To avoid the crowd at markets and the hassle of queuing up at supermarkets, you can enjoy more relaxed moments by always keeping some healthy Food Ingredients at home. With the assistance of a few pieces of useful Kitchen Utensil, despite the bad weather or hectic schedule, you can easily manage to treat your guests a nice and nutritious meal at home.
Kitchen utensils
Chopping boards and knives
In your kitchen, you must keep at least 2 chopping boards and two knives: one set to treat raw foods and seafood, and one to treat cooked foods to prevent contamination of the foods. There are different choices of chopping boards made of different materials and in different shapes and colours. No matter which ones you have chosen, you must keep them thoroughly clean and dry after use each time. Those with cracks and cleaves due to long years of use should be displaced.
Crockery and eating utensils
- There is no need to keep too many eating utensils but just enough for the family on a day-to-day basis. Try to find those made of materials which are unbreakable, non-slippery and good in insulation of heat.
- It would be ideal to use crockery which can go direct into the kitchen appliances such as microwave stove, oven, dish-washer and the fridge. In this way, you don’t have to remember which is which and avoid unnecessary accidents.
- It is better to choose cups and mugs with handle for easy handling. Those with bigger handles provide better grip and are safer.
- It is not necessary for the crockery to come in one set. Choose those who interesting and easy-matching colours can add life to a dining table and stimulate the appetite of an elderly person who may not be able to eat a wide range of foods.
- Try to find bowls with a circular ring at the base of a bowl. The circular ring provides better insulation as the ring keeps the palm and fingers away from the body of the bowl. It also keeps bowls on a stack slightly apart, making it easier to take the bowls out one by one.
- A good-looking noodle bowl can also be used to serve food with heavy sauces.
- Deep plates prevent sauces from spilling over during serving.
- Different types and lengths of cutlery can be used to meet the needs of the individual members of the family.
Food Storage
All foods must be handled and stored properly once taken home. This is to keep the foods hygienic and safe and to maintain the food quality. Plastic wraps, ziplock bags and airtight containers are good partners to store different types of foods.
Refrigerator
A refrigerator is a must in a kitchen. It helps to maintain the quality of foods and prolong their usability. Based on the needs of the family choose one with the appropriate design and storage capacity. Always keep the temperature of the fridge at 4 degree C or below. For foods which are not to be consumed immediately, keep them in the freezer. Eggs, milk and vegetables should be kept in a fridge to prolong their usable periods. As for foods which require to be kept frozen, such as ice cream and frozen foods, the temperature of the freezer should be maintained at -18 degree C or below.
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Rice Cooker
Rice cooker is a very practicable cooking utensil. Apart from its usual function of cooking rice, it can be used to steam food while cooking rice without the need to watch the stove. In recent years, rice cookers come in all sorts of designs with various functions such as cooking congee and soups as well as baking cakes.
Water boiler
Water can help transfer the values of foods to different parts of the body and also help dispose wastes in the blood. We should drink 6 to 8 glasses of water each day. Water boiler is therefore a must in the kitchen to ensure that there is sufficient drinking water each day. It is safer to have a water boiler which can turn off automatically or produce an alarm sound when water boils.
Food preparation utensils
- Most elderly persons have difficulty holding up heavy things due to lack of strength in the arms and wrists. Pots and pans should not be too big or too heavy, but attention should also be given to the materials used to make these cooking utensils. Those made of poor quality materials can burn easily.
- Try to use
pot and pan which can be cleaned easily so as to save the prolonged washing and standing time which may lead to back pain. Also check the
coating used as the durability of the materials against scratching and the time for heating up may vary greatly
- Cooking utensils like turners, soup ladles, should come with a heat resistant handle to prevent burning in the hand.
- Pots and pans in recent years come in all kinds of shapes and designs and in glamorous colours. They can be used for serving on the table apart from cooking. Cookery books on cooking with a single pot, like one-pot meal, one-pot pasta, are becoming very popular in overseas countries. All you need to do is to put all food ingredients into the pot and use the same pot for serving. It is both good-looking and also most convenient. However, the materials used to make this type of pots are usually quite heavy and we must expect to use a bit more strength.
