Gadgets For Your Kitchen
Working a kitchen is rewarding and fun. But, as an at-home chef, you don’t get a cadre of assistants like a restaurant chef would have.
The cutting, the peeling, the slicing, and the prep — it’s up to you to manage the workflow of your kitchen. Thankfully, there are tools you can use to help.
A thoughtfully-used kitchen gadget can reduce your time at work and maximize the pleasure of food prep. Here are some of my favorite tools.
Silicone Bowls
Silicone bowls are wonderful and should be kitchen standard-issued.
Silicone bowls can be used in a multitude of ways.
You can use silicone bowls to pour, scoop, and hold pretty much anything. I like to use them for things like pouring pancake batter into a pan, and for holding pre-measured ingredients.
They’re also clean. They don’t foster growth of bacteria or fungus like wooden bowls, and they don’t shatter when you drop them like a glass bowl would. Silicone bowls are also easy to clean.
Drawer Organizers
To work in a kitchen, you have to be organized. Knowing where things are, and how to find the quickly can reduce your time to cook by quarters of an hour or more.
Well-placed drawer organizers keep your important spices, tools, and pans within reach. They also help to maximize the available space of your kitchen.
If you’re feeling cramped in your cooking space, look to re-organize before you look to remodel. For less than $100, you can use drawer organizers to increase your available kitchen space by one-third or more.
Mandolin Slicer
Mandolin slicers can dramatically reduce your kitchen prep time.
Using a series of pop-in / pop-out blades, you can use a mandolin slicer to cut carrots, zucchini, beets, and pretty much any other vegetable not called kale.
With proper use, you’ll cut vegetables quickly and uniformly. This makes your food easier to cook, too, because food pieces of uniform size all finish cooking at around the same time.
Good Set of Knives
Knives are the most important part of a chef’s kitchen. Furthermore, you only need one knife, if it’s a good knife.
Recommendation: Buy 2-3 good, expensive knives instead of a cheap set of 10.
Once you have your good knives, keep them sharp. Sharp knives reduce accidents because they require less power to operate and allow you more control.
Silicone Ice Cube Tray
Yes, I know your refrigerator makes ice cubes. Still, you should invest in silicone ice cube trays.
There are a few reasons to invest in silicone ice cube trays. They’re simple to use, they don’t crack or break ever, and they can be filled with just about anything.
I like to use silicone ice cube trays for freezing coconut water, which I use in some of my superfood smoothies; and, for freezing colorful juices into fun shapes for my kids and their drinks.
Lastly, I like silicone ice cube trays because I can fill them with “clean” water and because they look pretty. When you’re cooking a meal, presentation matters.
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