My top kitchen essentials
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As someone who spends a lot of their time in their kitchen, creating recipes and cooking from inspiring cookbooks, there are quite a few items in my kitchen I treasure.
Of course, I’m not listing the very essential components of a kitchen, such as cutlery, serve ware, glasses, pots/pans, etc. My list below is a small list of items I cannot live without now that I have them. At one point in time, they were not essential to me. Though, I have found them to be extremely useful and they help me save time, lower stress and make my kitchen more efficient. I should note that my partner is a chef and I’m a food blogger, so our kitchen is our haven. I recognise that we invest more money and time into our kitchen than the average person does. Food is the basis of both of our jobs and it is our mutual passion, so there is not a single day that goes by that we do not utilise our kitchen and these items in one way or another.
They are not all necessary to buy all at once, as I surely did not buy them all at once. Most of them are gifts I received over time or items I invested in with my partner. With that being said, now I could not imagine loving cooking as much as I do without them. They make the cooking process easier, thus more enjoyable and less stressful. I love investing into beautiful kitchen pieces that will last me a long time. The way I see it, I spend a lot of time at home and in my kitchen, so I may as well have it nicely stocked!
My Top Kitchen Essentials
Microplane Grater/Zester - here.
I use this grater for more than just parmesan cheese. A grater can be used for grating and/or zesting garlic, ginger, citrus, hard cheeses or frozen fruit to make a shaved ice dessert. Rather than mincing a garlic clove, which takes ages, I just grate it and it’s done in less than a minute.
KitchenAid Food Processor - here.
Before I got this for my birthday, I used to STRUGGLE. I refused to buy it and spend money on something I thought was unnecessary. My idea was that anything I needed to process, I could do in a blender. Boy, was I wrong. This bad boy is used more than any other appliance in this house. I make dips, soups, sauces, emulsions and chopped veggies in this food processor. Ladies and gentlemen, that’s how you gift someone a really good gift. You gift them something they would never buy for themselves.
Cooking salt here and finishing salt here.
This refers to a kitchen essential I believe should be in every kitchen. There are so many different types of salt out there. There is fine cooking salt, rock salt, flakey salt, sea salt, kosher salt and that may be it. Fine cooking salt is what I have found to be the cheapest salt there is. This is the salt you want to add to soups, stews, pasta sauces, general sauces, emulsions or anywhere that the salt is not going to be visible in the final dish. If the salt is going to completely dissolve, use cooking salt. Flakey salt on the other hand, is the luxury line of salt. The result is a beautiful shape and texture that you can use to garnish dishes with. It is more expensive than any other salt, as I have found, so you want to reserve this salt for garnishing. Don’t use flakey salt in a recipe where it will disappear, use cooking salt. I keep a jar of cooking salt and flakey salt by the stove so I can access both as needed.
Mixing Bowls - here.
Having a few different sizes of mixing bowls in your kitchen makes your cooking so much easier. Especially if you are cooking a dish with several components, having mixing bowls that are the right size for that element is important, in my opinion.
Re-usable Bamboo ‘Paper’ Towels - here.
Other than tea towels, bamboo ‘paper’ towels replace regular paper towels and they are more environmentally friendly. You can get so many uses out of one sheet, we end up using it for a week, then putting it in with the rest of our tea towels in the wash, and re-using it again and again. It’s amazing and I cannot recommend enough if you are looking to cut out paper towels.
Japanese knives - here.
Investing in high-quality Japanese knives is worth every penny. They are built with craft and they will last a lifetime. If you take care of them, you should be able to pass them down to your grandkids. Using sharp knives in the kitchen is safer than using dull knives. It is important to sharpen your knives every 3 months or so, depending on how frequently you are using them. Of course, there are different knives for different purposes. In the world of knives, you could find a butcher, filleting, vegetable, utility, chef or sashimi knife — to name a few. Generally speaking, I recommend getting a multipurpose knife that you can use for general chopping of vegetables and slicing of meat that is most common in a household. Any kind of fish filleting or thin slicing may call for a different blade.
“I love investing into beautiful kitchen pieces that will last me a long time. The way I see it, I spend a lot of time at home and in my kitchen, so I may as well have it nicely stocked!”
There are so many other things I could talk about, such as having a cookbook stand in your kitchen to hold up the cookbook while you’re cooking to that exact page. Or an organised spice rack, with clearly labelled jars. I could talk endlessly about ceramic coated cast iron pans and dutch ovens. Having more than one cutting board in the kitchen is useful if more than one person is cooking. Tea towels dedicated to keeping wet and wrapping your delicate herbs and greens in to extend their life and keep them fresh in the fridge.
I hope this is a good starting point, let me know your kitchen essentials below, too!
