20 Essential Kitchen Items To Upgrade Your Home Cooking
Meghan got one of these carbon steel roasting pans a few years ago and quickly declared it “the $99 pan that everyone needs.” Yes, even those who have no plans to host a Thanksgiving ever. She likes it for roasting veggies, braising, baking, making deep casseroles, and more. “It’s lightweight, heats well, and is nonstick.” Plus, it’s smaller than those too-big roasting pans out there. Faith has half-joked that this wok is the one thing she'd grab from her house in a fire (once her family was safely outside, of course!). It's made of carbon steel, which is durable and inexpensive; heats quickly and evenly; and can become virtually nonstick. Readers ask us all the time if All-Clad really is worth the money and we say it is — especially when it comes to a fry pan.
The number of utensils in a household kitchen varies with time and the style of cooking. They take up a lot of space and you can already do a lot of what it does in an oven or toaster oven. Yes, they’re great for reheating meals but I don’t think investing in one will make you want to cook more if you don’t already. If you have a ton of space in your kitchen AND your budget, and you’re already into cooking, go for it. But if we’re talking about what needs to be on your kitchen equipment essentials, this doesn’t make the cut.
If you're like us, you'll be using your bench scraper to move piles of chopped vegetables from board to bowl, or board to skillet. Or to scrape your board clean of scraps and residue before you start another round of chopping. The more food you prepare with it, the less you'll be able to get along without it. Squeeze out seed- and flesh-free citrus juice, poach perfect eggs, sift flour, steam vegetables, and more. And, of course, your strainer can also serve as a colander for draining pasta and the like, a nice hot-foods counterpart to your salad spinner.
Measuring cups are used for precisely measuring the volume of liquid or solid cooking ingredients. You may not think that measuring cups can be anything special. Well as it turns out, great design can extend all the way down to measuring cups. This stackable set of measuring cups New Gadgets 2022 from Kitchenmade has all sorts of smart features that eliminates the small frustrations that measuring cups often bring about. Now if you’re looking for the Ferrari of cutting boards, look no further than this Proteak edge grain cutting board.
Plus, it’s dishwasher safe so you don’t have to worry about the handle melting or warping in the heat. A whisk is often one of the most used items in your kitchen, so it’s important to have one that’s ergonomically made. This 9-inch whisk from OXO Good Grips fits great in the hand and is perfect for whisking together salad dressings, sauces, eggs, desserts, and much more. Instead of all this increased choice making our lives easier, it’s made it that much more difficult to separate the quality from the junk. So we decided to test all the kitchen equipment we could get our hands on to solve this problem and make stocking a minimalist, high-quality kitchen as easy as possible.
(It’s like the original slow cooker.) You can also use your Dutch oven as an alternative to the large sauce pan above. And you can bake bread with a super crackly crust in your D.O. It’s no surprise the dutch oven is considered one of the best kitchen products. They’re expensive, so save your pennies and use it every chance you get. In my experience, bamboo cutting boards are the best choice for a home chef. In addition to a set of bamboo cutting boards, I like to have a plastic cutting board with side grooves for slicing meat and other juicy foods.