The best kitchen gadgets for eating healthy

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Eating healthy can be a challenge, but it doesn’t have to be if you have the right kitchen tools to help you prep good meals.
From a spiralizer and pair of herb scissors to pineapple corer and avocado knife, we’ve rounded up a few essentials that everyone should have in their kitchen.

In a world of takeout, fast food, and nuke-em-in-the-microwave meals, you might be spending less and less time in your kitchen. And that’s a shame, because not only does home cooking done right taste a lot better than prepackaged food or meals bought on the run, it’s frequently healthier and more economical, as well.

If you need some encouragement to get back in the kitchen, we’re here to help. We’ve rounded up nine kitchen gadgets that admittedly you could live without, but you probably won’t want to. Each one helps to make your food prep or cooking time a little easier, a little faster, a little healthier, or a little bit more fun. Best of all, none of them are expensive or complicated.

These gadgets are handy tools to bring back the joy of cooking and keep you healthy. Many of them inspire you to eat more fresh veggies, herbs, and fruit, while others help you prep meals with fewer oils and carbs.

Here are the best kitchen gadgets for eating healthy you can buy:

Best gadget for fresh veggie noodles: 5-blade Spiralizer
Best gadget for quick salads: EZ Salad Cutting Bowl
Best gadget for healthy baking: Velesco Silicone Baking Mat
Best gadget for fresh herbs: Jenaluca Herb Scissors
Best gadget for easy straining: Kitchen Gizmo Snap ‘N Strain Strainer
Best gadget for fresh pineapple: Super Z Outlet Corer
Best gadget for quick zest: Raniaco Zester
Best gadget for fuss-free guacamole: OXO Avocado Tool
Best gadget for easy meat shredding: Bear Paws Shredder Claws

Keep scrolling to read more about each kitchen gadget, to see which ones are best for you.A spiralizer
Spiralizer

The Spiralizer 5-Blade Vegetable Slicer turns humble veggies and fruits into noodles, curly toppings for salads, and healthy garnishes for any dish.

Zoodles and other veggie noodles are one of the hottest new trends in the kitchen, and it’s no wonder. They taste good, provide the base for whatever tasty sauce you’d like to pour on top, and pack a powerful punch of nutrients without wheat or other grains you might want to avoid. You can buy pre-spiralized zoodles in many markets these days, but they are expensive. Save your dollars, and do your own spiralizing instead.

Just choose one of the five cutlery-grade stainless-steel blade plates included with the Spiralizer 5-Blade Vegetable Slicer, clamp your veggie or fruit into position, and turn the crank. Voila, you’ve got thin curls of veggie deliciousness that are perfect for stir-frying, soups, salads, pasta dishes, bowl lunches, or just about anything else you can cook.

The spiralizer comes with five different blades, and each one produces a slightly different thickness, twist, or shred. The spiralizer holds tight to your countertop with suction-cup feet, cleans up in the dishwasher, and works beautifully to spiralize just about any fruit or veggie that’s firm, including zucchini, sweet potatoes, yellow squash, carrots, ginger, broccoli stalks, apples, pears, and cabbage.

Pros: A great way to add interest to vegetables and cut back on wheat and other carb consumption, includes three free recipe eBooks

Cons: You might eventually tire of the zoodle trend

Buy the Spiralizer 5-Blade Vegetable Slicer at Amazon for $24.98

A salad cutting bowl
EZ Life Products

The EZ Salad Cutting Bowl takes all the fussy chopping and slicing out of salad prep so you can eat salad more often.

If too many of your lunches come from vending machines or drive-thru burger joints, you can healthy-up your diet by choosing salad at least a couple times per week. The EZ Salad Cutting Bowl makes it easy to mix up a great salad quickly.

Just add your favorite mix of veggies to the EZ Salad Cutting Bowl – lettuce, carrots, cucumbers, cabbage, celery, tomatoes, or any others you like – rinse them right in the bowl, close the bowl’s base, turn, slice through the bowl’s slits, turn again, slice once more, and then open up the cutting bowl and enjoy your chopped salad. You can make fruit salad, as well.

The EZ Salad Cutting Bowl is made of sturdy, BPA-free plastic, and easily washes in the dishwasher.

Pros: An easy way to make tasty salads or chop veggies for use in other dishes

Cons: You’ll need a knife long enough to reach across the entire bowl

Buy the EZ Salad Cutting Bowl on Amazon for $15.99

Some silicon baking sheets
Velasco

With the Velesco Silicone Baking Mats, stuck-on baked goods, meats, or vegetables are a thing of the past, and you’ll cut down on oils and fats, as well.

I use my aluminum baking sheets quite a bit, and not only for baking. Sheet-pan meals, heating up frozen foods, cooking bacon in the oven, and toasting seeds are all fairly common activities in my household. Scrubbing the sheets, however, was never much fun. It took me a while to discover the joys of silicone baking mats, but once I did, there was no turning back.

I’ve had my set of two Velesco Silicone Baking Mats for a year or so now, and despite frequent use, they are still unstained and have no signs of wear or tear. They fit nicely in my 16×12-inch baking sheets, and wash-up quickly with just a swirl in the sink and a little dishwashing soap.

I also use them to line my roasting pans; they fit nearly perfectly. No more cooking-oil sprays — which leave impossible-to-remove buildup on your cookware — no more soaking and scrubbing to remove cooked-on food, no more greasing the pan before I use it. Food also cooks evenly and removes easily from the food-grade silicone material.

The half-sheet baking mats are also perfect for rolling out cookie dough or kneading bread, rolling meatballs, or making candy. Go ahead and put the mats in your dishwasher, microwave, oven, or freezer and they will come out unscathed. They are also affordable when compared to the trendy Silpat brand.

Pros: No need for grease, butter, or oil on your baking sheets or roasting pans, and foods won’t stick, even if burned

Cons: None to speak of

Buy the Velasco Silicone Baking Mats on Amazon for $12.95 for a set of two

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