Favorite Tools To Use in the Kitchen
We rely on some essential kitchen tools to cook meals at home. My five favorite tools are below. I hope this list inspires and helps you in your home cooking!
COOKING AT HOME
I began cooking in college. I started off very simple – hearty breakfasts with bacon, eggs, grits and fruit and canned spaghetti sauce with spaghetti noodles. When my husband and I dated in college, we often cooked simple meals together. He was interested in cooking to save money and loved being creative with inventing meals. I loved cooking to nourish our bodies with healthy foods.
We meet many goals when we make meals at home: budget, creativity, and health.
DESIRE FOR HEALTHY FOODS
I earned a 500 Hour Yoga certification shortly after we were married. This education charged my desire to dive deeper into the concept of food as fuel. My desire to consume healthy foods was renewed once again when I was pregnant with my two children. Now that they are preschoolers, I’m even more passionate about providing strong nutrients to their developing bodies.
We make the majority of our meals at home. Therefore, its important to us to make cooking easy, fun, and healthy. The following kitchen tools below are the most important ones to me. In fact, if we were going on a long, extended vacation, I would take these with me if I could!
MY ESSENTIAL KITCHEN TOOLS
- CHEF’S KNIFE: A good quality chef’s knife, such as the Wusthof Classic 6-Inch Chef’s Knife, is probably the item I use and love the most in the kitchen. I use it to chop and slice through anything! Sometimes I remove it from the dishwasher and hand wash it to use it, because its that good. They will last a lifetime and are totally worth it, in my opinion.
- FOOD PROCESSOR: My husband surprised me with a Cuisinart Food 8 Cup Food Processor for Christmas one year. We use this versatile machine to make hummus, pesto sauce, salsa, cole slaw, and cauliflower rice among many other tasty meals.
- CAST IRON SKILLET: I purchased a Lodge Cast Iron Skillet from Target on sale for about $9. Did you know the iron from the pan actually is absorbed by the food you are cooking? So when you cook with cast iron, its a great natural way to assimilate iron into your body. This is especially helpful if you are like me, and can be more at risk for becoming anemic. The cast iron skillet will last you a life time if you season it properly. You can move the cast iron pan directly from the stove top to the oven for dishes such as hashes or quiche, which is convenient.
- DUTCH OVEN: My husband knows me well. One Christmas, he gave me a Staub Dutch Oven. This is my other well-used cooking work horse. We use it to make delicious soups, stews, roast, homemade tomato sauce, and chilis. The dutch oven is made of enamel on the interior of the pot. So, if absorbing too much iron in your body is a concern, than enamel coated cookware is a great option for you. This dutch oven can transfer easily from cooktop to oven and it holds heat very well.
- VEGETABLE PEELER: We use vegetable peelers for peeling lots and lots of vegetables. We are part of a CSA and each week, we bring home a box of fresh, local farm, organic vegetables. The Oxo brand peelers are great. My boys use the ones with the long handles when they help in the kitchen.
I hope this inspires you to get in the kitchen with good tools since they make cooking easier. What are your favorite kitchen tools?
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