out of it. Then we filmed our “Hash Brown Throwdown” and that all changed! We dusted off the Griddler and then started testing out other uses.

If you aren’t familiar with the Griddler, it is basically a cross between a griddle and a George Foreman grill. It comes with plates that can be reversed for either a flat cooking top or a grill. You can also fold it flat and use it like a traditional griddle or use it like a panini press/grill.

The other day we were making hash browns on it, and afterwards Brian threw on some fresh broccoli and cauliflower. It steamed them up perfectly and they didn’t stick! A few days later, he grilled some sliced tofu on it! It cooked in about 4-5 minutes and ended up super tasty with grill marks and all.

We will definitely be using this one way more often in the future. Be sure to follow us on Instagram, because I usually share any cooking experiments we are working on there 🙂

Click here to view “Cuisinart 5-in-1 Griddler” on Amazon

#1: Vitamix

If you made it this far, you are probably not surprised by our number one pick… the Vitamix! When we started out with our WFPB diet, everyone kept recommending that we get a high speed blender, but we put it off for a few months. Eventually we bit the bullet and decided to get this as a Christmas present to each other.

This thing works magic! We use it to make hummus at least once a week, and it turns out so much creamier than any other appliance ever has in the past. It also makes great smoothies and nice cream.

We decided to get an Ascent Series Vitamix because I really liked the smaller 8oz & 20oz cups you can purchase to go with them (these only work on Ascent Series blenders, so don’t purchase them for any other line of Vitamix). With those, you can make a single smoothie and drink it out of the same cup or make an even smaller batch of nice cream, salad dressing, etc. in the 8oz cups.

If you are in the market for one, I would suggest getting a refurbished one directly from Vitamix. The inspection process for their refurbished machines is top notch, and ours still came with a 5 year warranty. Also, the base is the only part that is refurbished – the blender cup, blade, etc. will all be brand new when you receive them.

There are a ton of other uses for the Vitamix that we haven’t even tapped into yet. I really want to try making my own almond milk, peanut butter, etc. Let us know what you use your Vitamix for in the comments below!

Click here to view “Vitamix A2500 Ascent Series Smart Blender” on Amazon

Click here to view “Vitamix Under Blade Scraper” on Amazon

NOTE: The blending cups below only work with the Ascent Series Vitamix blenders. If you have another model, they will not be compatible. Also, you only need one of the blades, so if you purchase the 8oz or 20oz “Starter Kit,” then you can just purchase extra cups of either size separately (without the entire kit).

Click here to view “Vitamix Ascent Series Blending Bowl Starter Kit” on Amazon

Click here to view “Vitamix Ascent Series Blending Cup Starter Kit” on Amazon

So there you have it! These are the Top 7 Small Appliances we have in our kitchen. Let us know in the comments section below what YOUR favorites are!