Lekue Cooking Mesh makes boiling veggies fun again

It's pricier than the five-buck alternative, but my Lekue silicone cooking mesh bag [Amazon] has survived dozens of boils.

The deal here's pretty straightforward: instead of boiling stuff in a pot, then having to pour hot water into a colander to strain the food, you just boil it in a silicone mesh baggie which can be easily removed and rinsed when ready. The downside is that the capacity isn't great, making it tough to feed more than two or three in a single load. The upside, though, is pretty obvious: convenience, and less fooling around with scalding liquids.

Silicone drawstrings stop the contents escaping, and make it easy to dangle over the pot if you just want to drip 'n' dump the food onto the plate. For cleanup, just throw it in the dishwasher. Here are some delicious mini-cabbage things I boiled with it:

We use this constantly now, and durability seems to be the advantage over cheaper implementations of the concept that aren't quite as well-designed. (It's not the mesh that fails, but the drawstring) But, really, there's not a lot of difference. But avoid the propylene clones in dollar stores, unless you're OK with eating sweet pthalatoes.

Lekue Cooking Mesh [Amazon]