‘Crip Up the Kitchen’ Author Jules Sherred Wants Your Kitchen to Be More Accessible

In the United States and Canada alone, roughly 20 per cent of adults live with some form of disability, yet recipes are rarely written with disabled people in mind. It is assumed the recipe reader has hands that can chop, slice, and grip without pain or discomfort; that they can lift heavy pots and pans, bend down to open an oven door, and navigate their own kitchen with ease. That’s rarely the reality when cooking with one or more disabilities, which is why Jules Sherred wrote Crip Up the Kitchen: Tools, Tips, and Recipes for the Disabled Cook.

It’s a comprehensive, thoughtful cookbook that makes good use of the Instant Pot and air fryer, and champions frozen vegetables and infamous “unitaskers” like the garlic press — all things that have been scoffed at by professional chefs, food writers, and home cook enthusiasts for being unnecessary, redundant, or lazy, yet which can prove invaluable for those living with a disability.

I called up Sherred to talk about why the book was needed, ways to make your kitchen a little less ableist, and how to create nourishing, delicious meals no matter your ability level.

It’s refreshing to see a cookbook that makes me go, “I haven’t seen this exact thing before.” It’s something we were missing.

My proposal was basically “I’m going to change how cookbooks are written” and it’s like, “Who are you to change a cookbook? They’ve been done the same way for 60 to 100 years.” But [I said] “I know what needs to be done, trust me.” And somebody let me do it.

In the book, you say that the kitchen is the worst room in the house if you’re disabled. Why is that?

Unlike other rooms, where it’s relatively inexpensive to add accessibility tools and mobility tools, the kitchen can cost upwards of $US100,000 ($138,820) to make accessible, depending on your type of disability. Who has $US100,000 ($138,820) to do a quick or complete kitchen renovation — to either lower the kitchen counter heights, or expand the aisle widths between the counters and appliances? As an example, I cannot open up my fridge when I’m using my wheelchair because there’s not enough room.

A lot of your recipes involve the Instant Pot or air fryer. What do you like about these appliances?

The Instant Pot? Because you put everything in it, set it, and forget it. There are some recipes that require multiple cooking phases — but usually you’ve dumped everything in, you set it, and you forget it, and all of your energy is just in the prep part. You don’t have to worry about remembering to stir things. There’s no babysitting.

The air fryer requires a little bit of babysitting, just like anything that you’re baking requires a little bit more attention. But there’s still that peace of mind that if you do forget about it because of brain fog, or whatever cognitive dysfunction is going on, you don’t have to worry that your house is going to burn down. The worst thing that’s going to happen is that your food is going to be overcooked.

With an air fryer, you can do baking as a wheelchair user, because wheelchair users are unable to use an oven, and so by having an oven on your countertop or on your table, you can once again bake and fry in a way that is safe.

One of the things you point out is that a lot of Instant Pot recipes aren’t optimised for the Instant Pot. What makes a good Instant Pot recipe?

You start off with the minimum amount of fluids necessary. That’s the first place people go wrong; they do a one-to-one. “Well, the stovetop recipe says I need six cups of water, so I’m going to put six cups of water in the Instant Pot,” not knowing that anything that’s not a starch is going to add cups of water to the recipe and dilute it. And everyone is like “All these recipes are so bland,” and yeah, because they’re over-diluted. If it’s too concentrated, then you can add water at the end. Easy peasy.

The next is that they overcook it. Say they’re wanting to do a tomato sauce, and they’re like, “Well, it’s like 40 minutes to do the tomatoes on the stove. So I’m gonna have to do it 40 minutes in the Instant Pot. Again, you’re cooking under pressure, and physics changes the rules. The rule is is find whatever ingredient takes the longest to cook, and however long that takes to cook is the amount of time you cook [the dish].

So it’s really all about knowing the right amount of fluid and the cook time so that everything doesn’t turn into mush (unless you need it to be mush because of arthritis, or whatever chewing-related disability you have).

You have an expansive, thoughtful list of appliance and tool recommendations in your book. Could you shout out a few you wish you had known about sooner?

The French rolling pin. There was a year and a half I couldn’t use my thumbs at all until I had surgery on both of my hands, and even now I still have grasping issues, and a traditional rolling pin is a torture device. A French rolling pin makes it super easy. You don’t even have to use your hands; you just use your wrists.

In lieu of that, you can use a pasta roller–whether it be on your stand mixer or a hand crank one–for things like pie crusts and roti and other flat breads, because even rolling sometimes was too much effort. You can be very specific about the thickness. For a recipe that says “three millimetres thickness,” well, just set your pasta roller to that thickness.

[Also, using] the multi-egg slicer for slicing soft things aside from eggs, like white mushrooms, strawberries, and cherry tomatoes.

Another one I wish I had learned about sooner was the immersion blender with attachments. Just being able to have a really lightweight food processor [so] you don’t have to use your hands. You can use it one-handed by grasping the food processor in the fold of your arm, and holding it to your body while attaching the immersion blender. If you’re having mobility issues like bending over, you don’t have to use heavier equipment that might be difficult to manage. And the storage space is pretty much zero. With attachments it’s just like it’s like five appliances in one, and it’s inexpensive, relatively speaking.

I think there’s a tendency to dismiss appliances and tools that either feel like shortcuts or unitaskers, like the famously maligned garlic press.

Yes, or even purchasing already minced garlic–“How dare you be so lazy? You’re not a real cook.” No! These are literally life-saving tools. Everyone needs to eat. And one of the reasons I wrote the book was because everybody would tell me I needed an Instant Pot, and then their following sentence would be them telling me everything they hate about it. And I’m like “Why would I buy this if you hate it so much? I don’t understand.”

Then I saw somebody with a disability use it, and they talked briefly about how it has helped them in the kitchen, and now I see. And nobody mentions the benefits for disabled people. Anything that is beneficial for a disabled person gets pooh-poohed, and we get called lazy for using it.

There are so many things that now I can really enjoy because I’m able to cook sitting down. I cannot stand at a stove. Five minutes is [the]outer limit that I can stand or walk before I have to use my wheelchair. Being able to feed myself again is huge, for all sorts of reasons.

We all need food that’s culturally appropriate that we connect with, that we feel good eating, that reminds us of happy memories. And people don’t understand that, or they dismiss that importance.

Get Jules’ tools:

• A tabletop pressure cooker with canning capabilities: Instant Pot Max 6-quart
• An oven-style air fryer for worry-free baking: CROWNFUL 19-quart Air Fryer Toaster Oven
• A tapered rolling pin for easy rolling: Muso Wood Sapele French rolling pin
• A pasta roller for making crusts and flatbreads: Elabo Pasta Maker
• A multi-egg slicer for eggs and more: CraftyCrocodile egg slicer
• Immersion blender with attachments: Mueller Smart Stick with attachments
• A shoe rack to create vertical storage: Gorilla Grip Shoe Holder Rack
• Get Jule’s book for further reading: Crip Up the Kitchen: Tools, Tips, and Recipes for the Disabled Cook

Can you briefly explain the spoon system and how you use it to cook and prep?

It’s based on Spoon Theory, and Spoon Theory is about how able bodied people, who do not have fatigue issues have cupfuls of energy that they can spend throughout the day, and they don’t have to think about how they’re using that energy, and it takes them no time to replenish it. If they’re feeling worn down, they may sit down for half an hour and get a second wind they can go again.

For those of us who have fatigue as part of our disability, we have spoonfuls of energy a day. And those spoonfuls wildly fluctuate, and it takes a lot more time to replenish that spoon. I created a system where you create a chart of what you’re able to do based off of how many spoons you have. And it takes a while to make that chart right for you. The chart that’s in the book is the one that I created while I was working on the book. It’s a jumping off point that people can look at and pop in their own things.

I check in with my body at the beginning of my workday, figure out how many spoons I have, [and] pick what I’m going to do. I check in again after lunch. If I have still more spoons to spend, then I add some more tasks because I only have one spoon to spend and I’m done. And the goal is to have one spoon left at the end of your day, so that you can enjoy life, and you’re not crashing on the couch or needing to be in bed because you’re exhausted and sore.

You only cook a few times a month. How does one shift from a weekly mode to a monthly one?

It takes a little bit more pre-planning, only in that you have to pick eight recipes, and you have to figure out the core ingredients for those recipes. Once I have that, I spend every two weeks prepping–like chopping a bag of onions, which works out to about eight cups of onions, and I freeze them. I chop my onions in quarters, then I put them in the food processor. I’m not sitting there hand chopping a bag of onions. My hands can’t handle that. Same with green peppers and everything. It’s all cut in quarters, and it all goes in the food processor.

It’s a matter of having your often-used ingredients on hand or in the freezer, and a well-stocked pantry of non-perishable items and figuring out, “Today I’m going to be making 16 servings of chicken korma,” and then I pressure jar them, or if people don’t have that capacity, they can freeze them. That way I always have 42 to 46 meals for when I’m really low on energy, and then that gets depleted. But if I’m having a day where I’m feeling really good, then I have the ingredients already prepped, so I’m going to do another big batch cooking and it takes no time to replenish.

In your book, you say “Don’t let diet culture shame you out of using frozen vegetables,” because, as you explain, frozen vegetables can actually be more nutritious.

It’s always some food lobby that gets involved with these things, always, but there’s this common misconception that frozen vegetables are not as nutritious and they’re filled with salt. And that’s not the case. Maybe a long, long time ago, they would add salt to frozen vegetables, but then they realised that adding salt to frozen vegetables actually makes them soggy. Now they do a quick blanch and flash freezing within a couple of hours of them being picked. From the moment something is picked, it starts to die and lose nutrients. Those foods that you’re getting in the fresh food aisle, some of them have been sitting there for a week. In the frozen food aisle, [those things] were frozen within less than 24 hours after being picked. So they’re really fresh, they’re just frozen.

Most people cannot tell the difference. You’re not some chef in a Michelin starred restaurant. You don’t have to worry about [the taste]. The thing you need to be worrying about is getting yourself fed and making sure that you are eating nutrient-dense food.

I don’t want to be snobby about it, but it’s the snobby culture that caused this, right? Ignore the judgments, please. That’s the reason I swear in my in my cookbook, because it is BS. I’m here to help you undo that messaging, and just be like, “I fed myself today. I did a great job.”

What are some other things that you wish able bodied people would consider when talking about cooking, or when inviting disabled people into their home to share a meal?

Everything that a disabled person does requires more effort. One of the things that really frustrates me about able bodied people and their recipes, is [they’ll say] “Oh, I have this recipe. It’s super easy. It takes me 15 minutes to make.” Even “30-minute” meal kits will take me an hour and a half, because it takes me that much more effort to make things because of mobility issues. Nothing is easy.

Coming over for a meal is exhausting. You need to leave room for the disabled person to be exhausted, or maybe, instead of inviting them over to your house for a meal, you say “I want to cook you something and bring it to your house.” You’re still having that social time with the disabled person, and they’re not having to do extra labour for your enjoyment.

Is there a recent hack you’ve discovered that you think everyone should know?

In the cookbook, I explain how I turned an eat-in area of the kitchen into a prep area. When I was photographing the book and doing the last bit, I had to move it all into my dining room, and now my dining room is my kitchen. Not everyone has a dining room, but if you have a dining room, put your Instant Pot, your air fryer, and everything [else] in there, and get a bucket to collect all the dirty dishes to take into the kitchen at the end, and have someone else in your house do it. If you have a partner who is able to do it, that’s their job.

Use your dining room table and a side table or serving buffet to store your stuff. For wheelchair users, it’s easier than trying to navigate tight corners in the kitchen. My kitchen clearance has the technical space required for code, but I still cannot easily navigate corners when I have to use my wheelchair.

Another thing you can do is use your Instant Pot in your living room. Use your coffee table for a cook and prep space. Just because it’s a living room doesn’t mean you can’t cook in it. If you don’t have room in your kitchen, or if you don’t have a dining room, well, you do have a living room.

Is there anything else you would like our readers to know?

I hope people enjoy the book. Yes, it’s for disabled people, but, as all things with a disability focus, it benefits everybody. Anybody who’s short on time, who has a busy schedule, families with young children–it will help you out too, because it’s all about saving time and energy.