My Favorite Tools for Home Cooking
With the holidays approaching, I’ll be spending even more time preparing food in the kitchen. I love making delicious foods for my family year-round and these are my favorite tools for home cooking.
Some of our favorite memories involve the food we enjoy together as a family. Not just at the holidays, but throughout the year. However, the holiday season is made extra-special with all of the delicious treats that we typically don’t make at any other time.
Cookies, pies, candies, and those big meals take time and effort to create but are so worth it. Having the right tools and equipment in the kitchen makes me more efficient and allows me to get more done while spending time with everyone.
I have grown my collection of kitchen tools over time, here and there as my skills and our lifestyle have evolved. Some are expensive and some are very basic. And there are still some that I would like to add to my kitchen one day.
These are my favorite kitchen tools for home cooking in our kitchen. It’s hard to narrow down a list as every item in my kitchen has a purpose. But some are used a lot more than others so these are the ones that I rely on the most.
My Favorite Tools for Home Cooking
Grain Mill
Several years ago, after I had been making all of our family’s bread for a while, I wanted to experiment with milling my own flour. I got a grain mill still use it almost every day. I mill hard red, hard white, and soft white wheat berries along with spelt and einkorn. I use the flour for baking bread and lots of other recipes so my family ears whole grains as much as possible but I still use all-purpose flour sometimes too.
Mixer
I have a standard Kitchen Aid mixer that I use for small-batch recipes and when I need to mix something up quickly. But I really love having a Bosch mixer. I can mix up to six loaves of bread at a time which comes in handy when I want to make a week’s worth of bread for our family of six. It’s great for whipping butter and making big batches of cookies too.
Sheetpans
I used to use regular old cookie sheets but once my husband bought me a set of sheet pans, I realized what I had been missing out on! Sheet pans are awesome and so versatile, I use them all the time. Not just for cookies but other baked goods (scones and biscuits are made at least weekly around here), freezing berries, roasting vegetables, and so much more.
Cast Iron
It could go without mentioning that cast iron pans are a staple around here and used every day for cooking and baking a variety of foods. I have grown my collection slowly over time and watching them get more and more seasoned as I use them makes me so happy.
Bread Pans
I have been baking our family’s bread for a long time, every week. Homemade bread can’t be beat. But having good quality bread pans makes quite a difference I have found. My favorites are aluminum and cast iron pans.
Stock Pot
A good, large stock pot should be a kitchen staple. Soups, stews, and stocks are often bubbling away on our stove or jars of homemade jams are being boiled. I don’t have anything fancy, just a good quality pot from the store that’s large enough to work for all of these purposes.
Mixing Bowls
Several of these are used pretty much daily, I’m always mixing something up in the kitchen. I prefer glass since I cook with sourdough so often but I have metal and melamine sets as well in several different sizes.
Grater
I know this seems like a silly item to have on a list of kitchen tools but, there’s a story. For years and years I dealt with broken cheese graters and it drove me nuts! Handles breaking off, sides coming undone. I remember growing up, my mom just had a plain, metal, one-piece cheese grater. Nothing fancy. So I finally found one and it’s amazing. I grate cheese and butter almost on a daily basis, not to mention zesting lemons and making breadcrumbs.
Glass Jars and Containers
Of course jars for preserving foods (jams, vegetables, meats, etc) and for storage as well. I also have a few sets of Pyrex glassware containers to store leftovers in. I like to avoid any plastic in our kitchen and around our food plus, when I store food in glass containers, I can just pop them in the oven to reheat when the time comes.
More of My Favorite Tools for Home Cooking
I can’t list every item or this post would go on forever! Here are a few more of my favorite tools for home cooking that I might not use as often, but love having.
- Cheese Press-For making hard cheeses like cheddar, a skill I am new to and still learning. I have this press and it works great.
- Slow Cooker-A staple in most kitchens and for good reason. I don’t use it that often but especialy like making overnight chicken stock in it so I have an extra-large one.
- Yogurt Incubator-I make our yogurt with raw milk from our cow. I have an Instant Pot that I use for large batches (one gallon) and a small incubator for smaller batches.
- Ice Cream Machine-This was a gift from a friend years ago but we still use it so often! Homemade ice cream is so easy to make and absolutely delicious.
- Cheese Cloth-For making soft cheese such as ricotta and cream cheese.
- Digital Scale-I like to weigh rather than measure ingredients when possible, especially when making bread.
- Crepe Pan-Homemade, whole-wheat crepes are a favorite breakfast around here. There pretty easy to whip up so we make them regularly and having a crepe pan makes it so much easier.
- Digital Thermometer-I love having this to quickly check the internal temperatures of foods I’m preparing, especially meats and loaves of bread.
What are your favorite kitchen tools? I’m sure this list will change as I learn new skills and adapt my cooking. I’m thankful to have access to these tools to provide our family with healthy, homemade dishes everyday.
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