Healthy Cooking Tools you Need, Tools you don’t Need, and things in between

This post contains affiliate links to products. I may receive a commission for purchases made through these links.

We know that home cooking is one of the most significant ways to improve your diet and your health. Cooking at home means that you’re eating foods with fewer additives that promote overeating, less sugar, salt and fat, and more nutrients and fiber than fast, restaurant or packaged food. 

For most of us the biggest challenge to cooking at home is time. If you have a job, business, children, and a busy life you may not have the time to cook delicious meals. Equipment can make all the difference when it comes to cooking efficiently or resorting to a fast food drive thru or carry out for your family.

This is not intended to be a complete or exhaustive list of kitchen tools. It’s just a small selection of items you may not have in your kitchen that actually make it easier to cook homemade food by cutting the time out of necessary tasks and preparation.

The Essentials

Here is my list of old favorites and new discoveries that, along with a well stocked pantry help me to be able to play Chopped in my kitchen and whip up fabulous meals in minutes. Some of these items are for convenience and others are for enhancing your dishes by giving them a gourmet touch without a special trip to the store.

Sharp knives

Ok here’s the whole thing that inspired this post. My favorite brand of kitchen knives had a set on sale and I had to just do it. Dull knives in the kitchen are not only dangerous because they require you to apply so much pressure and one wrong move can cause a disaster, but they also make cooking such a drudgerous chore. When your knives are the appropriate size, type and are nice and sharp, you can get a perfect chop, slice, dice, julienne, chiffonade, etc. And chopping takes up a lot of cooking time. It’s probably why the most common icon or symbol for chefs is knives.

I don’t recommend that you buy knives online unless you’re already familiar with what you like because you really need to handle the knives to see if they work for you. In fact, some cooking stores let you actually test cutting vegetables right in the store. Also, have you seen the variety of different types of knives out there? You don’t need all those knives. Basically you need a chef’s knife, a paring knife and a serrated utility knife.

Buy the best knives you can afford and take the time to learn how to care for your knives. Because they will inevitably go dull at some point and even if you plan to take them to the store to be professionally sharpened, you need to be able to maintain that sharpness of the blade. 

There is so much more to say about knives so stay tuned for a future video post dedicated to knives for home foodies.

Herb keepers

When you want to take your healthy cooking in a more gourmet direction fresh herbs are a game changer? They can make a simple dish like grilled salmon like a fancy health spa dish. The problem with fresh herbs though, is that they go bad so quickly! One day they’re nice and green and crisp, and two days later they’re a yellow slimy mush. So herb keepers, while don’t do miracles but they’ll buy you a little more time to use up those herbs before they become your kid’s science project by keeping the upright with the stems in water.

Mini food processor

A mini food processor or chopper is essential for busy weeknights when you just don’t feel like pulling out the big one and making space on the counter, searching for all the damn parts and fiddling with all the blade attachments. I use it for when whatever I’m chopping can be finely chopped or if uniformity of the pieces is not imperative.

Microplane/zester

Citrus zest and ginger are huge flavor bombs and just like fresh herbs, even more so, can transform an ordinary dish into something extraordinary in a matter of mere seconds. A microplane or zester better than a cheese grater when you need a finer grate, and the shape of it prevents the zest from being wasted because you can’t get to it. Just a little bump on the side of the bowl and it’s all in.

Vegetable steamer

This one is pretty self-explanatory. You have your main dish, and a starchy side, but wait! What about the vegetables? Let’s just be honest here, sometimes vegetables are an afterthought. That’s when your vegetable steamer is your hero.

Multicooker (slow and pressure)

Ok just suppose it’s a regular weeknight, no school meetings, overtime or activities. And you want to have a roast for dinner. You sear it in the multicooker, add seasonings and aromatics and switch it to slow cook mode for an hour or two. But when you check it it’s still tough and not done, but oh no, it’s getting too close to bedtime and you’ll need to abort your mission and make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for dinner. 

But no! All you have to do is switch the multicooker to high pressure mode for 15 minutes and voila! Dinner is ready, just how you like it. This is a true story. Actually multiple true stories. So get a nice electric multifunction cooker to save the day when you need it.

Kitchen Tools you don’t Need

The whole point of this blog and life in general is living the good life. The good life means prioritizing the things you love while maintaining excellent health. It does not include things that treat food like a punishment, or a prescribed medicine you have to take.

Kitchen scale

Unless you’ll be using the kitchen scale to measure for baking, it’s not necessary. If it would be used to ration food portions forget it, it’s too clinical. This whole “portion control” thing has gone out of control. Basically they want you to believe that your body is not capable of knowing or re-learning how much food you want and need. I believe in intuitive eating which is reconnecting to your body’s hunger and pleasure cues, and not forever relying on a kitchen scale to tell you how much to eat.

Juicer

Juicing fruits and vegetables seems like fun but in reality, the juice of fruits and vegetables are no more nutritious than the fruits and vegetables themselves. In fact, they not only don’t add anything, but they actually take something away. That thing is fiber, which is a super important for weight control and lifestyle disease prevention. Most Americans do not eat enough fiber, so juicing isn’t as good idea as blending (smoothies) or better yet, just eating the whole fruit or vegetable.

Mason jars

Unless you can your own fresh produce, you don’t need mason jars. But it’s trendy to use them to make overnight oats. Can somebody explain to me the point of overnight oats, because I just don’t get it. I think it’s a silly fad. First of all, only the most diet-y of diet girls act that damn crazy about oatmeal. I mean, the whole purpose of oatmeal is not to be a festival in your mouth first thing in the morning. It’s just cereal. Why do you need to soak it all night instead of just cook it? If you want that, fine, it won’t hurt you. But I’m not recommending them. I also don’t recommend jars for salads. It looks pretty but it’s ridiculous.

Spiralizer

I have one of these buried somewhere in the deep recesses of my cabinet. I admit, it’s not a complete waste. It can be useful to add vegetables to your spaghetti. But if you think you’re gonna fool somebody into thinking your zucchini is pasta, you’re gonna get a rude awakening. Zucchini does not taste like, nor have a texture close to noodles.

Ultimately, what you buy for your kitchen is up to you. There will be some things that you feel are necessities that I do not, and vice versa. What is important is that you consider whether you need the tool to create something that you’ll love, or is it something used to prepare some food you think you have to eat just because it’s healthy, or some food substitution trickery.