Best Kitchen Tools and Cookbooks for Caregivers

Who hasn’t heard about the benefits of healthy eating? The idea is repeated over and over again in books, blog posts, and on social media. But there’s a bigger question – how do you eat well? 

I don’t mean this from the nutritional perspective, like which foods are healthy. Most of us have a pretty good intuitive sense of what we and our loved ones should be eating. Yet, doing this in practice is always tougher than it seems.  

This is particularly true for caregivers. 

You’re often juggling multiple dietary needs for your loved one (and possibly yourself), while also being short on time and energy. So, today, we’re talking about our favorite kitchen tools, cookbooks, and other products that can make life a little easier. 

You can also check out our post on cooking and meal prep tips for busy caregivers. 

Our Favorite Cookbooks for Caregivers

Keepers

The title Keepers refers to recipes that the authors turned back to time and time again. These recipes were popular with family members and simple enough to prepare on a busy weeknight.

This book is perfect for people who are hesitant in the kitchen and want to learn new tricks and approaches. You might get some new ideas along the way.

The Ultimate Meal Prep Cookbook

The Ultimate Meal Prep Cookbook comes from America’s Test Kitchen and is designed specifically for meal prepping (where you’re preparing meals for the week ahead of time). The meal prepping approach can save you time and energy each week, while also reducing food waste. 

The cookbook includes 25 weekly plans, with full grocery lists and directions for preparing the meals. 

This book does take some liberties with the idea of meal prep, as you still to do a little cooking most nights. However, their approach remains highly effective and a great time saver for caregivers. 

The Simple Kitchen: Quick and Easy Recipes Bursting With Flavor

The Simple Kitchen does indeed focus on simple recipes. There are more than 80 recipes in the cookbook, many of which take less than 30 minutes to prepare. 

The meals tend to be delicious and follow homestyle cooking, so they should be fantastic for picky seniors. The biggest limitation is that there isn’t much support for specialized diets.  

Now & Again

Now & Again offers plenty of unusual and interesting recipes from various cultures. Despite the complex flavors, the recipes are typically easy to prepare, which makes them perfect for when you’re short on time or energy. 

There are also sections in the book dedicated to ways of reusing leftovers. Some of these ideas will be familiar, while others are very creative.  

Good and Cheap

As the name suggests, Good and Cheap helps you to make delicious and inexpensive meals at home (the book itself is pretty cheap too, costing just a few bucks for the Kindle version). 

The subtitle for this book is “Eat Well on $4/Day”, however that $4 target won’t always be realistic. Food prices have increased since the book was published in 2015 and you’ll need to pay more if you’re making ingredient substitutions. Even so, the meals are still pretty inexpensive and generally well received. 

Cookbooks for Particular Diets

Most of the cookbooks for caregivers we’ve featured are designed for everyday eating, often focusing on delicious meals that families love. 

That style falls short if you or your loved one needs to follow a particular eating approach, like keeping fat low or being on a diabetic diet. The following shortlist of books addresses some of these specific needs. 

• The Complete Mediterranean Cookbook. Mediterranean eating tends to be healthy and has been associated with long life. This is one of the most popular cookbooks on the topic and an excellent place to begin. 
• The Diabetic Cookbook for Beginners. While this book doesn’t contain many pictures, it offers an impressive selection of 500 recipes, plus a 21-day diabetic meal plan. 
• Plant-Based on a Budget. Many of the plant-based meals in this book can be made in a single pot without too much effort. 
• Renal Diet Cookbook for the Newly Diagnosed. This book offers 100 recipes that are low in sodium, protein, phosphorus, and potassium, all of which can be great for kidney health.  
• The Heart Healthy Cookbook for Two. Not only does this cookbook focus on heart healthy foods, but it’s also designed for two people, rather than a full family. 

Things To Consider

Needless to say, caregivers can use any type of cookbook they want. But, the following criteria are worth looking for. 

• Delicious food that’s easy to prepare. Time is precious for most caregivers. 
• Meals with few ingredients. Fewer ingredients means less energy and effort, which can be crucial. 
• Easily adaptable recipes. You may need to adapt a meal to match a specific health need or the senior’s food preferences. Some recipes make this process easy, while others don’t.   
• Recipes that meet dietary requirements. Seniors with chronic health conditions may need to follow a specialized diet. Such a diet might focus on soft food, be low in sodium, or be an even more specialized approach like a renal diet. 
• Suitable for meal prep. Meals you can prepare in advance are amazing, especially if you can make meals for a few days or even a week at once. Doing so allows you to prep meals when you actually have time. After all, dinner time is often quite stressful.  

Tools For Cooking

Now, let’s look at some tools for your kitchen, along with cookbooks that make these easier to use. 

Slow Cooker

Slow cookers have two big advantages. First, they allow for hands off cooking. You can often prep dinner in the morning or even the night before, then allow it to cook all day. 

The long cook time helps to tenderize meat and veggies too. That’s perfect for seniors who struggle with chewing. 

The other advantage is that you can often find second-hand slow cookers at a relatively low price. After all, they’re one of those products people often buy and never actually use.  

Slow Cookers We Love:

• Crock-Pot 7 Quart Slow Cooker. This slow cooker has just four settings: Off, low, high, and warm. Still, it’s a decent size and is inexpensive, making it perfect if you just need a conventional slow cooker. 
• Hamilton Beach Programmable Slow Cooker, 4 Quart. While this slow cooker is smaller and more expensive than the previous example, the ability to program it is very powerful. 
• Elite Gourmet 3 Quart Electric Slow Cooker. If you’re cooking separate meals for the senior, a small slow cooker like this can be amazing. 

Recommended Cookbooks:

• Fix-It and Forget-It: Slow Cooker Dump Dinners and Desserts. The recipes in this book are indeed fast and easy to prepare. However, some rely on canned soup and similar ingredients – a style that won’t suit everyone. 
• The Easy 5-Ingredient Slow Cooker Cookbook. This book offers plenty of delicious and easy-to-prepare recipes. But… the title is misleading, as most contain more than five ingredients (the author explains this, stating that the recipes have five main ingredients). 
• The Super Easy Vegan Slow Cooker Cookbook. Even if you’re not a vegan, the meals in this book are a great way to add nutrients to your diet.  
• Skinnytaste Fast and Slow. The title of this cookbook is a reference to fast meal prep, followed by slow cooking. It’s also one of the most popular slow cooker cookbooks on the market, which is another reason to consider it. The author of the cookbook runs a blog called skinnytaste.com, which is worth checking out for a sense of her style. 

Instant Pot

An Instant Pot is generally more expensive than a slow cooker, but they’re worth every penny. 

First, they have many functions, including slow cooking, pressure cooking, rice cooking, steaming, sautéing, yogurt making, keeping food warm, and sometimes even air frying. The exact functions vary from model to model, but Instant Pots are always impressive. 

Having a single tool that does all of this is incredibly helpful, especially if you’re short on space. 

The pressure cooking feature is particularly powerful as it reduces the cooking time by around two thirds, which makes meals so much faster to prepare. 

Products We Love:

• Instant Pot Duo 7-in-1. This Instant Pot model comes in 3 quart, 6 quart, and 7 quart versions. The 6 quart version would be perfect for most families and gives you all the functions you need. 
• Instant Pot Accessories. There are many sets of Instant Pot accessories, which give you even more functions and make the tool easier to use. We particularly like this set. 
• Moss & Stone Electric Pressure Cooker. While this product doesn’t come from Instant Pot, it has a similar collection of features (and even a few more). It’s a great choice if you don’t like the Instant Pot brand for any reason.  

Recommended Cookbooks:

• The Ultimate Instant Pot Cookbook. With 200 recipes, this cookbook gives you plenty of variety and makes your Instant Pot very easy to use. 
• Mediterranean Instant Pot. The focus on Mediterranean cooking makes this an exciting cookbook, one with healthy meals and interesting flavors.  
• The Step-by-Step Instant Pot Cookbook. This is one of the best cookbooks for getting you started, as there are step-by-step photos of the processes. 
• Skinnytaste One and Done. This cookbook gives you plenty of variety, offering easy recipes that can be made in the Instant Pot, slow cooker, air fryer, and more. The common theme is that each recipe can be made in a single vessel, not multiple. 

Air Fryer

Air fryers are most popular as an alternative to deep fried foods. They use hot air to give you a similar texture as deep frying your ingredients, while requiring barely any oil. 

Health isn’t the only benefit. Air fryers are also a fast and easy way to cook food and to reheat leftovers. The finished dish is often much better than if you’d reheated it in the microwave. 

The biggest catch is size, as most air fryers are fairly small. You might be able to cook a meal for two using just an air fryer, but there’s rarely enough space for a four person meal. 

Air Fryers We Love:

• COSORI Small Air Fryer Oven. This small air fryer is best when you’re serving just one or two and are on a budget. While it’s cheap and tiny (just 2.1 quarts), it will be enough for many families. 
• Ninja AF101 Air Fryer. At 4 quarts, this air fryer is larger than the previous example and can be easily used for roasting, rehydrating, and dehydrating food, as well as air frying. 
• Instant Air Fryer Oven. This 6-quart air fryer is more comprehensive again and has six distinct functions. There’s even a larger 10-quart version of the air fryer, which is seriously impressive.  

Recommended Cookbooks:

• The Essential Air Fryer Cookbook for Beginners. This is one of the most popular air fryer cookbooks and it’s easy to see why. The book is even available on Kindle Unlimited in some countries, making it an inexpensive choice.
• Air Fryer Perfection. This cookbook comes from America’s Test Kitchen, which consistently produces excellent recipes. The instructions are easy and the ingredients are simple, making this a great book for learning your air fryer. 
• The Essential Air Fryer Cookbook for Two. The focus on smaller portions makes this cookbook incredibly helpful for caregivers. 

Countertop Ovens

Countertop ovens are much smaller than regular ovens and come with a variety of features. They’re great for small spaces and heat up much more quickly than a full sized oven. 

Because there’s less space, a countertop oven won’t work for everything you can cook in a full sized oven, but they do a surprisingly good job. You may find these tools perfect if you only feed yourself and the senior.  

Countertop Ovens We Love:

• Black + Decker 4-Slice Convection Oven. This convection oven fits four slices of toast or a 9-inch pizza, making it useful for simple meals. It has a strong focus on toasting bread, but still works well for baking, broiling, and keeping your food warm. 
• Toshiba Large 6-Slice Convection Toaster Oven. This isn’t just a larger toaster oven, it also has many more features and even comes with a rotisserie for cooking chicken. 
• Oster Digital Air Fryer Oven. This product has many more features than the previous example and can even act as an air fryer. 

We don’t have cookbooks to recommend for countertop ovens, as most of those that exist are low quality books designed for a specific model of countertop oven. 

A cookbook isn’t needed anyway. Countertop ovens follow the same principles as regular ovens. You may simply need to adjust the cooking times or temperatures a little to account for any differences.  

Services To Consider

Sometimes the right answer isn’t a cookbook or a new tool, but to decrease the amount of cooking you do. 

I know, I know. We’re often taught that cooking is the done thing. That it’s an important part of being a functioning adult. Yet, we all need to tailor our activities based on our energy levels. 

Two types of services can be powerful here: meal kits and meal delivery services. 

• Meal kits provide you with all the ingredients for a given recipe, often already prepped and with premade sauces.
• Meal delivery services provide a full meal, sometimes fresh, sometimes frozen. The meal simply needs to be reheated at the right time.

Meal kits and meal deliveries are generally more expensive than cooking at home. However, they can be worth it for the time and energy you save. 

Seniors could even be eligible for government assistance with food delivery costs, particularly if they follow a Medicare Advantage plan. Medicaid health plans sometimes pay for meal delivery services as well. Your case manager will be able to tell you more about whether you’re eligible for free or discounted meal delivery. 

Here are our favorite services and what they offer. 

Fresh n’ Lean

Meals from Fresh n’ Lean arrive chilled, not frozen, and are made using fresh locally sourced ingredients. There’s a strong focus on quality and flavor, so seniors get reheatable meals that actually taste good. 

They have the following meal plan options:

• Protein+ (from $10.32/meal)
• Keto (from $10.66/meal)
• Paleo (from $10.66/meal)
• Vegan Standard (from $9.99/meal)
• Mediterranean Diet (from $10.32/meal)
• Whole30 Approved (from $10.66/meal)
• Vegan Low Carb (from $9.99/meal)

The exact price is determined by how many meals you order per week, with a minimum of 1 meal per day for 5 days per week.  

Magic Kitchen

Magic Kitchen focuses on fully cooked meals as well. These are delivered frozen, so you can store the meals until they’re needed.

This service shines when it comes to flexibility. You get to order whichever meals you want without being on a specific plan. You often get the chance to mix and match sides and mains too, which is perfect for specialized diets. 

There are even sections for various types of diets, including portion controlled, diabetic friendly, dialysis friendly, low sodium, low carb, renal, senior, low fat, and more. Few services have so many options.  

The price varies considerably, influenced by the ingredients used and the size of the meal. But, if you want to give them a try, the Magic Kitchen Trial Pack is a good place to begin. This currently costs $162 and provides 15 meals (12 lunches, 3 breakfasts), which comes to less than $11 per meal. 

Jet Fuel Meals

Jet Fuel Meals is a smaller company that delivers fresh meals to areas of Florida, New York, and New Jersey. Meals are delivered three times per week, which ensures they’re always fresh and of the best possible quality.

Their meal plans include:

• Keto
• Weight Loss
• Traditional Maintain
• Athletic Weight Gain
• Pescatarian
• Plant Based

Regardless of the plan, you’re ordering meals for a week at a time, starting at $51 for a meal per day per week. That’s around $7.30 per meal, which isn’t too bad for a delicious and healthy dinner. The cost per meal decreases if you’re ordering more meals each week.

What A Crock Meals

What a Crock Meals takes an unusual approach, as their meals are all designed to be cooked in the slow cooker. Instead of focusing on meal plans, the company allows you to order meals individually, either once off or as part of a recurring subscription.

The meals often cost around $12.99 or $13.99 per serving, but there are some cheaper ones as well. There are also some bundles of meals, which decrease the price per serving. This company is a great intermediate between cooking meals yourself and having fully cooked meals delivered to you.

Gobble

Gobble is popular as a meal kit for families, but it’s also a powerful option for caregivers and seniors. A huge selling point is the time factor – meals typically take around 15 minutes to make. They also taste surprisingly good for such little effort. 

Their menu includes wheat free, dairy free, low carb, and vegetarian options, although they don’t cater for more specialized diets. 

The prices range from $11.99 to $16.99 per serving, depending on your chosen plan. The time and energy you save with these kits could make them well worth the cost. 

Adaptive Tools For Eating

Adaptive products are items that make the tasks of daily life easier. Here, we’re looking at tools that help seniors to eat. These are most relevant to seniors who have limited grip or not much flexibility in their hands and wrists. 

Here are a few interesting products that can help. 

•  Adaptive utensils (like these) typically have large gripped handles that make knives, forks, and spoons much easier to hold. 
• You can also make your own versions using foam grip tubing. 
• There are also scoop plates (like these) that reduce food spills and make it easier for seniors to food onto their utensils. 
• Alternatively, you could fit plate guards onto your own plates (like with this Able-T Plate Guard).