The Hardest Working Tools: The Frugal Luxury of Double-Duty Appliances

⏲ Grab a coffee! 4 min. read.

Whenever I go thrifting I always check the kitchen section. What amazes me is the bounty of discarded small kitchen appliances. So many of them have single uses, and I suppose folks grow tired of having to store those single-use gadgets.

It’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking a well-appointed kitchen needs every gadget and appliance in the book (along with the depleted bank account all of those come with).

I, too, have bought a few specialty doo-dads. I have a specific penchant for unique waffle irons, for example.

But I do try to keep my appliance armory on the slim side due to limited storage space.

What I’ve realized is this: true kitchen resourcefulness relies on exploiting the multi-taskers.

What I want is a kitchen that is appropriately equipped with the single-use appliances that I truly want, but mostly filled with those reliable, high-quality tools that gladly pull double duty.

Sasun Bughdaryan on Unsplash

Not only do I aim for a streamlined kitchen set-up, by I also save money by owning what I really want and need. That’s stewardship of both the kitchen size I have and the bank account that is not unlimited.

With a little creativity, we can repurpose the kitchen tools we already own. Here are a few double-duty tools that I think deserve highlighting:

The Hidden Value of a Bread Machine: A bread machine can bake loaves of bread with little effort, but as you likely already know, it’s also great for mixing and kneading the dough needed for rolls, pizzas, burger/sausage buns, Stromboli wraps, and many more bread products. Did you know you can also use yours for making jam, baking a quick bread loaf, baking a traditional meatloaf, or kneading semolina pasta dough (semolina requires serious kneading)?

A bread machine has two helpful features that allow it to perform all of these additional tasks, the ability to mix and knead, and the timed cooking.

The Multi Facets of My Humble Food Processor: We all know the chopping and puréeing virtues of the food processor. But it’s also great for shredding cheese in bulk to freeze and use later (pizzas here I come!), pulsing pie pastry for flakey crusts or biscuit dough for light baking powder biscuits, kneading yeast-raised pizza dough (if you have the dough blade -- looks like a short and stumpy plastic blade), grinding chopped meat (raw or cooked), making bread crumbs, slicing potatoes (if feed tube is wide enough), and kneading egg and semolina pasta dough.

What the food processor has going for it is it’s high speed and the shallow bowl, allowing processing of dry ingredients, as opposed to a pitcher blender that requires a certain amount of liquids to create the vortex that pulls ingredients down to the blade. Using the stem and disk attachment on the food processor and utilizing the feed tube, the speed of the processor allows for smooth shredding and slicing.

A Picnic Cooler’s Secret Life: Not an appliance, but in one way it works like one — my picnic cooler. In addition to keeping food and beverages cool, I also use it as an incubator for making yogurt. It keeps a water bath for the jars of inoculated milk at a steady warm temperature for hours.

A cooler's insulated sides, bottom, and lid hold warm foods warm or cold foods cold for several hours.

Max Jenssen on Unsplash

There is a unique kind of satisfaction that comes from making our existing tools work just a little bit harder for us. It reminds us that a complete, highly functional kitchen isn't built on constant consumer upgrades; it’s built on resourcefulness, creativity, and the simple joy of using what we already have to its absolute best advantage.

Your Turn (Whenever You Find This Post This Week!): Our comment section is officially open as a community roundtable, and I want to learn from your kitchen wisdom! What is the number one appliance or tool in your kitchen that you successfully use for a completely different task than what it was originally intended for?

• Are you team Small Appliance Hack (like using a coffee grinder for whole spices)?
• Are you team Bakeware/Cookware Twist (like using a cast-iron skillet as a baking stone)?
• Or do you prefer to keep your appliances simple and rely on classic hand tools?

I'll be checking back in over the next few days to update the post with your best suggestions, so please pull up a chair and add your favorite double-duty secret to our list below!