kitchen tools 🔪 vs kitchen gadgets 🤖

my hot take: kitchen gadgets? who needs ‘em — BUH BYE, veggie spiralizer

When it comes to the tools of the trade, as a passionate home cook, I have a lot of tools. Not necessarily gadgets because there is a big part of me that believes that you should not overcrowd your kitchen with things that barely get used. Sure, I have things that got used a lot during certain phases (hello, air popped popcorn phase — healthful, but it’s soooo hard to get fucking salt to stick to it), and I might get back to them someday. This is what I tell myself to refrain from buying the hot new kitchen items of the moment. 

But I will take a tool over a gadget any day.

A tool is something that is simple in appearance and function. They perform specific tasks but can be used with many different ingredients and recipes. For example, take the microplane zester: it zests AND it finely grates like anything that you need to be zested or finely grated — citrus, garlic, ginger, cheese, nutmeg, you could finely grate a jalapeño if you really wanted to.

A gadget is something that is a novelty. I’m not 100% against gadgets, they have their place to help you learn new things in the kitchen. Mind you, I have seen how they collect dust, stuffed in the back of a cabinet. (I used to offer a kitchen organization service before the pandemic.) Why have it if you can’t easily access it? Out of sight = out of mind — but not the good kind.

Contrary to the insane popularity that this cult kitchen gadget has gathered for itself, I do not own an Instant Pot, BUT! I am on the verge of buying one… Years ago, I read an article on the Instant Pot from America’s Test Kitchen that basically 💩 on it, saying that yes it can do all of the things that it’s advertised to do, but it can’t do them as well as all of the tools that it replaces. So I told myself that I wouldn’t buy one. Apparently ATK has changed their tune since 2019 or whenever I read that last. I have been able to get by this far in my home culinary life without it, but I’ve been having these *premonitions* that as life gets more complicated with balancing the demands of two careers, a kid newly in school, and keeping our home clean enough for me to not lose my mind (firm believer in “a messy home makes a messy mind” here) that an Instant Pot could be very helpful. Thoughts? Opinions? Favorite Instant Pot recipes? I know nothing about it, so throw everything you Instant Pot fanatics have at me. 

Even though I do not currently own America’s favorite kitchen gadget, I would like to share with you my favorite kitchen tools (and some gadgets, I guess) and how I prioritize their necessity. I put everything into four categories: BASIC BITCHES (everyday essentials), FAVORITES (will die on these hills), VERY HELPFUL (very mindful, very demure), and NOT THE NORM (but worth every penny).

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For a lot of these things, I wish I had known about shopping for them at restaurant supply stores. I didn’t know this was a thing until we were getting ready to self-cater our wedding 6 years ago and it blew my mind how affordable these basic kitchen items were, especially bulk storage! So that’s my pro tip to you: go check out your local restaurant supply store for buying kitchen tools etc. Ideally it’s like this giant warehouse situation where you get lost among complete range setups and the aisle completely made up of whisks and pastry brushes. Go with a list or just start browsing, and I’m sure by the time you get to the checkout you’ll be buying more than you intended. It’s like going to Target: you somehow always walk out with more than you went in for. The limit does not exist.

And for bigger-ticket items, wait for the bigger sales events of the year to make those purchases. Patience and strategy pay off, my friends.

Nothing listed here is ranked, just categorized. And it’s mostly just stream-of-consciousness or whatever I saw first in my cabinets and drawers 🤷🏻‍♀️ I will try to share links to the exact brands that I use, but if not, they will have a little asterisk next to them, noting that this is the brand that I actually want and/or my best recommendation. This is particularly true for my ‘basic bitches’ category because I have been accumulating and inheriting these things since I started cooking for myself more than 15 years ago — I either don’t know the brand or the item is actually out of production.

A couple things to note so you can trust what you see here isn’t bullshit: 

• Efficiency might as well be my middle name.

• I don’t do affiliate links.

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basic bitches — use all the time, everyday essentials:

• knives (to keep them sharp, i take mine to a vendor at the farmers market) :

  • chef’s (gets used the most — i prefer this western/japanese santoku hybrid to get both options of rocking the knife and cutting straight up and down, respectively)

  • *paring (for more precision work with smaller items and motions, like with fruit. mine came from my darling, incredible gift-giver sister-in-law — an engagement gift straight from japan, she got us a santoku knife and a utility knife with our names written in japanese characters ❤️🇯🇵 mine is the smaller of the two so i use it as a utility/paring knife)

  • serrated (for cutting bread, slicing large tomatoes, and cutting cheese)

  • *cleaver (for working with larger cuts of meat — i have a cutco cleaver from a set that my dad gave me like 15 years ago?? it still works great,` but this one from shun would be awesome)

• *cutting boards (looking to update my own, wooden like these from Boos, one for juicier items, and at least one specifically for garlic and onions)

• *baking sheets (for all things that baking sheets are called to do — i have one small, two medium, one extra-large)

• *muffin pan (for all things that muffin pans are called to do)

• *silicone spatulas (for baking and other accuracy scraping needs)

• *wooden spoons (for scratchable surfaces like enamel or nonstick)

• *metal spatulas (for cast-iron only, get one small and one large)

• *ladles (for peak spooning, owning multiple helps for when one is in the dishwasher)

• *slotted spoons (for fishing specific items out of liquid, i have one metal and one wooden for using on different materials)

• *whisks (for the things you need to mix by hand: eggs, dry ingredients for baking. not whipped cream, please, and i cannot stress this enough, do not try to whip cream by hand — i like to use metal, but will use a silicone for scratchable surfaces)

• *mixing bowls (for LI-TER-AL-LY everything)

• glass measuring cups (for measuring liquid ingredients)

• *measuring cups (for measuring dry ingredients)

• *box grater (a steady and stable option for your shredding needs)

• *casserole/roasting pan (for everything from vegetables to baklava to meats, especially chicken 😘)

• small saucepan (for all the sauces and smaller volume recipes you want to make; also makes a great butter softener when you need room temp butter for baking: boil water, empty it, then turn it upside down over a couple sticks of butter, let sit for 60 min)

• heavy-bottomed saucepan (for medium volume cooking sometimes exposed to higher heats; sauces, rice and other grains, etc)

• *colanders (for all your basic straining needs)

• meat thermometer (for knowing if your meat is properly cooked)

favorites — will die on these hills: