My tiny kitchen might be my favorite room in the house, but it's not exactly a metropolis of culinary tools. Until the day that I somehow stumble upon a million dollars, or even $149.99, I've become a little creative with my chopping, blending, pulsing, dicing and cutting when cooking meals or baking from scratch.
I'm well stocked with the basics – pots, pans, knives and plenty of Tupperware containers for leftovers – but when it comes to heavy food prep, I have to be scrappy.
I've found that even without a wide variety of kitchen gadgets to choose from I can make good use of the few tricks I do have up my sleeve. For example: you need to slice herbs, but the sharp-sharp knife is in the dishwasher. No herb mincer in your arsenal? No problem. Pull double duty with a pizza slicer!
What are the kitchen gadgets that you can't live without? Alternatively, what kitchen gadgets do you have that just aren't worth the cabinet space they monopolize?
{ 9 comments… read them below or add one }
I have my grandmother’s ancient stand mixer. I inherited it when she passed away, but I haven’t used it once in the three-ish years I’ve had it. I always use my hand mixer. I should get rid of it, but thinking about it makes me feel terrible, so I keep it.
I absolutely could not live without my Pampered Chef garlic press. I love it, and use it multiple times a week. You don’t even need to skin the garlic, it’s easy to remove if you don’t!
I have more tools and gadgets than any one person should own, including a garlic press and never use it; I think it wastes too much of the bulbs and is a pain to clean. One of my favorite tools is my citrus press- I have repetitive stress injuries in my wrists and can’t grip, squeeze, twist or press very hard and the citrus press easily turns citrus halves inside out to squeeze a ton of juice from them.
I’ve used the pizza cutter for herbs too, it’s great for that!
I actually am really loving this. I just got a book from St. Nick about solving kitchen conundrums with unique items. I’ll e-mail you the info, you’d like it.
i have a tiny kitchen and not many gadgets. my dishwasher is for storage, not for dirty knives… that said, a gadget i would really like to own is the microplane grater/zester, i’ve used it and it’s awesome.
I have two favorite gadgets, one old and one newer. The old is a chopping jar that belonged to my grandmother. The new is an immersion blender — I wouldn’t want to be without it!
Oh yes, the pizza cutter is a good tool to have around. I also use it to cut dough when baking and to cut sandwiches.
Another favorite of mine is kitchen scissors — they are pretty cheap and can snip herbs, cut bacon into little strips, and more…plus, they open all those food packages too.
And my immersion blender. I use it at least once a week.
I have a miniture spatula that is my favorite tool. I also love my pizza cutter.
I love the apple slicer. A metal cutting tool that slices through apples, cutting out a core and making pie shaped slices around the core. I have kids and it makes “preparing” an apple much easier.