A Food Mill is a kitchen equipment that enhances your efficiency while cooking by separating and filtering the unusable part of vegetables, fruits, meat, and many other things. Using a food mill lets you work smartly in the kitchen instead of doing unnecessary hard work.
It saves your worthy time, and energy, and makes you use your raw food to the fullest.
Why Use Food Mill In Your Kitchen:
There is a lot of kitchen equipment for filtering food contents like a food processor, sieves, and many others but a food mill is the best one. There are multiple reasons for it. Some of them are:
- Food mill creates fewer waste products, so it saves your food and money.
- It separates the food contents with a good and attractive texture.
- A food mill is a multi-purpose item.
Parts Of a Food Mill:
A Food Mill consists of three parts:
- The first part of the food mill is a crank. It has sharp blades.
- The second part is a plate-type bottom that has holes.
- The third part of a food mill is a bowl which is used for gathering processed food.
How Food Mill Works:
Food Mill is equipment that is quite easy to use as its handling is very easy and smooth.
- You can simply put your food content in the food mill.
- After adding food you can move the crank. Due to the movement of the crank, the sharp blades of the food mill start working and break down the food content into smaller pieces.
- The smaller pieces are pushed down through the holes.
- After passing through the holes the processed food is gathered in the lower bowl.
Kinds Of Food Mill:
There are two types of food mills:
- Standard Food Mill
- Continuous Food Mill
The difference between them is that a standard food mill can be used for small amounts of food like in daily routine cooking in the kitchen. While the continuous food mill is effective for huge amounts of food.
A manual Food Mill is better or Electric Food Mill is:
Food Mill is available in both forms – Manual and Electric. Both have their pros and cons.
Pros of manual tomato milling machine:
- It is cheaper than an electric food mill.
- You are not dependent on electricity. It saves you money.
Cons of Manual Food Mill:
- Hard work is required.
- Only effective for small amounts of food.
Pros of electric food mill for tomatoes:
- You can work smartly and no labor is necessary.
- Great for large quantities of food.
Cons of Electric Food Mill:
- It is expensive.
- You are dependent on electricity. No electricity means no work.
Multi-purpose Functioning Of Food Mill Due to various disks:
Food Mill is multi-purpose kitchen equipment and that’s why it takes privilege over other food filtering equipment. The reason behind this is food mill comes with various disks and you can select any disk based on your usage.
The difference among disks is the size of the holes. Different sizes of holes proved to be effective for filtering different types of food. The sizes of disks available with food mill are:
- 4mm – 5/32″
It is effective for creating chunks or smaller pieces of food. It can be useful for creating salads and stringy vegetables like broccoli, cabbage, and celery.
- 3mm – I/8″
This size of the disk is best for mashing food to a general level. It can be used for mashing and shredding meat for meatballs and soup.
- 2mm – 5/64″ 3/32″
It is best for mashing food to the finest quality and also useful for mashed potatoes and mashed broccoli and cauliflower which are the best diet and keto food. These discs are so fine that even tomato seeds can’t pass.
- 1.5mm – 1/16″
These discs create the finest form of puree or sauce. The resulting sauce is thick in texture and removes all the waste products like peels and seeds. It is very helpful in the preparation of tomato sauce, fruit purees for jam, and tomato puree.
- 1mm – 1/32″
This disc of food mill is the finest one. It removes all the extracts and results in thin syrup or juice. The best thing is it gathers all the nutrients and supplements in the juice. It can be used in the preparation of fruit syrups, fruit juices, and broths.
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How Food Mills Can Be Helpful In Cooking:
Food Mill helps in cooking to a great extent. It saves time while cooking as if you are making pasta and tomato puree is needed. Also, It creates lots of mess when you separate seeds and peels but if you have a food mill you can simply put your tomatoes and create your tomato puree without using any effort to separate seeds and peels.
It is also helpful in those types of food in which mashing is necessary. Like if you are making mashed potatoes, it is so tough to mash potatoes with bare hands. They are too hot to mash and after cooling them down, so they become difficult to mash.
Food Mill saves you time and energy. Without much effort, you can mash your potatoes in no time.
Recipes In Which Food Mill Can Be Used:
There are an unlimited number of food recipes in which food mills can be used. Some of them are:
- Salsa – Food Mill crushes vegetables into chunks for salsa.
- Mashed Potatoes – The food Mill helps to mash potatoes into the finest form which is perfect for mashed potatoes.
- Tomato Sauce and Puree – Food Mill processes the tomato into a paste by removing the seeds.
- Soup – In the preparation of chicken corn and Vegetable soup, a food mill can be used to crush the corn or vegetables into chunks.
- Fish Broth – Food mills extract all the components from fish and help create broth effectively.
- Jam – In the preparation of Jam, the food mill plays its role by separating the peels and seeds of fruits.
- Salads – Salad preparation takes a lot of time. It can be saved by using a food mill. You can simply add your vegetables or fruits and have smaller pieces.
Effective Ways To Use Food Mill For Tomatoes:
- The first thing to consider while using a food mill for tomatoes is the size of the disk used in food mills. As a food mill comes with various disk sizes, the disk should be selected carefully i.e the one through which tomato seeds can’t pass.
So, for creating a good, smooth, and filtered tomato paste the disks that should be used are:
- 2mm – 5/64″ 3/32″
- 1.5mm – 1/16″
- 1mm – 1/32″
- While using a food mill for tomatoes, ripened tomatoes should be used. They have good taste and color. That’s why the resulting sauce would be good in taste and color.
- Both raw and cooked tomatoes can be used in a food mill. It is dependent on the purpose for which tomatoes are being processed in the food mill. Some examples are:
- Like if you are processing tomatoes for pasta sauce, it is good to proceed with boiled ones. As it removes the raw taste and will taste in good pasta sauce.
- Another example would be salsa. If you are using a food mill to process tomatoes for salsa, it is best to go with raw ones. As cooked one would not add good flavor, color, and texture to salsa.
- If the purpose of making tomato sauce via a food mill is to freeze it for later use. Both raw and cooked tomatoes will work fine.
Methodology To Use Tomatoes In Food Mill:
The methodology for processing tomatoes in the food mill is:
Step 1:
Take ripened tomatoes with low water content. This helps in creating the sauce with food quality in terms of flavor, look, and texture.
Step 2:
Wash the tomatoes carefully to remove any dirt or bacteria. Due to it, the resulting sauce will be hygienically good.
Step 3:
Take a knife and a cutting board. Remove stems. If tomatoes have any bruises or bad parts, remove them all. So that you have clean tomatoes. If tomatoes have any bad parts or stem, they will spoil the taste of the sauce and they will not be preserved for a long period.
Step 4:
If you have a large size of tomatoes, cut them into pieces for easy processing. Moreover, It will save your labor if you are using a manual food mill. If you have small tomatoes, they can be used as they are.
Step 5:
If your purpose for making the sauce is to use it in pasta or any other thing in which raw sauce will not taste good you can boil the tomatoes but if you are making salsa, salads, etc you can go with raw ones.
Step 6:
Using a spoon, put the tomatoes into the food mill for further processing.
Step 7:
After adding the tomorrow, move the crank for the processing of tomatoes into the desired form.
Step 8:
Gather the resulting sauce from the bowl and remove the waste extracts from the food mill.
Here your tomato sauce is ready.
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References,
https://www.thespruceeats.com/what-is-a-food-mill-995683
https://www.ehow.com/how_8289177_use-food-mill-tomatoes.html
