Author of How to Prep When You’re Broke and Bloom Where You’re Planted online course
Do you keep manual kitchen tools on hand so that you can cook from scratch, even when the lights go out? Every prepper’s kitchen could potentially benefit from these items. Some of them are like the ones our great-grandmothers used, while others are more closely related to a manual version of modern items.
Here is a list of kitchen tools that you may want to add. I use several of these right now and have for years.
Chopper
I have this manual food chopper and use it regularly. It makes fast work of things like onions, garlic, and other veggies and saves me so much time during canning season. I also use it when I need a lot of a particular chopped item, and when making fresh salsa. It’s an inexpensive addition to your prepper kitchen that can save you a lot of time chopping, dicing, and mincing.
Slicer
A good quality mandoline like this one can be incredibly useful when you need to slice things uniformly and thinly. I use mine particularly when I’m dehydrating produce to get thin, even slices.
Food mill
Canners will recognize a food mill. It helps you to get a nice, smooth puree for things like marinara or apple sauce. You can also use it for potatoes and even for baby food if you have a tiny human in the house. I find a food mill to be invaluable. I love this one because it’s ergonomic and easy to use.
Rotary beater
I still have and use my granny’s rotary beater. The listing calls this item an egg beater but it works well for baking too. Any place you’d use a handheld mixer, you can also use a rotary beater. You’ll have to put some muscle behind it but this will help with batters, frostings, and mixing. Sure, you can use a fork but I find that a beater incorporates my ingredients much better.
Mortar and pestle
I find a mortar and pestle to be invaluable. It’s a great tool for macerating herbs and also for grinding dried ones. This has both culinary and medicinal uses – I use it when getting herbs ready for a decoction or an infusion, and also for getting the most flavor out of my kitchen spices before adding them to a dish. I’ve also used it to grind up medication to hide in my pets’ food, and you could do the same for humans who perhaps cannot swallow a pill. This is a really nice one that is a useful size.
Can opener
Do you have a manual can opener? Do you have two? (One is none and two is one!) This one is very high quality and is also easy to use. I’ve had a few that were really difficult to crank, but the Gorilla Grip is my absolute favorite. This is a place you really don’t want to cheap out, particularly since preppers often rely heavily on commercially canned goods.
Manual meat grinder
Here’s another place you don’t want to cheap out: with a meat grinder. A meat grinder is a great way to make a tough, unpleasant cut of meat more palatable. I’ve tried the cheap $30-40 dollar ones and they break quickly, do a poor job, and are difficult to crank. This is the one that I swear by. It’s easy to assemble and disassemble for cleaning and works extremely well. Yes, it’s a bit of a physical workout, but not nearly as much as the cheap versions.
French press or pour-over coffee maker
If you want to be able to have your morning java long after the power goes out, there are two really simple options that only require your coffee and boiling water: the French press and the pour-over coffee maker. I’ve had this French press for years and always used it as my backup. But recently, my daughter got this pour-over coffee maker with a permanent filter. (I guess pour-over is trendy now?)
Both of these make a great cup of coffee, and really, it’s up to your personal preference what kind to get. French press is less filtered and makes a stronger, bolder cup of coffee, so if you prefer a blonde roast or a lighter cup, you’ll want the pour-over version. If you get your coffee in whole-bean form, you’ll also want a coffee grinder. I love the vintage look of this one: the reviews are great and the price is right.
Pasta maker
Do you like pasta? Do you have hundreds of pounds of wheat put aside? If the answer to these questions is yes, then you might benefit from a manual pasta maker. It’ll save you a lot of effort when you can run your dough through this instead of rolling it out and carefully slicing it to the right size. Not only does it work well for noodles, but you can also use it for making dumplings and pierogie.
Tortilla press
I got my cast iron tortilla press in Mexico, but this one is very, very similar. It’s the very best way to get a nice thin tortilla to fry up. It’s nearly impossible to roll the dough thin enough, and that’s extremely time-consuming. Tortillas are another great way to use your stash of grains, and they are quick to make with a press. Ladies who I knew when I lived in Mexico would spend a few hours every weekend making fresh tortillas for the week ahead. Once you’ve had homemade tortillas, you’ll never want to go back to storebought.
Wheat mill
Grinding wheat is hard work. In good times, I would always recommend using an electric wheat grinder because the job is time-consuming and takes a lot of muscle. But if the power is out and you want to work your way through those wheatberries, you need a proper grinder.
I’ve tried numerous different brands, and I always go back to the Wondermill Junior. There’s no other grinder around that does such a good job and really does so as efficiently as possible. Yes, there are cheaper ones, but you get what you pay for. If you stash grains in their whole form, you will need a grinder to make them ready for cooking. You can grind basically any grain with this device, and it also includes an auger to make masa and nut butter.
If the Wondermill is too spendy, this is the next best choice.
What are some manual kitchen tools you recommend?
Do you have manual tools for your kitchen? Do you have the ones listed here? Are there others you’d recommend? And do you use them now or are you saving them for power outage situations?
Let’s discuss it in the comments section.
About Daisy
Daisy Luther is a coffee-swigging, adventure-seeking, globe-trotting blogger. She is the founder and publisher of three websites. 1) The Organic Prepper, which is about current events, preparedness, self-reliance, and the pursuit of liberty; 2) The Frugalite, a website with thrifty tips and solutions to help people get a handle on their personal finances without feeling deprived; and 3) PreppersDailyNews.com, an aggregate site where you can find links to all the most important news for those who wish to be prepared. Her work is widely republished across alternative media and she has appeared in many interviews.
Daisy is the best-selling author of 5 traditionally published books, 12 self-published books, and runs a small digital publishing company with PDF guides, printables, and courses at SelfRelianceand Survival.com You can find her on Facebook, Pinterest, Gab, MeWe, Parler, Instagram, and Twitter.
USA Grown and manufactured hard maple countertop cutting boards. Economical, come in every size imaginable, last forever and have excellent antibacterial properties.
While to many folks it may seem counter intuitive to choose a wooden surface that can’t be heat sterilized over a poly surface that can, the proof is in the science. Hard maple boards use capillary action to absorb bad bugs from the cutting surface pores. Once bacteria is trapped inside the wood’s cells it suffocates, cut-off from the oxygen it needs to survive.
Per square foot they are cheaper than poly also.
As long as you’re at it buy some good knives. I like Dexter knives personally, good steel, easy to keep an edge or rehone and are economically priced. Oh, yea, and a meat cleaver. Something, say, in the 6-8 and one in the 12-14 oz range.
Tools to sharpen the knives.
A good pair of kitchen shears, too.
Potato masher, grater, waffle maker, dish rack, tea kettle, just a few items to make life easier.
A set of high quality working kitchen knives. At a minimum include an 8″ or 10″ kitchen knife, a boning knife, a fillet knife, a paring knife, a good heavy cleaver.
While each can set you back over $100 with some as much as $300, it is a worthwhile investment. And don’t confuse these with using a hatchet, K-Bar and other survival tools. A good set of working knives for food alone will be well worth the investment over time.
And properly care for, will last the first owner’s lifetime and be used by two more generations.
Dutch oven and pans that can be used over fire.
A plus. I loved the ones with feet and a rim on the edge from Boy Scouts 1970.
I already have all but 3. We don’t eat grains of any sort, so there is no need for the grain mill, the tortilla press or the pasta maker. But when we did eat grains, I always hand cut my pasta, so no real need for that anyway. With a wood cookstove, a great set of cast iron and manual tools you can do a huge amount of kitchen work.
Special kitchen shears for cutting up butchered chicken. Maybe other tools for processing your own chicken and meats.
Zester, pastry blender, cork bottle opener, whisks of different sizes, pizza peal, chinos, good set of kitchen knives and knives for butchery.
Chinos? Slacks? I think it is a local term I don’t understand.
I think it’s a chinois – a conical strainer on legs with a pestle.
I also have a manual press for things like getting water out of spinach. I use it a lot more often than I thought I would!
A good manual knife sharpener that will get the right edge for your kitchen and butchery knives. As far as coffee makers, the two mentioned are good, but you can also get a rather old-fashioned, stainless steel percolator for using on the woodstove or a fire grate. If there’s no electricity and you must resort to all manual kitchen tools, then water is probably not running. A small hand water pump on your kitchen counter could be a real timesaver. You could be pumping up water from a container in your basement or even under your sink. They will usually pump 20 feet from the water source. This has traditionally been a common feature in Amish kitchens.
While the Wonder Mill sounds entirely capable … back in the Y2K era I picked up a Country Living kitchen countertop grain mill that could be operated either by an electric motor or by your muscle power. At that time the manual cranking radius was too short to be comfortable so I handmade a longer cranking arm from a piece of oak which saved me ever bothering with an electric motor. The degree of fineness you get for producing flour from whatever grain (or combination of grain types) can be easily adjusted. It’s worth knowing that this works even when you choose grain types without gluten. I included the optional bean auger so that I could turn dried beans into flour (which can be made edible in only three minutes of boiling in water — saving enormously on stored fuel in a long term power outage) .. and can turn one or multiple nut types into nut butter (hint: not only peanuts).
There are more choices in the can opener category to be aware of. There are side cutting can openers (only non-electric from what I’ve seen) that smoothly cut into the side of the rolled top (and sometimes the bottom as well) to leave a smooth edge that won’ cut your fingers and can produce a reusable lid that usually fits perfectly so you can save some fraction of the contents back in your fridge and use that lid to keep various food aromas from mixing. Only occasionally do I find a can’s geometry that’s not quite compatible with the side cutting can opener.
It’s also worth realizing that such cans with safe edges and reusable lids once cleaned and dried can make excellent storage containers for all kinds of small parts and things. Since cans are not see-through like glass jars it’s a good idea to label the contents with a stick-on label or a Sharpie. If there’s any risk of such cans being knocked over with a resulting contents spill, it’s not difficult to use a tiny magnet inside the can at the underside edge of that lid to prevent such spillage.
Store marketers have badly concealed the wonderful side cutting capability by labeling such can openers as “safety” can openers, eg., which doesn’t begin to hint at their excellent capabilities I’ve discussed above. While I have not tested every brand on the market my experience has been excellent (and many years long, and counting) with both the Good Cook brand and the Farberware brand. In contrast the Walmart house brand “Mainstay” was a pitiful disaster with the molded plastic cranking handle disintegrating after only a couple of months of use.
I find that one of my most frequently used knives is a rectangular stainless steel Chinese cleaver (size #4) that can easily slice almost anything, can act like a shovel to transfer freshly sliced goodies to a cooking pot, and can even use the handle end to break down frozen veggies into smaller pieces while still in their store packages so the smaller pieces will cook a little faster and blend better into a combination of other such goodies in the cookpot.
I’ve also learned (there’s an excellent group of cookbooks on this topic) that learning how to cook over rising steam is worthwhile for several reasons. 1, It takes very little water in a pot to generate enough steam for however long your recipe needs. 2. Steamed food does not leave the sticky residue mess that frying et al takes a lot more time and effort to scrub off. 3. In a power outage (short or long term) the same steaming process with the same cookpots could quickly be transfered to a camp stove, a rocket stove, or other such emergency burner. 4. Steam cooking can even work with dirty water. Even in cases where there been VOCs (volatile organic compounds) contaminating local water (think widespread flooding examples), it only takes a little time of boiling for such contamination to boil away so the rising steam thereafter can then be cleanly and safely used for steam cooking. So steam cooking has several non-obvious advantage from a prepper’s perspective. So it’s a very good idea to acquire (or make) enough cookpots (with the needed bottom holes) that are of a compatible size to use over the boiling pots below. My experience with the Farberware product line has been excellent. Some of their pot sizes that come with such bottom holes can work well. Others especially the smaller sizes don’t have those holes but respond very well to having such holes drilled into them, whether by electric drill or a drill press. One neat way is to use a larger pot with holes as a pattern, lay it on top of the pot to be drilled, and use a Sharpie to mark very uniformly where all those holes are to be drilled.
–Lewis
Lewis: Don’t you think using contaminated water might transfer toxic vapors to your food?
Regarding the reasonable question about using contaminated water: Years ago when I was checking out the literature about distilling water to remove every possible kind of contamination so you would finally have safely drinkable water as the result …the discussion I saw was about nasty chemicals that would behave in predictable ways. It was explained that nasty stuff (like VOCs) that would boil off (ie., rise and go away with the beginning steam from boiling) would quickly vanish into the air after the first few minutes of boiling. The result was that after process … all remaining water that would be turned into steam (to be later cooled into drinkable water) would be clean — with anything nasty that’s left in the boiling pot would remain there and never go up with any remaining steam — making the then-cooled steam to water safe to drink.
The only difference between that process and the cooking in rising steam process I described is that there is no need to cool down the remaining rising steam because it does its job of safely steam-cooking while still hot … but only after any volatile chemicals have been allowed to first boil off and away. That’s why I have some confidence in the steam-cooking process — as long as any questionable water is given a little time to boil off any bad stuff first before putting your cookpot over the remaining rising steam — even while any remaining bad stuff that was never going to boil off … stays in the bottom of the boiling pot.
–Lewis
PS: something I forgot to mention earlier is the usefulness of adding some white vinegar and some blue shop towel paper to one’s stockpile. In situations where water is very scarce with the need to conserve it whenever possible ..a spray bottle with white vinegar plus some blue shop towels can be used instead of dish water for washing dishes, cookpots, utensils, glassware, etc. There a good video on YouTube that demos that process.
Adding to Lewis, stackable bamboo steam baskets.
Another GREAT article Daisy! I’ll Amazon the whole lot!
You might be better served watching estate/garage sales for made in USA items. I kept all made in USA kitchen items from my grandmother – food mill included.
I have a chopper and a slicer but I call mine a chef’s knife, lol. I definitely would like to get the egg beater but I’ll wait to inherit mine from my mom. It’s vintage. I usually wash dishes by hand so the dishwasher is just a really fancy drying rack. I have a mandolin that I never use because it’s a knuckle killer.But the mortar and pestle, cheese grater, potato ricer, manual coffee grinder and french press are all on board. Barring some kind of EMP, the rest of my equipment will run off the Jackery. I have a cream separator that I wouldn’t want to not be able to use since I love my butter.
A Japanese Suribachi mortar and pestle. It has a scored surface that really shreds and grinds easily, easy to clean. A slow cooker, even though it consumes electricity, is a boon to those who don’t have the time to cook after working all day, the meal is ready. Just have to set it up in the morning. Good cast iron skillet and dutch oven with a cover, feet and a bail handle. A decent hand crank coffee grinder just in case the electric goes out, its the only easy way to grind coffee beans without losing your mind. Kitchen shears that come apart for cleaning. A good, amply sized cutting board. An all inclusive cookbook certainly helps also.
A good way to conserve fuel is by using a “fire-less cooker” aka a hay box.
It’s especially good for soups or stews.
It’s an insulated box into which you place a covered pot containing your soup or stew, which you have previously brought to a good boil for about 15 or 20 minutes.
You leave it in this insulated container for hours, while it cooks.
Good video about this on the Provident Prepper YouTube channel.
I have also seen modern versions on Amazon.
Very good for times when fuel is hard to come by.
Another device to look into is a solar oven. Again, check out the Provident Prepper YouTube channel.
There are several good British documentaries on YouTube, like Tales From The Green Valley and The Edwardian Farm, which goes into how people survived life without electricity.
Just search for the name: Ruth Goodman
on YouTube, as she is in a whole series of these documentaries.
Absolutely fascinating and inspiring.
Up until the advent of electricity, people had survived with fairly simple technologies and tools.
It was more difficult than our modern times, but doable.
I think we modern folk can do it too, if need be, by acquiring the skills and tools that we need.
I forgot, another really good YouTube channel is The Townsends, which demonstrates 18th century methods of cooking and baking and even construction of log cabins and outdoor ovens and also campfire cooking.
I will add a few comments to the excellent suggestions by Lewis:
First of all, that Chinese cleaver style knife is not a cleaver. It has a fine blade designed for slicing, and it does an excellent job on that. I keep mine as sharp as I know how. Use it as a cleaver, and you can ruin the blade.
One advantage that Lewis didn’t mention for steaming is that you’ll never over heat what you bake. Steaming is an automatic temperature regulator. You won’t get that hard crust on steamed bread, that some people love and some (like me) hate. Steaming may take a little longer than baking bread, but on the other hand I’ve never burned my bread.
There are aluminum steamers available at Asian grocery stores of several different sizes. Aluminum melts as fairly low temperatures, so make sure you don’t allow it to boil dry. Other than that, they can last years. They can be used on stove tops, camping stoves, rocket wood stoves, etc.
One thing I use for mixing is a couple of chopsticks. If they are held about an inch apart, they do a better job of beating eggs and mixing liquids than a fork. The fork’s tines are too close together.
I have a grain grinder from somewhere south of the border (all the writing on it is in Spanish) and have ground sizes from millet to garbanzo beans in it. It works best when I feed it slowly instead of dumping everything in it in a pile. For some strange reason, two cups of wheat berries yield three cups of flour.
I have a mini wok, 9″ in diameter, just about the right size for cooking for a single person or a couple. It can be used for all the same uses as a regular sized one, but it’s so light and handy I use it regularly. It takes the place of several pans.
I have pint sized (two cups) thermos bottles, wide mouth, that I use to cook grains, most commonly rice and oats. Bring the rice in a pan with water to a boil, then transfer to the thermos, and it finishes cooking in a few hours. The same with oats. I tried beans without grinding them first, but they need more high temperatures to finish.
One final note about cooking over a fire—coat the bottom of the pan with soap, I’ve tried both liquid dish soap and bar hand soap, afterwards almost all the soot just rinses off.
Thanks so much for the tip about the dish soap. That’s one thing that cooking over a fire have always irked me.
Has not have.
A hammer is essential for the kitchen, IMO.
A hammer does not break, requires no electricity, no need to replace worn out parts, needs almost no counter space, can be carried easily to and from areas of need, can tenderize meat, break down things like whole spices, peppercorns, cardamom, nuts, and grains like wheat groats.
And, a hammer can be an effective weapon.
It can also be used for building projects and prying off boards and lids/covers, etc.
There are many other uses for a good solid hammer that are too numerous to name here.
And hammers are relatively inexpensive even if you purchase a sturdy, high quality hammer.
Can also be used to break down into powder, coffee beans, hard beans and hard grains.
I have a manual coffee bean grinder.
Great ideas, especially the can openers. I have several manual ones that need replaced. I went full on traditional and purchased a bamboo steamer with a steam ring. I love good veggies and fish and it should be kinder to asparagus. I may spend the fiatbux and get a cleaver. I used my grandmother’s for years, but it is now over 100 yro so it needs to be decoration. The oak handle is worn and the blade needs re-honed. Any suggestions on a newbie?
Make friends with those who have been through hard times. Our elder folk has so much wisdom & knowledge & soon all that will be gone forever, both will benefit from this.
On You tube War time kitchen. They show how to cook a complete meal in a double broiler & so much more. How things were done in WW2.
We have a coffee maker that you pull the bottom off & it has a basket that you put the coffee in then you put it back together.You pour the hot water in the top pot & it filters down in to the bottom pot.
A old cookbook. They used little ingredients or better yet if you can get granny’s recipes box.
Get a camp style oven, You can put it over a flame or on a wood burner stove. Now you can bake your food. A good oven & meat thermometer. You don’t want to “guess” you meat is thoroughly cooked.
A good water filter or how to make 1. Books on how to do thing’s like herbs & natural med’s , how to garden, to take care of you’re live stock & any other how to you might need. Canning supplies .Good tools that use no power. A good sewing machine.
A good community ,that is so important as non of us can do it all & alone.
If you have a solar oven, make sure you have pans that will actually fit on the shelf that is inside of it. Dark pans are best for the transfer of heat. The non-stick bakeware and dark enameled steel pans are best. Definitely get one of those small black speckled enameled oval roasting pans with a lid that fits perfectly on the shelf. I got mine at Walmart. But no cast iron, as the shelf will not support that kind of weight when it is filled with food.
—I bought a manual food processor years ago from Amazon that included pieces to switch out in the lid for slicing and grating into the bowl. They run about $25 and cut down on how many items you have on hand.
—Make sure you have cookware with metal handles that won’t melt over a fire, whether it is cast iron, stainless steel, aluminum, or enameled steel. Also make sure you have some long-handled utensils (spoons, spatulas, ladles, etc.) for cooking over a fire without getting your hands burnt by being to close to the flames. If camping stores don’t have what you are looking for, check out restaurant supply stores.
—A manual pressure cooker is good for gas/propane stoves. They usually come with plastic handles, so they’re not so good over a campfire. They might work on a wood burning cook stove if you are careful with positioning the handle.
—We have stocked up on paper plates, bowls, and cups (not foam or plastic) to save water when it comes time to clean dishes. These can be burned in your burn barrel without turning into a melted mess like foam and plastic would. You can have each person reuse their own cup over and over again, but having paper ones on hand is good for the times when there is sickness and you want clean, disposable cups. Lining bakeware and dutch ovens when baking with parchment paper also helps in the cleanup end of things.
Cutco knives, shears, & vegetable peeler
Nothing works better for meal prep! Lifetime guarantee too!
Love Cutco. I have some I inherited from my mother. Including an original ergonomic kitchen cleaver. Even though I’m practically next door, they are salty in price.
You have good taste in blades. Tip of the hat to you.
A copy of Betty Crocker’s Outdoor Cook Book (1961) ………for those who need to learn or re-learn this skill from an easy to read book with complete with pictures.
Good list. I have all plus a few from grandma who was given her grandmothers furniture and kitchen tools when she married in 1897. I also have solar power in my home so my electric flour mill and others things still work for me.
I read through the comments. I have many of the additional items listed. I keep a clean kitchen hammer in a kitchen drawer. I have used it with an old heavy-duty knife to cut frozen food. I have a bamboo steamer set, Wok, cast iron in many ways, old pressure cookers with wooden handles, a Coffee grinder, meat grinders, percolators, good knives from my restaurant days, a cleaver, and more. Instead of a hay box, I learned to use old well-worn quilts wrapped around a Dutch oven to keep food cooking for hours. I also have some very heavy old pans with lids that would work and a Dutch oven. I even have a plow disk welded and ground smooth in the middle with two handles on the sides. It is good for cooking over any fire and can make a lot of cooked food. They are prevalent in New Mexico. I can beat anything with a good whisk but I also have a couple of old egg beaters I grew up with from Mom’s kitchen. I love good tools- kitchen or shop, and good books. I have many books on natural medicines, foraging, older “scratch” cookbooks, crafts, sewing, art, and woodworking books, and most of my old Bible College books too. I don’t work on the vehicles much anymore but I still have my tools but a son may have many of them soon. I have a pounder for T posts for fencing, yard and garden tools in a good variety, a wire feed welder and gauges and hoses for Oxy acetylene welding or cutting, a box of about 100 drawer glides, and several boxes containing premade drawers that came from a cabinet shop that went out of business and two more boxes of cabinet hinges and pulls. A leather sewing machine still sits in the boxes for the machine and its motor. I need to build a heavy table for it. I’ve been playing with my lathe making small bowls from native wild olive wood. I’d like to figure out a way to run that and some power saws with pullies from a single solar-powered motor. If not then I need a few more good deep-cycle batteries or that rebuilt main battery in my old Prius. I bought it to play with as a power source. It runs off an electric motor once started. That could be done easily enough with just a starter and a recharged battery from its own circuitry.
It is good to keep this old brain working. LOL, But the old body needs to rest a bit now and then,
I have a hand pump from Walmart to pump water from the round-necked 5-gallon bottles and a well pitcher pump good for a 25-foot lift. I’m thinking about setting it up to pump the 330-gallon wire-caged containers I have 6 of.
clergylady, you never cease to inspire me.
The mention of washing dinner plates above reminded me of something I only recently learned. To save on dish water needed and scrubbing effort it is apparently common in Mexico to cut off a plate sized piece from a roll of clear plastic to lay over the plate before putting any food on it.
That would make a useful addition to the practice of using a spray bottle of white vinegar plus some blue paper shop towels to wash cookpots and dinner ware to help minimize the need for what might be scarce water.
–Lewis
I love my Amazon basics griddle I use on the bbq. I keep only three propane tanks, but I can link to the 250 gallon tank. I do not keep the big one linked up so it does not get left on by accident. Propane is my realistic off the grid. Tom
Double and triple up on the can openers. I have found it difficult to find a long lasting unit. A phillips head screwdriver to tighten the head helps. Along with a small sharpener and a bit of oil on the blades help also.
For us old folks…it helps to have a kitchen tool that facilitates the opening of jars. Add a sharpener or rasp to keep all edges: scissors, knives, can openers useable. M
Re: “…it helps to have a kitchen tool that facilitates the opening of jars…”
Running a search on both Walmart.com and Amazon.com for JAR LID OPENER will pull up a blizzard of choices on both sites.
–Lewis
Years ago, we got a tool designed for removing oil filters from cars—they work great for opening hard-to-open jars as well.
Agreed R.O
That is the tool I currently use. The wrap around strap is perfect for different sized lids. Moniqueo
Also, a really good set of butchering knives and sharpener for game and domestic animal butchering. Make sure you have a rib spreader, meat scissors, and stainless steel bone saw (looks like a large hacksaw).
I like Chicago Cutlery I have so many I may use some for barter I find them at garage sales and thrift stores also picked up a grain mill 10 bucks found it on line for 150 got to have a old type wirly bird mixer I keep one in the camper,A long handle hamburger flipper for cooking over a fire.
I wanted an “egg beater,” but I couldn’t find one. Apparently, my area has switched to whisks. So I bought one and tried it and it works just as well.
I have many manual kitchen tools. Grabbed the recommended chopper. I need a decent inexpensive knife sharpener. Any wisdom from the group?
Check out youtube, America’s test kitchen. They recommend Chef’s choice Diamond Home, I purchased and it is great.
I have a vintage hand beater, meat grinder, and nut chopper all inherited from my grandmother. I also have a cold brew coffee maker that uses no electricity along with some other small kitchen gadgets.
Hi Daisy, I just use a cutting board to make tortillas but every other option you mentioned I have. I would also recommend a meat cleaver, grating bowls , manual shredders for cheese/veges. I also love a manual butter maker, and cheese press. Thanks for the article.