He’s Knocking on My Door

Category: Featured Helpful Find

  • Helpful Find: This Little Shredder Makes Meal Prep So Much Easier

    Helpful Find: This Little Shredder Makes Meal Prep So Much Easier

    There are some kitchen gadgets you buy, use once, and then they disappear into a cabinet for the next five years.

    This isn’t one of those.

    We use this food shredder all the time.

    Chicken.

    Pork.

    Fresh tuna.

    If I need something shredded, there’s a pretty good chance this thing is coming out.

    See the shredder on Amazon

    Could I accomplish the same thing with two forks?

    Absolutely.

    Do I want to sit there pulling apart a pile of chicken with two forks when this thing can do it considerably faster?

    Absolutely not.

    What Is It?

    It’s a pretty simple kitchen gadget.

    Put your cooked meat inside, put the top on, and rotate it back and forth. The plastic teeth inside grab the meat and pull it apart.

    A few turns later, you’ve got shredded meat.

    One feature I really like is the clear top.

    You can actually see what’s happening inside while you’re turning it. If the pieces are still too large, keep going. When it reaches the consistency you want, you’re done.

    No need to keep opening it to check.

    We Use It for a Lot More Than Chicken

    I originally thought of something like this as a chicken shredder.

    It definitely does that.

    But we’ve found quite a few other uses for it.

    We’ve used it to make:

    • Shredded chicken tacos
    • Chicken salad
    • Fresh tuna salad
    • Shredded BBQ pork

    The fresh tuna has become one of my favorites.

    We’ve been grilling tuna steaks and then shredding the tuna to make tuna salad rather than always using canned tuna.

    Drop the cooked tuna into the shredder, give it a few turns, and it’s ready for tuna salad.

    Where It Really Earned Its Keep: Pork

    Chicken usually isn’t particularly difficult to shred with forks.

    Pork can be another story.

    I’ve made pork before that I expected to fall apart beautifully…

    It didn’t.

    Then you’re standing there with two forks trying to convince a stubborn piece of pork that it’s supposed to become pulled pork.

    That’s where I’ve really appreciated this thing.

    Put the pork inside and start turning.

    It shreds it.

    Even some of the pork I’ve had trouble pulling apart manually has been considerably easier with this.

    That alone makes it useful in our kitchen.

    It’s Also Faster

    This is probably the biggest reason we continue using it.

    Convenience.

    I’m always looking for ways to make cooking easier.

    I can sit there pulling chicken apart with two forks…

    Or I can put it in this thing, twist it a few times and move on to the next part of dinner.

    That’s an easy decision.

    Especially when we’re making something that requires a decent amount of shredded meat.

    There Is One Thing I Don’t Love

    I’m not going to pretend every product I put under Helpful Finds is perfect.

    This one has a downside.

    It’s a little annoying to clean.

    The plastic pieces inside that do the shredding are sharp and pointy.

    That’s great when they’re attacking a piece of chicken.

    It’s less great when you’re trying to clean little pieces of chicken out from between them.

    I wouldn’t recommend getting aggressive with your fingers trying to remove stuck food.

    Use a brush.

    Ours came with a small cleaning brush, which helps get into the tight spaces.

    I actually think having a slightly larger cleaning brush in addition to the included one would make cleaning easier. Keep the little brush for the tight areas and use the larger one for everything else.

    The important thing is making sure you don’t leave little pieces of food stuck between those plastic teeth.

    Into the Dishwasher It Goes

    After we’ve removed any visible food particles, we put ours on the top rack of the dishwasher.

    That’s made cleanup considerably easier for us.

    As always, I’d follow the cleaning and dishwasher instructions that come with the particular model you buy rather than assuming every plastic shredder is dishwasher safe.

    The dishwasher handles the final cleaning.

    I just want to make sure there aren’t chunks of yesterday’s chicken hiding somewhere inside before it goes in.

    Because…

    Gross.

    Is It Necessary?

    No.

    Let’s be clear.

    Humanity successfully shredded chicken for a very long time before someone invented a plastic container with spikes in it.

    Two forks still work.

    Your hands work.

    There are other ways to do it.

    But that’s not really the point of my Helpful Finds.

    I’m looking for things that make everyday tasks easier.

    And this does.

    It’s especially helpful when we’re preparing a larger amount of shredded meat or when we’re dealing with something like pork that doesn’t particularly want to cooperate.

    ❤️ Greg’s Take

    This is one of those simple kitchen gadgets that turned out to be much more useful than I expected.

    We’ve used it for chicken tacos.

    Chicken salad.

    Fresh tuna salad.

    BBQ pork.

    It saves time, saves me from fighting with two forks, and the clear lid lets me see exactly when the food has reached the consistency I want.

    The downside?

    Cleaning around all those little plastic teeth.

    Use the brush.

    Trust me.

    Other than that, this thing has earned its place in our kitchen.

    And considering how many kitchen gadgets end up buried in the back of a cabinet…

    That’s actually saying something.

    Where to Find It

    If you want to see the food shredder I use, you can find it here:

    View the food shredder on Amazon

    Affiliate Disclosure

    This post contains an Amazon affiliate link. If you make a purchase through my link, I may earn a small commission at no additional cost to you. I only share products that I personally use or believe may be helpful. Affiliate commissions help support He’s Knocking on My Door and the cost of keeping the site running.

  • Why We Finally Bought a Rice Cooker

    Why We Finally Bought a Rice Cooker

    Sometimes the best helpful finds aren’t complicated.

    They’re just things that make everyday life a little easier.

    We eat quite a bit of rice in our house. Since I’ve been following a low-sodium diet, rice has become an easy base for a lot of the meals we make at home.

    Plain rice is naturally very low in sodium as long as you’re not adding salt, salty broth, or other high-sodium ingredients while cooking it.

    There’s just one problem.

    You still have to cook it.

    Making rice on the stove certainly isn’t difficult, but you have to watch it, get the water-to-rice ratio right, make sure it doesn’t overcook, and hopefully end up with rice that’s neither crunchy nor mushy.

    Eventually we decided there had to be an easier way.

    So we bought a rice cooker.

    And I’m glad we did.

    Set It and Forget It

    The biggest reason we bought a rice cooker was convenience.

    Put in the rice and water, turn it on, and let the machine take care of the rest.

    There’s no standing over the stove or wondering whether I should turn the heat down.

    Set it and forget it.

    Once the rice is finished, our cooker automatically switches to a keep-warm mode. That means we don’t have to perfectly coordinate the rice with everything else we’re cooking for dinner.

    That may seem like a small thing, but when you’re preparing several things at once, having one less pot to worry about is pretty nice.

    The Rice Comes Out Right

    This might be my favorite part.

    The rice comes out consistently good.

    I’ve made plenty of rice on the stove that was still a little hard when dinner was ready. I’ve also gone the other direction and cooked it too long.

    With the rice cooker, there’s much less guesswork.

    Put everything in, start it, and when it’s finished, we have rice ready for dinner.

    Brown Rice, White Rice and Carbohydrates

    We make both white and brown rice.

    I’ve been using brown rice quite a bit because it provides more fiber than white rice. But that doesn’t mean we’ve eliminated white rice. We still enjoy both depending on what we’re making.

    For me, the bigger consideration is portion size.

    Rice may fit nicely into my low-sodium diet, but it still contains a significant amount of carbohydrates. Because I also have diabetes, I have to pay attention to how much rice I put on my plate.

    That’s an important distinction I’ve learned along the way:

    Low sodium doesn’t automatically mean something is unlimited.

    A food can work very well for one part of my diet while still requiring some thought because of another health condition.

    So I enjoy my rice.

    I just don’t fill half my plate with it.

    Great for the Meals We Make at Home

    Rice has become the base for quite a few meals around here.

    The steak and shrimp rice bowls I recently mentioned in my Daily Journal are a perfect example. We can control the seasoning on the steak, choose our vegetables, pay attention to the sodium in the shrimp, and serve everything over a measured portion of rice.

    I’ll be sharing my version of that recipe on the site soon.

    That’s the kind of cooking I’ve been trying to embrace.

    Instead of focusing entirely on foods I can’t have anymore, I’m finding meals we enjoy and figuring out how to make them work for me.

    The rice cooker simply makes that easier.

    It Doesn’t Take Over the Kitchen

    Another thing I like about rice cookers is that you don’t need a giant appliance.

    They come in several different capacities, so you can choose one based on how much rice you normally make.

    We went with a medium-sized model, which gives us enough capacity without taking up a ridiculous amount of counter or cabinet space.

    If kitchen storage is limited, that’s worth considering.

    Cleanup Takes Almost No Time

    Convenience doesn’t mean much to me if an appliance takes forever to clean.

    Fortunately, ours doesn’t.

    The cooking pot has a nonstick interior, so cleanup is extremely easy. Once we’re finished, it takes very little time to clean the pot and have it ready for the next meal.

    Simple to use.

    Simple to clean.

    And consistently good rice.

    That’s pretty much what I wanted.

    ❤️ Greg’s Take

    Do you absolutely need a rice cooker?

    Of course not.

    You can make perfectly good rice on the stove.

    But that’s not really why I bought one.

    I bought it because it makes life easier.

    Living with chronic illness has made me appreciate things that save a little time and effort. If an appliance can take one job off my plate while we’re making dinner, that’s valuable to me.

    I can put the rice on, walk away, and concentrate on preparing everything else—or just sit down until I need to do something again.

    When dinner is ready, the rice is ready.

    And it’s cooked right.

    Sometimes a Helpful Find doesn’t have to change your life.

    Sometimes it just has to make one little part of it easier.

    The Rice Cooker I Use

    If you’d like to see the rice cooker we purchased, you can find it here:

    See the rice cooker I use on Amazon

    There are different sizes available, so I’d choose the capacity that makes sense for the amount of rice you normally prepare rather than automatically buying the largest one.

    Affiliate Disclosure: This post contains an affiliate link. If you purchase something through my link, I may earn a small commission at no additional cost to you. I only share products that I personally use or believe may be helpful.

    Health Disclaimer: I’m sharing my personal experience and how rice fits into my own eating plan. This is not medical or nutritional advice. Rice is a carbohydrate-containing food and can affect blood glucose. If you have diabetes or another condition requiring dietary management, work with your healthcare provider or dietitian to determine the types and portions of foods that are appropriate for you. Always check nutrition labels and ingredients, particularly on seasoned or prepared rice products.