2.3 Indoor Cooking

In general, all you need here is a decent selection of pots, pans and bowls. However, I do recommend considering the following:

An immersion blender. I never really thought about one of these until I heard an NPR piece on possible Christmas gifts for the cooks in one’s life. I immediately thought of my younger son John, so I got him one and he liked it. I subsequently purchased one for myself, a Braun, that is not only a blender but can also be a small chopper, useful for things like grating hard cheese and mincing garlic.
A slow cooker. This is definitely a secondary priority, since most recipes that call for one can easily be adapted for the stove top or oven. However, it is nice to be able to throw a meal together and forget about it for a few hours. I’ve included some recipes that use it, but I’ve also made suggestions as to how to cook them conventionally.
A convection toaster oven In the summer months, it’s nice to be able to cook in one of these and avoid heating up the house by using the oven.
Only a few of these recipes call for using a microwave oven, but one is great to have, especially for thawing and warming leftovers.
Finally, we finally broke down and bought an Instant Pot®, the six quart Pro model, and having had it for several months, I have no regrets. While it is basically a computerized pressure cooker at heart, its capabilities go beyond that - I’ve done sous vide cooking (nothing elaborate) and yogurt making with great success. And once you learn certain basic protocols for different kinds of dishes it is relatively easy to adapt other recipes to it. And there are at least as many recipes on the internet as there are cat videos, so the possibilities for exploration are limitless. One piece of advice that is ubiquitous - they are not especially good as slow cookers, since they heat only from the bottom, as opposed to from all sides in a dedicated device.