10 Essential Pieces of Raw Food Equipment
by Cy
There are a great number reasons to focus your dietary lifestyle on raw foods (1). From the enzymatic benefits of eating foods in their natural state to aiding in the process of detoxification, pure, living foods are one of the greatest investments you can make in yourself and those you love (2, 3). Living food can be as simple as eating an apple or as complex as serving a multi-course gourmet raw vegan meal involving several days of preparation. A few tools are helpful to have on hand to ensure that you can make a wide variety of raw dishes. Here are 10 pieces of raw food equipment that I have found useful over the years.
High-Powered Blender: A blender with significant power and stamina (a minimum of 750 watts) will make food preparation a lot more versatile, facilitating everything from smoothies and raw soups to sauces and nice creams. Invest in the highest quality blender you can. Vitamix and Blendtec are reputable mainstay brands and there are lots of other options as well. A mini blender is useful to have on hand for making quick, smaller-portioned smoothies and mixes as well as for traveling.
Knives, Knife Sharpener and Cutting Boards: Invest in the best quality knives available to you. This will enable easier food prep and allow you to make beautiful culinary creations. A knife sharpener will keep your knives whetted, allowing you to cut more precisely and artistically. Cutting boards in different sizes make time in the kitchen an ease and a joy.
Dehydrator: This will help whether you want to dehydrate fruits or vegetables (for fruit rolls, veggie chips, etc.) or make a more gourmet style dish which calls for textural variation and warmth. It also helps to infuse seasonings into food and to balance flavors. It’s important to dehydrate with careful moderation. One of the reasons raw food is ideal is because of the perfect hydration built into fruits and vegetables. Taking the natural juices out of food takes away this benefit. There are many brands of dehydrators. I personally use a 9 tray Excalibur. In retrospect, since I don’t dehydrate an extraordinary amount of food, I would have opted for the 4 tray model. Some people recommend using a standard oven on its lowest setting if a dehydrator is not available. This method will dehydrate but temperature control can be challenging and it’s almost impossible not to cross the 47° C/ 118° F mark (4). I don’t consider it worth the risk of compromising the integrity of our wonderful raw foods. If you aren’t eating exclusively raw or need a workaround, I think it’s fine to use this technique in a pinch, ideally with an oven thermometer in place. If you find yourself repeatedly making recipes that call for a dehydrator, make the investment.
Spiralizer and Peeler: These are so much fun! You can turn just about any sturdy vegetable or fruit into a varieties of curls. I’ve spiralized apples, zucchini, carrots, daikon radish, sweet potato, yellow squash and cucumbers to name a few. When noodles come out long, you can cut them into manageable pieces with kitchen scissors. Handheld spiralizers are good for home and travel but are usually limited to one noodle type while the countertop models often come with interchangeable blades that vary the cut and thickness along with a hand crank that will process bigger jobs more efficiently. A simple Y or straight edge peeler is great for quickly removing skin from fruits and root vegetables. It’s also a stand in for a spiral slicer if you don’t have one. I have made zucchini noodles using a simple peeler with great results.
Juicers: A good quality, high efficiency juicer is a staple of the raw vegan kitchen. It will help immensely with preparing juices during detoxification and for everyday life. Masticating or slow juicers are mid-range in price, efficient and keep the juice raw and longer lasting (5). The blank plate can also be used to achieve palatable textures in certain preparations. Many raw recipes call for lemon or lime so it’s also helpful to have a handheld citrus press. I recommend a press made entirely of unpainted stainless steel. Eventually, the lacquered ones wear down and no one wants paint shards in their food! Since lemon is itself a cleansing and astringent fruit, you don’t have to wash the citrus press with soap after use. Just remove any seeds or residue, rinse and place in a drying rack. Larger capacity citrus presses can be manual or electric. I use a manual commercial grade stainless steel hand press for things like oranges, grapefruits and tangerines. You slice each citrus fruit in half, place it in the press and pull down a lever which squeezes out the juice. I love this type for making fresh citrus juices, one of my favorite breakfasts! I’ve never used an electric citrus juicer but have heard good reviews.
Graters: These bring another aspect of texture and variety into raw cuisine. I have a few of these, a big rectangular grater that I use for shredding things like carrots, zucchini, apples, jicama and celery and a mini-grater for citrus zest and for herbs like ginger, turmeric and horseradish.
Food Processor: I don’t use a food processor more than once a week but it’s useful if you’re looking to achieve a midpoint between roughly chopped and blended foods. If you want to make something like cauliflower rice or shredded cabbage, a food processor can save you a lot of time compared to ricing and shredding on a cutting board with a knife. The brand and capacity really depend on your preferences and how much food you are making. I use a simple Cuisinart 8 cup model with 3 blade options (6).
Spice Grinder: A spice grinder can help with bulk or whole seeds, spices and herbs that you want to release flavor from during your food preparation. A mortar and pestle are a great spice grinding option for maximizing flavor.
Mandoline: Mandolines cut foods down to a delectable paper-thin size. Rawviolis, cucumber roll-ups, vegetable platters, decorative salads, finely sliced fruit and more can be achieved using a good quality mandoline slicer. My experience with mandolines is you get what you pay for.
Salad Spinner: You’ll notice a difference in the quality of your salads and reduce time spent in the kitchen with the use of a salad spinner. Waiting for salads to drip dry or using kitchen towels is time consuming and wasteful. Salad tastes great and absorbs seasonings and dressing best when it’s dried of excess water.
If you are just starting off or cannot invest in everything at once, I recommend starting with knives, a cutting board, a knife sharpener and a blender. Start there and build up your collection. When I mention investing what you can, I understand and respect financial limitations. It is much more cost effective to purchase something of acceptable quality at a higher price than it is to buy something cheap that doesn’t endure and will need to be replaced sooner. I’ve had my Vitamix and Excalibur dehydrator for over 10 years and my juicer for 16+ years. Most of my stainless steel knives and food prep utensils are built to last a lifetime. One idea for cutting costs is to look for second hand or refurbished equipment. Someone in your area may be willing to part ways with a piece of equipment at reduced cost. Second hand store houseware departments often carry deeply discounted quality kitchenwares as well. Still another option is to make do with what you already have. There is a lot of overlap between raw and cooked kitchen equipment and you may be surprised to find you already have many of these items. When I first started making raw food, I made do with about $100 worth of equipment. I had a few simple knives, plastic cutting board, bowls, peeler, hand citrus press and inexpensive blender. I started where I could and added on as needed. I later purchased the more costly items on the list, one by one. In my early raw days I was more dependent upon nut and fat-dominant raw foods that reminded me of the cooked foods that I missed. I favor much more simplicity now, so most times I’m juicing, blending or eating whole fruit.
I love preparing raw food. Something about raw food opened something within me that truly enjoys the process of making beautiful, healthful foods. I enjoy the flexibility having these ten tools in my kitchen allows so that I can prepare foods for a variety of palates and preferences. More than anything on this list, the key to preparing satisfying, delicious dishes is to obtain the highest quality foods you can, preferably wild or organic whenever possible. This fosters the purest, most genuine connection to earth and allows us the topmost taste, beauty and benefit from our food.
References
(1) Raw foods here refers to fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds in their natural, uncooked state, not surpassing 47° C/ 118° F.
(2) Why Raw Food? Living Light Culinary Institute. https://rawfoodchef.com/about-us/why-raw-foods/
(3) Raw Food Detox. Live Remedy: Holistic Nutrition for Transformational Health. https://www.liveremedy.com/raw-food-detox/
(4) What Temperature Destroys Enzymes? The Healthy Home Economist https://www.thehealthyhomeeconomist.com/at-what-temperature-are-food-enzymes-destroyed/
(5) An In-Depth Juicer Buyer’s Guide, Juicer Buyer’s Guide. https://www.juicerbuyersguide.com
(6) Boutenko, Sergei and Valya. Fresh: The Ultímate Live-Food Cookbook. North Atlantic Books, Berkeley, CA 2008. pp 48