One I didn’t see mentioned yet: a rice cooker.
Put in rice, add water, push start button, and you get perfect rice every time. I’m usually against single-purpose kitchen tools but a rice cooker is soo worth it.
Really only if you eat a lot of rice. For once a year or so, a pot on the stove works just fine. The actual benefit I’ve see for ricecookers is how well they can hold the rice for hours ready to go, but that’s more of a commercial benefit I think.
[…] but that’s more of a commercial benefit I think
For me, this is the primary benefit of a rice cooker. Having warm, cheap, filling food on demand at any time is fantastic. I am so lazy and my little rice buddies are always ready to go when I can’t be bothered.
“Rice is great if you’re really hungry and want to eat two thousand of something”
I eat a lot of ice and I still just make it in a pot.
I like to imagine you huddled over an ice field, stirring water in a pot until it turns to the perfect slushy consistency for your fresh homemade ice.
Shit this comment made me so thirsty good lord I need some water
Artesan ice. $17.99/litre
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I would like to know more about this.
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I need this recipe ASAP.
Get a box of brownie mix
Mix according to the instructions
Put in rice cooker
Start cooker
Brownies are done when cooker cycle finishes. Test with toothpick, run longer if not fully baked.
OK that sounds so simple. Going to try this. Thanks!
A rice cooker can serve as a cheaper instapot tho. I can steam rice and veggies without having to babysit a pot.
I also have kitchen anxiety, and in a roommate situation can keep a rice cooker in my room.
Living in Japan, this almost didn’t register to me. I have literally never met anybody that didn’t have one. When you move out, you use your family’s old one until you can buy a newer one.
Everyone should have one, absolutely.
When I did a homestay in Japan, my host dad was shocked my family didn’t have one. I do now though!
I know this will be a popular response, but I don’t get it.
I just use a pot and the rice is always perfect? Not hard at all? Am I just good?
I used to do that for years, but rice cookers really do some magic to get perfectly fluffy rice. I thought my technique was good, until I tried rice from a rice cooker.
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You should look into Zojirushi. They make the best rice cookers
We sold our rice cooker on eBay after finding out the microwave rice cooker addon for 10€ is just as good, if not faster.
Lol TIL people are buying used rice cookers on eBay
So what?
It’s great for quinoa, farro and couscous too. Love our tiger rice cooker, it’s a work horse!
Speaking of, be careful about consuming too much rice because of arsenic. There are plenty of other grains that don’t soak up arsenic so readily and have a better nutritional profile. It’s fine to eat rice, just switch it out throughout the week.
what’s the difference with cooking rice the normal way?
ok this might sound heretical but a “hack” i learned from cooking youtube is to just boil rice like pasta then drain. I do this for about ~12 mins with white rice and it comes out perfect every time with no risk of messing up. Downside is you need to drain it.
unsure the validity of this claim? but apparently there can be a non-insignificant amount of arsenic in american grown rice, and boiling can help leech it out into the water.
Is it different from a pressure cooker? Because pressure cooker is similar (add water, rice, start cooking, wait for X whistles) and has multiple use cases.
Rice cookers are not sealed for high pressure (they are in fact not sealed at all, just like regular pots and lids, because they need to lose excess moisture) and they are configured for this one particular thing: every rice cooker is calibrated for a fixed serving of rice (or couple different settings) with fixed amount of water. All it really does is turn off at the perfect moment,
which is determines by weight.which is determined by a thermostat (magnet-based in this case)Oh, I have a pressure sealed rice cooker, but it’s the top of the line Zojuroshi and is more like $600. It’s also not fast, takes like an hour, but the rice is divine. Sadly, I rarely cook rice. I got it for my sister, who lived in China for a while and used to eat rice all the time, but then moved into a tiny house and gave it back to me… I can’t really bear to throw it out - but I only use it if I’m making a huge amount of rice randomly.
Ah okay. Thanks!
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More importantly, it clutters the kitchen.
If you have a car get a dashcam. It’s more valuable than any insurance because it will definitively prove what happened when something goes wrong. Bonus: you can post videos of bad drivers doing stupid things on the internet for imaginary points.
If only there was actually a good car dashcam, but every time I go down that rabbit hole I give up frustrated. The quality (build, mounting, video, whatever) is shit in pretty much all of them, and the “passable” ones look like a web cam from 2005 still.
There’s a reason for that, Linus Tech Tips did a great video on it. You’re better off buying an old go pro and using that.
Only if you remember to turn it on
We’ve been happy with the VIOFO A129 Pro. Not very expensive and good quality video on both cameras day and night. There are lots of day/night comparison videos and the VIOFO beat a lot of cameras that were much more expensive.
I agree, I also have a VIOFO A129 DUO and it’s great. But I haven’t found the time yet to mount the rear cam… too much hassle to bring the cables to the back of the car.
Yep I’ve also got a VIOFO, works great.
I thought it would be kinda ugly when I looked at it, but depending on how your car is designed once it’s mounted you don’t really see it so it’s fine. Took a while to figure out how to wire it to the battery though, mostly because I’d never done that before.
Another happy (though quite new) owner of a VIOFO here, A119 Mini v2 in my case. Great picture quality.
People lie. Even a shittiest, cheapest dashcam will be better than nothing, when you have to prove to your insurance company who was really at fault after a collision.
Look for a BlackVue or Thinkware.
I’ve bought the N2 Pro from Vantrue a couple of years ago and I’ve been super happy with it. The quality is pretty good and it has actually capable night vision and parking surveillance. I’ve also bought one for my brother in law (who got into an accident just a month after) and one for my grandma. Not to sound like an ad, but these are definitely worth checking out even if it’s an older model.
I got one for $40 that’s 1080p, and the “high endurance” sd card I got for $15 is still going 4 years later.
Don’t overthink it. You don’t need something fancy.
A pair of high fidelity earplugs (aka concert earplugs or filtering earplugs). You can get a good non-custom pair for $15–$40, and that’ll work well for the average person for a long time.
They’re excellent for live music, airplanes, and anytime you want the world to be quieter but still need to be able to understand speech. And for music specifically, they can bring the volume level down just enough to be safe without muffling the sound like traditional foam earplugs do. Protect your hearing, kids!
Protect your hearing, kids!
Seriously, PROTECT YOUR FUCKING HEARING. I was young and stupid (now I’m no longer young) and went to way too many raves, gigs etc. without any sort of hearing protection, and now I have a nice constant background track of EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE and can’t hear higher frequencies worth shit
Right ear went to working in a call centre. Left ear seems to be trying to decide if it’s going to recover or not from some unaware idiot in Tesco suddenly walking up and slamming his stock cart shut right next to me. I really hope I don’t end up with stereo EEEEEEEEEEEEE but it feels like an inevitable matter of time at this point. There goes the left one again…
I didnt even go to any concerts or anything and i still have it 😭
I can get tinnitus if I have too much ear-wax and I have to remove it periodically, since it wont come out on its own.
Yep, tinnitus is your brain filling in the absence of hearing, its not a condition in itself
I got some of these and they are excellent
I know it’s way more expensive, but the last gig I went to, I used my AirPods Pro in transparency mode, and it reduced the sound down from an insane ~110db to peaks of 90! Definitely worth protecting your ears.
Airpods (and noise cancelling in general) are not substitutes for hearing protection!
Yes, good point! Whilst it’s probably better than nothing, it won’t be a proper substitute for proper hearing protection like the earplugs mentioned
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It gives a live read-out of the data in the ‘noise’ app on the Apple Watch. Not sure if that functionality exists without the watch, though!
Edit: not the most scientific measurement, so apologies if my original comment was misleading
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Do you have any brand and model recommendations?
I’m no earplug connoisseur, but I’ve been using Westone’s WM16 for smaller venues, and Etymotic Research’s ER20XS dual-flange for louder situations. I haven’t tried much else, but these work well for me. I’ve also heard great things about Earasers, Eargasm, and Hearos.
Earasers are a bit more expensive and appear to have a unique ergonomic eartip. iirc you can get them for $40 elsewhere, maybe Amazon. I’ve read that Earasers’ “-19dB Peak” model has a very slight sound reduction, so I’d probably opt for their middle “European Standard” model. On the other end of the price spectrum, Hearos is particularly inexpensive at a glance. Idk anything about specific models.
Some brands have multiple types of earplugs (e.g. for music, shooting, construction work), so make sure you’re getting one designed for music or “high-fidelity” or something like that. Any of the “good” brands are probably going to work just fine. (Read the reviews if you’re unsure.) Most brands seem to include multiple eartip sizes in the package so you can choose the right fit.
Beyond that, there is some element of personal preference. For example, I first tried Etymotic’s classic triple-flange version and didn’t like how deep they stuck into my ears. It felt invasive. But the dual-flange model feels great for me.
And finally, there are different options for how much attenuation (noise reduction) you want. Like I mentioned, my “-16dB average attenuation” earplugs feel good for small/medium venues (a backroom venue of a bar, maybe a theater). For a larger venue (arena or stadium, or even just a really loud loud theater) you’d definitely want more significant average attenuation, probably in the low-to-mid twenties.
Most earplugs will be confusingly marketed with multiple attenuation values. One will be an official NRR value, which is apparently required but controversial, and the other(s) will be the average and/or peak decibel reduction “when the product is used correctly” as reported by the manufacturer. It seems people don’t talk about the NRR as often. But it’s fun that they’ve made it more complicated for us to compare products.
I should also mention that if you’re a performing musician or hardcore concert-goer, you may consider springing for custom-molded earplugs, which are way pricier. I haven’t made that upgrade yet, but everyone who does seems to think it’s life-changing.
This got long, sorry!
I’m no earplug connoisseur
7 paragraphs about earplugs
uh oh, they’re onto me
+1 for Eargasm. The real MVP is the keychain carrying case which ensures I never leave home without em. As a drummer, DJ, and loud music enthusiast they’re one of my best purchases ever. I genuinely forget they’re in sometimes, but then I’ll take em out and it makes a big difference. Awesome quality of sound, just less damage.
I didn’t even know this existed. I really suffer in places with too much background noise.
I’ve been using my AirPods Pro 2 at races. They seem to work exceptionally well with noise cancellation on.
I have done this same thing. My hearing is a bit hypersensitive and these kinds of headphones have helped me in many different, loud situations!
A bike. Poor people in underdeveloped countries can use it to get access to education and markets, while people from developed countries can ise it to keep healthy and reduce their environmental footprint
I was going to say that, but out of the 6 bikes in the garage none of them are under $100 even second hand.
In fact I would advise against getting a cheap shitty bike that isn’t going to last. Spend the extra money, get something good. It’s better for the environment and your wallet in the long run.
I’ve driven “good” bikes all my life. Aluminium frame, disc brakes, fancy suspension, 3x9 gears. That sort of thing.
Wanna know what my best biking experience was? Riding a steel frame, 3-speed dutch-style rental omafiets with no suspension and regular-ass brakes on a vacation. That thing was hella comfortable, sturdy as a brick and convenient.
If I lived in a not fully car-brained city where you can safely bike and was tight on money, I’d absolutely buy an old cheap used regular-ass steel frame bike with no frills and use the hell out of it until it’s irreparably broken. You can leave that thing standing in the rain, locked with just a frame lock (or perhaps even no lock at all) all without worrying that it might get damaged or stolen because there isn’t much to damage or steal in the first place.
I also don’t see how buying a “good” bike in any way helps the environment when the alternative is re-using something that’s already been built and successfully used before.
I love my 2000€ Brompton that I daily-drive but I’d be nearly as happy with a 100€ bike like I described above. You don’t get more bike when you go above that price point, you only get a more fancy bike.
I’m really jealous of the Brommie’s folding mechanism.
I currently use a full size Dutch-style bike, but been keeping my eyes out for a secondhand folder for easy travelling, once I can swallow the price 🥲
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I have a bike in a city and it’s faster than the cars. The cars are always stuck in traffic as I fly by. Bikes are the best.
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Can’t leave footprints if your feet aren’t touching the ground.
It would increase your travel distance though. Mechanical advantage for the win.
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I was gonna say this.
$100 on craigslist or a local bike refurbishing place (where I got mine) will get you something that will last for years.
Throw in a $15 bike lock, a cheap returned helmet, and a $5 rear bike light and you’re set for life.
3 dozen pairs of identical socks. Mine are black crew cut. I’ll wear them until the last few pairs are worn through and I’ll never have a sock without a mate.
A water kettle. Doesn’t have to be any fancy one, but it really fucking rocks for anything you might think of : want hot water for tea? No problem. Need hot water to steep something? No problem.
Most mid-range ones are insanely power efficient too, often being alot better than just boiling water on a stovetop, or using a microwave. And, depending on insulation, heat can be stored for over 6! hours.
I’m going to guess you’re in the States? I’m from England and live in the Netherlands. I’ve never met anybody ever who didn’t own a kettle. Is it true that it’s really not that common in the States to own a kettle?
I would say 20 years ago almost no one had an electric kettle in the US. Now they are much more common, but still only in a minority of homes. Americans just don’t drink nearly as much tea as the English. The UK consumes 1.94kg of tea per person annually. The US is 0.23kg. (per wikipedia). You will find a coffee maker in most homes and hotel rooms though.
what do kids have with their breakfast then?
Cold milk usually
what about in wintertime?
Cold milk usually
…water?
o.o
In Canada, but we’re basically the same as the states. Of my extended family, which is 20+ people, I only know 2 who have kettles… So it’s a luxury to most people who come to my house lol.
We had a stove top kettle growing up but I never heard of an electric kettle until I was an adult. First time I saw one was a pretentious dude doing pour over coffee at work.
I’m the only person I know with an electric kettle, and I don’t use it much since I sopped doing pourover coffee.
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6! hours? An entire month?
Modern tech is a marvel!
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Depends where you live, Technology Connections did a few episodes on kettles because apparently they’re not super common in his neck of the woods.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/_yMMTVVJI4c
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source, check me out at GitHub.
I think they mean a powered kettle.
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Might depend on where you live. I rarely see them- usually only when someone is a tea fanatic
even cheap ones a great.
You can get a cheap one at walmart for like 20 bucks, and it’ll boil water faster than your cooktop.
A kettle is such a default kitchen item in the UK that I find it kinda crazy that it’s not standard somewhere like the US, though I know I’ve seen the difference in base voltage being a factor before.
I went to visit a friend in the US (los angeles). She asked me what I want for breakfast and I said just some tea please and nothing else. I saw her going from confusion to terror in 5 seconds. And I was like whats wrong? Is everything ok?
Eventually she boiled water in a mug in the microwave, put in some pieces of apples and called it tea.
A few weeks later I went for work in the bay area. I just cannot start a day without tea. I saw the hotel I stayed in had a bit of difficulty in the tea department. Decided to buy my own kettle so I can have my tea in the room. Naively went to an electric store to buy a kettle. There was none. I was like WTF. Went to target, there were none. Only stove ones. But my room didnt have a stove. Then it hit me americans just dont boil water like the rest of the world.
A fire extinguisher can be found for less than 100 USD and is a must-have. A smoke detector is also a bare minimum in my opinion.
A towel
99 bucks
Water sensor alarms.
If you have any doubts about the pipes in your house or have a feeling that water might enter your basement, sensors will help you sleep at night.
Water damage to your home is no joke. I know two separate homeowners who have had leaks from their refrigerator’s plumbing (water and ice dispenser). The damage for each homeowner was quite extensive given how small the leak was.
I second this!
Most people who have heard of water sensors know of the moen one. I’m in Canada, and my plumber recommended a Canadian company, Sinope. They were much less expensive and had a sensor in the line and ones you could put in and around appliances that use water.
The in-line flow sensor shuts off the water if it senses abnormal flow anywhere. But the physical sensors shut off the water when it’s leaking at that spot.
We’ve had no leaks, but the flow sensor shut off the water when I filled the kiddie pool and forgot to turn it off. It also cuts short, excessively long showers (that can be turned off).
The safety net is fantastic to have. We can install that freezer ice cube maker without a worry.
I went to go check out Sinope’s site, and it was already in my browser history. I wonder what past me was looking up…lol
Besides that, the smart valves are so much cheape than Moen! I might have to actually get one now. The ever looming threat of potential water damage stresses me out way too much.
The math we did was that the price was lower than an insurance deductible, and future rate hikes because of that. We also told our insurance company about it, and they said it reduced our home insurance cost. We halved our home insurance cost between the sinope, alarm system, pipe replacement, and changing providers.
For the sinope, you must consider installation cost if you want a plumber to do it. That probably adds hundreds.
I actually didn’t even think about the insurance deductible. You’re right that, even with installation, it would be less than that. Thanks for the info!
Home owners insurance or renters insurance should cover that, right?
In one case, it was under warranty but heavily disputed and it took a lot of posturing to get the work done.
In the other case, insurance took care of it, but flooring that would have been covered by insurance would not match the rest of the area, so the owners decided to renovate a lot more than they wanted to.
To me, the pain of having to live through the repairs/renovations is enough to make me vigilant of water leak issues.
That’s fair. I rent and I kind of enjoy renting to avoid those pains. The water tank floods the place? Well, that sucks but legally the landlord has to put me in a livable place with running hot water, an oven, and enough beds for everyone on the lease. It’s the one sole benefit of renting that makes me cautious about buying a house. Any house older than 1980 is probably going to have something that is a pain with it. I’m renting a house now that was built in the 50s and the electricity is outdated, the plumbing has a slow leak into the basement, and the foundation has some major cracks in it that let water flood the basement in the winter. We’ve clearly documented all these things and are just going to move out next lease end. So glad I’m not buying this place. I’d probably have to spend 100k just to get it to a stable house.
Yes, indeed! I have an automatic sump pump in my basement, so that covers heavy rain and potential burst pipes. But my cousin had pipes freeze and burst while he was away for Christmas. Even though he had insurance, the repairs took months.
Yup. They’re super cheap and awesome on the rare occasion they go off. If you place them right, you’ll even be alerted to tiny leaks like a slow drip from the toilet supply.
A rice cooker making rice in a saucepan will yield different results almost every time, a $20-50 rice cooker is just a set it and forget it kitchen tool that yields the same results every time. Very nice and easy
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Since someone already mentioned dashcams and cast iron, my vote is: a bidet toilet seat attachment.
Fancy ones can roll $200+ but a super simple one with just a cold water hookup and no electricity will knock you back $50-60. I bought one right as covid was beginning to hit the west coast, and instantly realized I could never - ever - go back.
Huge bonus of the toilet seat style bidets is that, since you aren’t actually replacing the toilet, they take like 5 mins to install and can be done in a home, condo, apartment, wherever.
A portable car tire inflator (with build in battery).
My dad would say a cast iron pan. That would outlive you and your kids.
I would say maybe an air fryer, I think you could get a decent one for less than $100USD. I use mine every day.
Otherwise, maybe good waterproof boots. I got some decent ones at an outlet store. They are kind of dressy so nice enough for work, but also warm AF and during the winter they are so good.
Why does the thought of being outlived by ones air fryer feel worse than being outlived by ones cast iron pan?
An air fryer is an appliance with electrical parts, including probably some fragile cheap electronics, moving parts (the fan that blows the air around) and parts made of different materials in a machine that is going to experience lots of cycles of heating and cooling. That is to say, there is a pretty sizable room for wear and tear. Hopefully it’ll last you many years, but one doesn’t really expect a machine like that to last for generations, especially considering things like planned obsolescence. A pan has no moving parts, no powered components, nothing but a hug sturdy slab of metal formed into a specific shape. As long as you take care of it properly to avoid corrosion, there’s not really anything to break about such a thing. So the idea of the later lasting practically indefinitely makes sense, the former not so much.
Chatgpt, is it you?
No? Why would it be?
everywhere I go I see his face
Probably because normally you’d expect to outlive the air fryer but not the pan…
Plus one for airfryer. Bought one that was on discount a few years back, has a spot on top of the cabinet when not in use but it’s almost always on the counter.
What do you use it for? I can’t think of a single thing that I would need an airfryer for. Between a standard convection oven and a deep fryer there is a better tool for anything you would possibly use the airfryer for.
I think you could get away with an oven and a deepfryer with everything, but in my experience an airfryer is generally faster than the oven, and less oily than a deep fryer (I wanna say more healthy but I don’t really know enough about the details, so I’ll just stick to the objectively “less oily”).
I use it for fries (sweet potatoe fries most often), anything resembling nuggets (like vegetarian nuggets/schnitzels, other veggy pattys, falafel), fry-snacks (eggrolls, samosa, bitterballs), and you can get a bit adventurous with trying our breads, vegetables, or other stuff that you would just plop in the oven.
Oven (or airfryer) fries and snacks aren’t even close to being as good as deep fried. Especially the bitterballen and kroketten are bad. Because it’s not actually frying, but baking, you don’t get the nice thin crunchy outside, to compensate for this they make special airfryer versions of these but those have a really thick outer crust to give that crunchiness and it just doesn’t work. Same goes for oven fries, they have this artificial layer on the outside to give it some crunch but that’s just not very good.
I just don’t get any of it. If you want to eat junkfood, eat junkfood. If you want to be a little healthier, then eat it less often. There are plenty of actually healthy snacks that aren’t a gross artificial version of proper junkfood.
Idk, I’ve got good experiences with stuff from the airfryer so far, also in terms of crispiness and stuff. It’s idd different from a deepfryer, for sure, but works good enough for me. Also gotta say that I don’t have a deepfryer anymore, and when I had one years ago it was an annoying device to use, so I guess the ease of use is also something that makes me like it.
It’s different from a deep fryer because an airfryer isn’t a fryer at all. It’s literally just a small convection oven + clever marketing.,Most people I know already have a convection oven in their kitchen so there really is little point to getting an additional one that just takes up space on the counter.
A large oven uses a lot of electricity that is wasted for heating up that entire space.
An air fryer is nothing but a small convection oven. That means it heats up almost instantly, wastes much less heat, can circulate the air much faster for faster baking, and uses substantially less heat. And it doesn’t generate the smell of deep frying.
We use ours almost every day. The oven is basically not used unless we make full size pizza.
The standard convection oven isn’t a better tool except in size.
Our air fryer is also quite good at making things like potatoes or tofu crispy, not deep fried crispy, but nice and crispy without that much oil or the amount of time it would need in the convection oven.
We had an air fryer, loved the food but it was SO difficult to clean. The sides would shred our sponges. Eventually we stopped using It because timed save from cooking was lost twice over from cleaning it. And then it was recalled anyways
I know people like air fryers, but I personally would recommend a NuWave. I know As Seen On TV, but it can be an air fryer from what I can tell, but is also just a really easy to use convection oven that’s reasonably cheap (though it is over $100), and everything that is going to be touched by food or it’s drippings can go in the dishwasher!
