What are your favourite things under 50$ that make your life a bit easier or more pleasant?

fossilesque@mander.xyz to Asklemmy@lemmy.ml – 372 points –

I need some holiday gift ideas (that I will probably gift to myself as well)!

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Instant Pot (on sale): There is legitimately so many things you can make in these. Many of them do sous vide too, which is one of the best ways to cook meat.

Powered ratchet: For anyone who works on their own vehicles, a cheap powered ratchet is a godsend. I bought one for oil changes and car repairs and it's my most used tool in my bag. I'm mad I spent so much time without one. Walmart's Hyper Tough brand powered ratchet is $40 and holds up very well. Extended reach one is often on sale for $50-55.

E-Ink reader: Another often on sale item. If you have someone who loves books, having an entire library in your pocket with a built-in backlight for night reading that's also easy on the eyes is a great thing. Coupled with Calibre and some....sourced epub files.....and you can read a lot for free.

Vacuum sealer: Never have freezer burned stuff again. And keeps things fresh in the fridge longer. Also works great for sous vide for the above-mentioned Instant Pot.

Can you share some instant pot meals/ideas? I got one and it barely gets used. Every time I look stuff up or ask peoole it's the same "crack chicken" recepies.

Mine is essentially a big power hungry medium boiled egg maker. Really wish it got more use.

Dried beans (includes garbanzo etc). With an automatic pressure cooker like that cooking dried beans goes from an ordeal where you have to soak them overnight and watch a pot for 5 hours and probably get indigestion because they're undercooked anyway to, spend 2 minutes throwing in the beans and water and pressing the button and then come back sometime between 1-5 hours later to perfectly cooked beans. Save money and space in your pantry getting rid of cans.

You're not selling it too well there, beanboy 😂

Anything sous vide (if yours has a sous vide button). You can use ziplock bags in Leiu of a vac sealer. Chicken or steak sous vide and then quick seared in a hot pan for color is the best.

Olive Garden style Chicken Gnocchi soup (dozens of copycat recipes online). You can buy pre-packaged gnocchi or make it yourself. Get a loaf of French bread to toast cheap at the grocery store and it'll blow your mind.

Basically any Chili recipe can be made 5-10x faster pressure cooked. No need to simmer it for hours.

Use it as a rice cooker. Pressure cooked white rice tastes like Chinese restaurant sticky rice and take 10 minutes. Get a box of frozen orange chicken from Costco and you've got Orange chicken over rice in about 18 minutes. Or cook some refried beans, brown rice, and fried eggs for a quick breakfast. Nothing beats a salt and pepper runny yolk egg soaked into rice.

Hard boiling eggs you mentioned already, but if you like egg salad it's a great way to make easy peal boiled eggs for mashing into egg salad in the fridge.

Those are just a few things I use mine for ranging from moderate to simple.

Hah. I think my problem might be that I have gadgets for all of these things already.

I have a sous vide, so no need to use it for that

Chili I usually make in my slow cooker because it yields larger amounts (I usually fill the whole thing up and freeze a bunch of it)

I have a Zojirushi rice cooker, but I'm willing to try the instant pot if it is faster. I will check that out.

Chicken Gnocchi soup sounds amazing though.

Here's my favorite recipes, I use it every week:

Ribs - easy to get super consistent results, pressure cooking helps keep moisture in. (https://www.pressurecookrecipes.com/easy-bbq-instant-pot-ribs/)

Clam chowder - creamy New England style, I add extra seasonings to amp it up. The clams I get in cans and bottled clam juice so the only non-shelf-stable ingredients are onions, carrots, celery, and garlic (https://recipes.instantpot.com/recipe/new-england-clam-chowder-2/) My additions: To make it more hearty and thick I do 3 cans of clams instead of 2, 4ish strips of bacon bits, an extra stalk or 2 of celery, between 1.5 and 2 lbs of potatoes instead of 1, and parsley and paprika in the same amounts as the thyme and oregano.

Spaghetti carbonara - my new cook book addition. grating the cheese adds more work, but overall still very simple as far as instant pot recipes go - saute the pancetta and reserve, saute onion and garlic, pressure cook pasta in broth, stir in butter, cream, cheese, egg, and pancetta when done (https://pressureluckcooking.com/instant-pot-spaghetti-carbonara/)

Corn chowder - really similar to the clam chowder but good for if you're not feeling seafood, like most of the recipes I favorite, the steps mostly amount to dumping all the ingredients in, pressure cooking, and stirring in something extra at the end (in this case cornstarch and half&half to thicken) (https://www.tasteofhome.com/recipes/instant-pot-corn-chowder/)

I also use the instant pot some for other recipes but I lean heavily towards 1 pot meals and stuff where I can get away with putting 90% of the ingredients in for the pressure cooking step, that does mean a lot of soups but I'm working on adding more pasta dishes to my repertoire.

(Edited to add recipe links)

Any recipes you recommend for the ribs?

The ribs are the simplest, at its most basic all you have to do is remove the membrane on the back and then curl it up on a trivet over a cup of water, pressure cook high for 25 minutes and let sit under pressure for 10-25 more minutes after it's done (depending on how fall-off-the-bone you want, I usually like 25mins), glaze with bbq sauce and broil in the oven until it gets a bit of char.

You can also salt & pepper it before putting it in, use apple cider vinegar instead of water, and/or add a few drops of liquid smoke in the instant pot. But it turns out great even when I forget to do those things so really all you need is ribs and sauce.

I got the recipe from here: https://www.pressurecookrecipes.com/easy-bbq-instant-pot-ribs/

Sounds great! I'll have to try the recipe. Thanks!

Love making risotto in mine. Easy weeknight meal (depending on the recipe).

If you have decent freezer space, there's no excuse to not use a vac sealer. I have so many friends that constantly complain about meat prices but don't take advantage of buying meat on sale in bulk. With a vac sealer, you can really get ahead. Also processing and preparing your own meat products (burgers, sausage).

We also vac seal soups and broths!

Also, on the topic of slow cookers, while not $50 and under, a ninja foodi is a pressure/slow cooker and air fryer combo. I literally use mine everyday. It gets more use than my microwave or stove.

How do you vacuum seal things with liquids? Mine says absolutely no liquids, like if it gets a single drop of moisture on it, the company will come shoot me

That's odd, mine actually has a "moist" mode. It has a little cavity where any juice that get sucked up go. You just have to empty it often if you're doing alot of meats that are juicy. As for soups, I do one of two methods, freeze over night in a Tupperware, then remove from Tupperware and Vac seal or ill just let it cool and vac seal, which might leave a small air gap, but I haven't notice it effect the soup like it does meat.

Seconding the vacuum sealer.