Essential Tools For The Kitchen

Even if cooking is not your passion, chances are you have plenty of kitchen gadgets and tools—many of which you might rarely use. I love buying things for my kitchen—in fact, I get giddy with excitement when I walk into Williams Sonoma or even Bed, Bath and Beyond. 

Coming up with a short list of some essential kitchen tools and gadgets was really easy—I just thought about things I use almost everyday or weekly. Here is the list! 

*Slow cookers—small, medium and large. The small size is perfect for keeping queso warm at parties. The medium size is great for a weeknight soup or chili. The large is essential for cooking a whole chicken, a large roast, or for making homemade stock and bone broths. 

*Good quality knives. Granted, I have a rather large collection of knives which is unnecessary to be a good cook. I just happen to love knives. You really only need a few—a paring knife, an 8-inch chef knife, a carving knife and a bread knife. Take care of your knives and they will last for decades. Don’t ever put them in the dishwasher, don’t leave them on a stainless steel sink, and only cut on wood, not plastic. Get your knives professionally sharpened once a year or so. 

*Whisks and tongs. These are tools I reach for on a daily basis—I truly cannot imagine a kitchen without whisks and tongs of several sizes. 

*Citrus zester.  Citrus zest is a fantastic ingredient that many home cooks forget about. Zest some onto pasta or fish. Try putting zest in a pan sauce. Zest adds zing to your homemade salad dressings. Stir some zest into mayonnaise. You can even mix citrus zest with sea salt and dip your margarita glass into it for an awesome salty rim. 

*Nutmeg grater. Freshly grated nutmeg is far superior in flavor to store bought ground nutmeg. Grate some in all of your favorite spinach dishes—creamed spinach, hot spinach dip. Of course nutmeg is wonderful in many baked goods and even on your latte or hot apple cider. 

*Cast iron skillet. I love my cast iron skillets and use them pretty much daily. I love that they go from the stove top to the oven and that you can get such a great sear with them. Season your skillet before using and never put it in the dishwasher or use soap on it. When properly seasoned, cast iron is also non-stick. 

*Food processor. Once you make pie dough in the food processor, you will realize what an indispensable tool it really is. Pie dough comes together in minutes when you let your food processor do the work. Need to grate a big block of cheese? The food processor does it in about a minute. 

*Immersion blender. Before I bought one of these, I used to make such a mess when it came to pureeing soup in the blender. Now, I just stick my immersion blender right in the soup pot and voila! 

*Handheld mandolin. I do have a professional grade mandolin that is wonderful when cooking for a crowd—think homemade potato chips or sweet potato chips for a party of eight. But on weeknights when it is just the two of us, a small, plastic hand held mandolin is amazing. No matter how good your knife skills are, you could never slice vegetables as thin and as even as a mandolin does. 

*Electric citrus juicer. Sure I use a handheld juice press for my morning lemon water, but when you want to make fresh citrus margaritas, there is no tool more welcome than my electric citrus juicer. In just minutes you can juice limes, lemons, oranges and grapefruits—and this tool truly gets ALL the juice out of the citrus. 

Of course there are other tools and gadgets I love, but these are some of my top picks. What tool and gadget can you not live without?