Treat yourself to a great can opener

Saving money by cooking at home more? Don't suffer with a lousy can opener …

Preparing more meals at home is one of the most straightforward ways to save money. It's also the key to making dinners that suit picky or otherwise restricted diets.

A lot of the common staples for home-prepared meals come in cans. And cans, like any packaging, need to be opened.

When did can openers begin to suck?

Growing up, my parents cooked nearly all of our meals. Restaurants – even McDonald's – were reserved for special occasions.

They had a Rival (I think) electric can opener that just wouldn't quit. Year after year, can after can, it just kept opening them. Like a can opener should, honestly.

Contrast with the ones we've had for the past ten years or so. They've all just … sucked.

The circular blade on a couple of them disengaged with the shaft. We had to squeeze harder and harder until the turning knob did nothing. The turning knob broke on another. A “safety” opener we had, which is one that opens the can below the rim, was so hard to turn on big cans that my wrist hurt after getting three-quarters around the can.

We had an electric can opener that worked like a giant bug going around the top of the can; it started out well enough but just gave up on the larger cans.

All in all, a highly frustrating, somewhat expensive, sometimes painful experience.

Restaurant supply to the rescue

My wife had spoken with my mom about Christmas presents, and sent her on a quest for a good can opener.

She went to a local restaurant supply store, where they sell things like measuring spoon sets in quantity, dinnerware that can withstand day-in/day-out bussing, washing, and rinsing, and industrial pizza ovens. In other words, they sell things that take a beating.

The employee recommended this Garde model:

Amazon doesn't appear to sell this particular model, but there are others.

Man, it's nice. The long crank offers a lot more mechanical advantage (physics thing) than the others we've used. Right now it opens cans like they were butter. It has a fantastically solid feeling to it.

If we had wanted to go even heavier-duty, we could have gotten a model that bolts to the counter, but those can get into three figures. The price point on the handheld crank model was about the same as some of the other handhelds that died on us.

Being frugal doesn't mean suffering

Doing little money-saving things again, especially when budgets are tight, can feel mildly annoying. There's no denying that it's a few extra steps in the morning to put together a meal instead of just getting one at a restaurant or a fast-food place.

It's not the time to add insult to injury by choosing to use cheap tools. That's just being cheap, not being frugal.

Here are three other places where we've done well for ourselves by not settling for garbage:

• Power tools. Embarking on some intermediate do-it-yourself projects? Head to Lowe's and you can find several different brands of cordless power tools that look very similar, but vary greatly in price, sometimes by a factor of 2 or more. (My wife loves her Dewalt cordless drill, but you might love something else!) It's worth it to do some research to see what's important to you, whether it's power, weight, battery charge, whatever. You want tools that you can swear by, rather than ones that you swear at.
• Food storage containers. When we first started making hamburger soup for meal preparation, the containers we had were long and rectangular (often used in Chinese restaurants). We got 25 of them with lids for not that much money. The problem was that they were so long that my spoon would regularly slide completely in the soup, and I'd have to fish it out. A disaster? No, but it was annoying. Eventually, we got some containers (slightly more expensive) that were square, and the spoon doesn't fall completely in the soup anymore. They've lasted for years.
• Vegetable peeler. We've liked our OXO Good Grips swivel peeler. The simple all-metal ones were noticeably less comfortable to hold and just didn't peel well. Ours stays sharp and continues to make peeling carrots and other vegetables very easy.