On the surface, an electric food strainer looks like a pretty handy kitchen gadget.  The thing is, they aren’t for everyone!  There are a few uses that call for electric food strainers, and for most other uses it’s complete overkill!  In this post I want to share how these wild gadgets work, and what they should be used for.

An electric food strainer works like a food mill.  It grinds up whatever you put into it and it separates the liquid from the pulp, similar to a kitchen stainless steel juicer.  When you put food into it, it sucks everything down and sends what you want one way, and catches the stuff that you don’t.  Most strainers have a plunger that you push into the mill to help everything get down in there.  This seems like a fantastic invention, but most people will never use them because they are a pain in the butt to clean!

Also, unlike a food mill, these things are dangerous!  If a finger, neck tie, or anything else falls into the mill while it’s operating, you aren’t going to get it back!  Treat this tool like you would a paper shredder, it’s not really that dangerous on the surface, but a small mistake can lead to huge problems.

What Are Electric Food Strainers For?

The most common use for an electric food strainer is for making a lot of tomato sauce at once.  After the tomatoes have been blanched, they can be tossed right into the strainer and it will turn out tomato sauce.

There are other uses, but you probably won’t have many of them!  If you’re making blackberry and raspberry jam and need to separate the skins and seed from the juice, you can toss all of them into the strainer.  They also make great apple sauce.

Should I Get An Electric Food Strainer?

Unless you run a commercial kitchen, you probably don’t need an electric strainer.  Almost every job that you can do at home can get done with a regular food strainer and a food mill.  They are much cheaper, easier to clean, and lower maintenance than an electric food strainer is.

Obviously, this is a cool gadget, but it’s not very realistic to have for the home cook.  There are a lot of other gadgets that will make a much bigger impact in your kitchen than an electric food strainer will!