5 of Our Favorite Kitchen Tools

If you're fighting the battle of the bulge, or simply looking to stay on track with your New Year's Resolutions, you need to get at least a little familiar with the kitchen.

Let's face it — you can't be permanently successful if you're relying on fast food, bringing in take out, or going out to eat regularly.

And while you can surely cook with the bare minimum, we'll admit it, we like "stuff" – useful kitchen "stuff."

Here are some basic kitchen gadgets we love and use regularly.
We surely could expand on this list, but we’ll start small.

Step 1: A Great Knife

You really can’t cook if you don’t have a decent set of knives … you don’t have to splurge on one of those $2000 sets that are sold at Williams Sonoma, but a basic Chef’s knife is a good start.

Here’s the Shun Chef's Knife we have and love.

Step 2: Garlic Press

Garlic is one of those 13 foods you should eat regularly that we talked about all the time… and while you can chop it, slice it, or mince it, a lot of times we prefer to use a garlic press.

Here’s a hint: you don’t have to peel the garlic before using it.

Put it in the press, with the “skin” and just press – voila, no mess, and fresh garlic.

Step 3: Microplane

This is great for grating cheese, zesting fruit rinds, or even shredding whole nutmeg, coconut, or garlic.

Let's face it — fresh tastes better, so grating foods gives meals a bigger "yum" factor.

Very handy, useful tool – particularly for getting fresh cheese, like Parmesan cheese, on your dishes to boost flavor without adding tons of calories.

Step 4: Magic Bullet

OK, so you surely don’t NEED one of these, but they are handy.

Yup, it’s an infomercial product – but one that works really well.

It’s convenient for making smoothies, guacamole, or any other blended item — particularly because the container has a screw on lid you can then store in the fridge.

And now Johnette makes Bailee's’s food in there too – steam fresh veggies, blend in the Magic Bullet, fresh food for Bailee.

Step 5: Food Scale

This is great for simply weighing and measuring portions – make sure you’re on track with your portions.

We use it often to “readjust” our eyes, as it seems that portions easily grow every couple weeks as you let down your guard.

Again, there are definitely more I could add …

What do you love that you can't live without in your kitchen?

Post a comment and tell us about it!!

Comments

[martinrouge]

I would personally ditch the Magic Bullet for an immersion blender, especially the ones that come as modular kits that turn it into a whisk, mini blender/food processor. While I certainly do have a full-size blender, I have been using immersion blenders regularly for over twenty years to do all kinds of things from pureeing soups to whipping up fresh mayonnaise to mixing up the various elements for a chili spice mix and making on-the-spot pizza sauce. I would definitely recommend that to any budding cook living in tight quarters!

[atombomb1945]

I agree with all of these except the Magic Bullet.  I have been able to do a fair amount of cooking with out a Blender of any time.  Unless you are making something along the lines of smoothies, milkshakes, or soup bases (Blend a few potatoes worth of cubes-steamed- in the blender to make it really thick.  Use this in place of cream in soups).  I would go with a good set of measuring cups. 

[7figuresam]

I definitely will put up some recipes soon. I am totally new to this.

[lemonie]

You need to show us something you've made or cooked, got a good recipe to share?

L