7 Things You NEED in Your Kitchen!

You're just not doing it right until you have these in your kitchen!

 

 

First off, I don't believe it's possible to have an all inclusive list of "must haves" in your kitchen.  If that were the case we'd have everything from avocado pitters to citrus zesters and all things inbetween.  But I really started thinking about it, what are the must haves in my kitchen?  Outside of regular tools and gadgets like knives and cutting boards, cast iron pans and peelers, what do I really use in my kitchen?

 

So here is a quick top 7 of the Devine household kitchen.  We use these things regularly and would be lost without them.

 

Rice cooker. Rice cookers make it easy to have a side dish on hand. Also, real rice(not the minute stuff) is dirt cheap, less than 50 cents per serving,why wouldn't you make this a staple side dish in your house. Most newer cookers even have settings for the whole grain brown rice.  Add some spice blends and you can add variety and depth beyoned the plain old white rice many of us grew up on. 





Crock pot- I think this one is self explanatory. Use your prepped up ingredients and a nice long bath in broth or other cooking liquid and boom, dinner with no fuss in the evening.  Everything from bbq pulled pork to bolognese sauce(fancy title for spaghetti sauce).  These are of constant use year round and assure your family homemade meals any day of the week.

 

Stock or Broth! You must have this in your kitchen. Foundational for sauces, cooking vegetables and meats as well. Oh yeah, remember your rice cooker? Think your rice could use a blast of flavor?  Whether store bought or homemade(preferred and easy too!), you will really be surprised how replacing plain ol' boring water will add mountains of flavor to your dishes.

Your prepped ingredients. Did you know that restaurant chefs do not start from scratch when you place your order. Vegetables are chopped, meats are marinated, pasta is cooked, all in advance so that when you place your orders, the food is thrown together with ease and much much much quicker this way. Having trouble getting food on the table during the week?  Spend 30 minutes doing all of the leg work the night before to make the next day's meal a snap.

Whole chickens- my personal go to ingredient. Why? In a word, versatility. You can do anything to a chicken and her parts. Also, you get ingredients from a whole chicken. Stock from the carcass, crispy skins for salads, rendered chicken "butter" to add to rice and potatoes, I could go on. Also, there is a certain pride in roasting a chicken properly and having meals to eat off of for the better part of the week.

Your meal plan. As I say often, if you get to, what's for dinner, you're sunk. Might as well figure out which value meal you're getting now. Planning is KEY to a successful food plan. If you don't know what you're eating, then you don't know what to buy at the store, it's a vicious cycle really. No really it is. Your food budget will be sunk and your family will be eating from paper bags and take out containers for their whole life.  Here's a link to a slew of templates or design your own.

Food Saver/Vacuum Packer.  Do you know how chefs can get boneless skinless chicken breast for under $1/lb? Because we buy a lot of it at once. Most times we get 40lb cases. That's a lot of chicken. And while I don't suspect that any of you will buy that much chicken, the lesson remains the same, when you buy in bulk you will save. So what do you do with the truckload of chicken you just got at Costco? Freezer bags? Nah. They don't really preserve food well for any longer than a week or two. The food saver or other similar apparatus preserve the quality of meats and other foods by removing all of the air out of the bags. Air is the main culprit behind freezer burn, nip it in the bud, freezer pack!

 

Consider adding some or all of these items to your "must have" list and continue to build your tool kit for kitchen success.  Do you have favorites?  What can't ou live without?  Comment below, I'd love to hear from you. 

All the best!

 

KD