Earlier this year we were hosting a barbecue day with some good friends of ours and as we were prepping food in the kitchen and my friend is looking through drawers from some tool or another she proclaims “we need to just look through Dana’s kitchen to find all the tools we need.” Apparently, I have all the things! Truth be told, I love a good kitchen gadget but I am selective – we all only have so much space in our drawers. So my amazon wishlist is never short on new tools that I have researched or had referred to me. And kitchen tools are also a favorite thing that for people to gift me too.
So for this post I decided to share my Top 10 kitchen gadgets. For the most part these are not your basic staples like my favorite spoon, measuring cup or rubber spatula. Those are things we all have. This post has my favorite unique gadgets (again for the most part — -wait until you see the measuring spoons I have on this list!). Maybe like my friend, you’ll find a fun new tool you like on the list.
Note: I am a member of the Amazon Associates program which means this blog earns a small commission if you make a purchase after clicking any of the links below. It doesn’t cost you anything more but it helps me to keep the lights on. The reason you see the (#EarnsCommission) after each link is because of regulatory requirements to make paid links obvious.
Bonus: Salt Cellar
A salt cellar (#EarnsCommission) really isn’t a tool. It’s something you use to keep salt in. When you’re cooking from scratch without processed ingredients you really can salt pretty liberally and not end up with as much sodium as you would with processed ingredients. Plus salt makes food taste more like itself, it’s a flavor enhancer. I like this one because it has an easy slide away lid so I can use it one handed if I have to and I am partial to wood.
10. Corn Stripper
We love, love, LOVE sweet corn! Our favorite place to buy from in Minnesota is Fresh Pickin’s which is a locally owned urban farm that sells from multiple farm stands including one just minutes from our house. They only pick what they can sell in a day and when they sell out are closed until tomorrow. We definitely go in the morning when we buy sweet corn! In order to preserve that fresh corn flavor through the winter we often freeze fresh corn (I gotta blog the multiple ways we do that sometime). When we do that we buy corn by the gunny sack full – and in those situations, as well as normal ones, this corn stripper (#EarnsCommission) comes really handy to help get the corn off the cob. The kernels don’t fly around the way they do when I use a knife.
These aren’t your average measuring cup, these push-up measuring cups (#EarnsCommission) work like a push-pop (you remember those from being a kid right?). The come in 1 cup, 2 cup and a mini-cup that does 2 tablespoons. They are amazing for sticky, thick or greasy ingredients. The kind that don’t like to come out of a regular measuring cup well. Think peanut butter, honey, molasses, Cricso, etc. You put the ingredient in, flatten the top (like you’re measuring a dry ingredient), tip over your bowl and push out. Simple as that!
I hate with a passion the measuring spoons that have a little ring to hold them all together. And when/if you separate them and forget to put them back together they start to disappear the way a dryer eats socks. So when I found these measuring spoons (#EarnsCommision) on a random prime day sale, I knew I had to have them. It keeps my measuring spoons together but they are easy to separate when you need to use them. And bonus, each one has two sides so it’s like having double the number of measuring spoons. Great when you need a teaspoon of paprika and then a teaspoon of garlic and you don’t want to contaminate one of the containers or wash your spoon in the middle.
7. Panini Press
I tried to stay away from single use types of tools/gadgets here but I really do use the panini press for a quite a few things. We originally bought it because we wanted to replicate Taco Bell’s chicken and cheese roll-up thing that’s no longer on the menu. The panini press (#EarnsCommission) has double sided plates (you can see it in the picture below) both flat and ridged. It works great for quesadillas, paninis, and there is even a waffle maker attachment (#EarnsCommission) so you don’t need to have a separate waffle maker – bonus! I have gifted this to many people! Note: My link is to an old version not the newest, I love it and can’t speak to the new version, plus the old version saves you a few bucks.
6. Air Fryer
Derek bought me this for Christmas in 2020. It was around the time when Air Fryer’s were THE tool to have and I did NOT want one. I just didn’t feel like it was forth the amount of space it would take up on the counter or in my pantry. I’d done the research and come to this conclusion and I was wrong. It turns out we use the air fryer all the time! In the winter when we aren’t grilling it works great to cook one or two chicken breasts (and without the oil splattering of cooking in a pan), does awesome crispy potatoes as fries, home fries, wedges (you get the picture, wings, etc. The air fryer (sEarnsCommissions) I have has two frying baskets which lets us cook a meat and a side at the same time, which I really love. I’m not sure if I’d love it as much with just one basket.
I love my immersion blender. I actually can recommend two different brands. I had the Cuisinart version (#EarnsCommissions) for many years and really liked it but it did splatter a little when blending shallower amounts. This year for Christmas my parents got me the Braun MultiQuick 5 version (#EarnsCommissions), which America’s Test Kitchen named their top winner because it doesn’t splatter as much. Both work really well and I can confirm the lack of splattering although I think my original my have been a teeny bit more powerful. I use my immersion blender for blending soups, salad dressings, tomato sauce, etc. Anything where I’m not in the mood to bring out the big blender because it’s so much easier to clean.
So those same friends of mine who said they love looking in my kitchen for new gadgets actually introduced me to the citrus juicer. It was when I was visiting them when they lived in Clemson. I’m not sure what we were making – it might have been Big Gingers – but we bought some lemons and limes and they got this juicer thing out. Up until then I had just been using my hands to squeeze citrus, how silly was I? You can find these citrus juicers (#Earns Commission) in multiple sizes – I have 3, lol!
I use my kitchen scale ALL the time. I have started to get into using it more and more for baking or making pizza dough. I use it in ice-cream and I always weigh in grams whenever I want to scale up or down based on a tip in Hello, My Name is Ice Cream. It is soooo much easier to divide by 100 than try to convert tablespoons, teaspoons, etc. We also use the scale a lot for making even burgers, portioning large servings of things – like bulk cheese or leftover pulled pork that we smoked. I especially love this Oxo scale (#EarnsCommissions) because it easily switches from standard to metric and it has a pull out display if you are using a larger bowl.
I don’t know how I ever lived without one of these. Honestly, I use it all the time. It’s great for zesting citrus, excels at grating garlic – so fine you don’t get garlic chunks, like when making the perfect Guacamole!, or ginger, and makes the perfect thin shreds of parmesan cheese. Microplane (#EarnsCommission) is the brand but sort of like elevator or kleenex is the word I generally say when referring to it. Bonus – it comes in a whole bunch of colors. I usually get whatever is cheapest but when I buy Tory gifts always pick out yellow if it’s an option.
When he was traveling for work, Derek used to eat weekly at this amazing, small, nose-to-tail butcher/restaurant in Denver. He and his coworkers got to know the owners – one the bartender and one the chef and one night asked the chef how they made such amazing and perfect steaks every time. His response, “use a thermometer”. Well this is my favorite instant read thermometer, made by ThermoWorks (no Amazon commissions for me, or commissions of any kind on this one), reads in just 1 second. I use this ALL the time to temp steaks, chicken, candy, water for yeast, even at the deer hunting shack for the water temp for a bucket showers (not kidding). It’s not the cheapest instant read out there but it’s worth it, everyone I have ever recommended it to or gifted it to has agreed!
So that’s my top 10 kitchen gadgets. I could have easily made this a top 20 or 25 or you get the picture. If you have something you can’t live without in the kitchen feel free to drop it in the comments – I’m always on the lookout for new ideas!
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