The vegetarian kitchen is a lively one. So many colors. So many spices. So many ways to slice and dice and sizzle and bake. For such a lively kitchen, these are the top 10 kitchen tools we love. (If you can’t run right out and buy some of the more expensive tools, we suggest adding them to your Amazon wish list! 🙂 )
We use this skillet every single day, whether cooking an omelette or making what we call 5-star broccoli (broccoli made in a way that forever transformed our view of the vegetable). A bonus: the skillet adds a bit of iron to your vegetarian fare.
We’re on our second one of these. The first lasted for ten years. It’s a must for otherwise long-cooking dry legumes like chickpeas. But we also have taken to making barley in it. (36 minutes, and you’re good to go.)
Super strong. Never overheats. And we even grind our own flour in it, without the addition of any special attachments. (Just whiz and go!). We received this one as a gift and have never looked back.
We have tried so many different kinds of knives, even different kinds of Henckels, and we still love these best. They’re the perfect fit and the perfect weight. And they make all of our slicing and dicing a pleasure instead of a chore. (Especially welcome when it comes time to deal with onions! 🙂 ) These knives do not dull easily, and this is actually important for safety. A dull knife requires undue pressure, so you’re more likely to slip up when your knife is dull.
5. Williams Sonoma dough cutter & counter cleaner
This was a Christmas gift, because one of us noticed that the pie maker in the family was always struggling to get the pie dough neatly into the pie pans at Thanksgiving time. The tool easily lifts the dough from the counter, cuts the dough in the first place (needful, because we make four pies for the holiday and need to divide the big bowl of dough evenly), and is even useful after the pies are in the oven, because you can use it to scrape the extra dough and flour from the counter surface!
6. Bamix professional immersion blender
This was also a gift. (Do you detect a trend?) It helps make the perfect smooth soups. Like this amazingly creamy pumpkin soup. Yum, yum, yum.
The humble wooden spoon helps us stir everything from millet porridge to Indian chickpeas. We also own a bamboo spoon, but we admit that the wooden spoons are still our favorites.
Speaking of bamboo, these cutting boards make us happy, too! They don’t have quite as much give as wooden cutting boards, but they clean really easily.
Sure, you can get a marble rolling pin. But we love our wooden one (ours used to belong to Grandma). It’s light enough for kids to use, too. (Those marble ones. Wow. So heavy!)
Next to the wooden spoons, this might be the humblest tool in our kitchen. It’s amazing how much a simple tool can make you happy. This one is smooth and strong. Stays on the can instead of popping off like many do. Requires very little hand strength to operate. Yay. 🙂
