Time Saving Kitchen Gadgets and Cooking Tools

I love to cook, but often at the end of a long day the absolute last thing I want to do is spend an hour or more making a meal. Unfortunately, I also really like to eat home cooked meals. So what do I do? I have made a virtual study of all the time-saving cooking implements and cooking devices and cooking tools out there, and many of them have been life savers!

One of my favorite things to cook is soup. I make all kinds of soup, and almost all of them start with the same basics: diced onion, diced carrot and diced celery. Sometimes, the dicing is the most time-consuming part of making a homemade soup fro scratch. Make the dicing go faster, and you can have a delicious, healthy homemade soup in 20 minutes. My secret? A chopping tool that really works. I was skeptical when I bought mine from Williams-Sonoma, but I absolutely love this thing. I cannot making a soup or a chili without it. It's also great for gazpacho, a pineapple-mango salsa, or any salsa really. Thing of a dish that demands a lot of slicing, chopping, or dicing, and a counter-top manual food chopper will be your new best friend.

Whether you are looking for a light, space-saving and easy way to mix up pancakes on a camping trip or a triathlete who heads out early for grueling 60-mile bike rides, you will love this Blender Ball bottle that quickly and easy mixes anything with a simple shake. This bottle has a whisk inside it, over which you pour the ingredients for your whey protein shake, your classic vinaigrette salad dressing, or even your pancake mix. Give it a shake and voila!

I use my immersion blender to quickly scramble raw eggs, to puree soup without the hassle or mess of transferring it in batches to a blender, to whip up a smoothie or milkshake or to finish a sauce. This one handheld device takes the place of myriad kitchen tools, and spares your wrist and the dishwasher in the process.

Set It and Forget It. You know the refrain; now you can know that this countertop rotisserie really works. You can have a whole fresh, spit roasted chicken in under an hour. It's easy to clean, and a great way to cook meats in a diet-friendly way without extra fats and oils.

Don't feel like hauling out the Cuisinart to grate cheese? Grab a Microplane coarse grater. These are hands down the finest, fastest traditional graters available. They are so sharp, you can grate faster with less pressure and thus reduce fatigue.

Who doesn't love rich and creamy mashed potatoes? And how often does one want to go through the wrist-numbing hassle of whipping up smooth mashed potatoes? Mashed potatoes can be an everyday food with the help of a potato ricer, which makes short work of boiled potatoes and promises consistently smooth mashed potatoes with little effort.

It is embarrassing how long it can sometimes take to get that stubborn paper wrapper off a plump clove of garlic. Most of the time I end up mashing to garlic clove with the side of my knife because I can't manage to get that paper off, and I hate when my hands reek so strongly of garlic I can still smell it the next day no matter how many times I wash my hands. Enter the garlic peeler. This funny little rubber tool really works, saving me endless frustration. Just insert a paper-clad garlic clove and roll the tube on the counter. The garlic paper miraculously falls way.

And while we're at it, a garlic press is another of the most useful, time-saving kitchen gadgets ever invented, though it's hard to imagine any real kitchen that doesn't already have a garlic press.