Advertising Disclosure
15 Awesome Kitchen Gadgets to Improve Your Home Chef Game
So you’ve set a New Years Resolution to make 2023 the year you completely master your kitchen. For some people, that means cooking at home to save money otherwise spent eating out. For others, that might mean mixing up their diets or being more mindful about the food they eat. Regardless of what mastery in the kitchen looks like to you, there’s one thing that any home chef worth their salt will tell you: The tools you use really do matter.
Which is why we outlined 15 awesome kitchen tools and gadgets that we promise will spice up your cooking. These items will not only help you save time and bring out the flavor in each meal you make, they’ll also drastically improve your food options to make sure your 2023 tastes (and looks) delicious.
Chef's Knife
If you only take away one thing from this article, let it be this: A sharp, well-made chef’s knife is the most important tool you can add to your kitchen in 2023. Besides making it easier and quicker to chop vegetables, mince meat, and dice fruit, a high-quality chef’s knife will allow you to maintain a better grip, assist in improving your knife skills, and make your kitchen safer overall. Good knives also last longer than their cheaper counterparts, saving you money in the medium-to-long term. All these benefits add up to time and money saved and a visible difference in many recipes. It’s no mystery why sharp chefs use sharp knives.
Stainless steel, multi-functional, and attached to an ergonomic handle – the Imarku Japanese chef knife is exactly what you want to level up your cooking.
Cutting Boards
While you’re shopping for a high-quality chef’s knife, we also recommend investing in a cutting board that provides a large enough surface to work with while still being compact enough to fit inside your cabinets. Bonus points for a surface that’s easy to clean, so you can spend less time scrubbing in the kitchen when your meal’s done. Wood cutting boards last longer and are easier to clean than plastic ones.
The Royal Craft Wood Cutting Board Set comes with 3 boards in different sizes, an easy grip handle, and juice grooves to contain messes (or allow easy collection for later storage).
Immersion Blenders
Immersion Blenders are the perfect tool for cooks that are fans of soups, purees, and sauces. These tools replace the need for hand-mixing or use of larger blenders with their loads of pieces to clean. Simply mix your ingredients in your desired bowl, pot, or saucepan, then use an immersion blender’s powerful blades to blend the ingredients down to your desired consistency.
The Peach Street Immersion Blender comes with many different color options all at an affordable price. Between the 500-watt motor and the TURBO boost option, you’ll never have an easier time blending smoothies, soups, purees, and more.
Cooking Thermometer
Forget about relying on guesswork or, worse, messing up your presentation by cutting open meat to check if it’s cooked all the way through. A proper cooking thermometer will help you ensure that all meals are prepared safely and properly.
The ImSaferell Digital Meat Thermometer is everything you want in a meat thermometer: accurate, quick, and noninvasive. The backlit screen ensures you’ll be able to read the thermometer of your food regardless of what condition you’re cooking in.
Microplane
Microplanes are simple tools that make grating easier than ever. They’re easily graspable, effective, and sharp for any items from cheese to vegetables and fruits.
We prefer to get our Microplanes directly from the source. Besides being dishwasher safe and long-lasting thanks to its surgical-grade stainless steel, Microplanes are also magnetic for easy storage on a magnetic knife strip.
Food Scale
Ever get frustrated trying to eyeball a food portion while following a recipe? We have too. That’s why we made the investment in a food scale. Especially useful when baking, these gadgets help you calculate the exact amount of food you’re using in pounds, ounces, grams, fluid ounces, or milliliters. This ensures that you know exactly how much of everything you’re putting in your recipes.
The Amazon Basics Digital Kitchen Scale is cheap, easy to use, and comes with an LCD display and batteries. It’s the perfect starter kit for getting used to incorporating one of these into your cooking.
Mandoline Slicer
For those recipes that require super-thin sliced vegetables or fruits – you no longer have to worry about managing that manually (even if you purchase the chef’s knife we highlighted above). Instead, you can further simplify the process of slicing food with a mandoline slicer. These tools evenly cut all the most common food ingredients, from onions to sweet potatoes, apples, and more.
Rice Cooker
A rice cooker drastically simplifies and automates the process of cooking rice at the perfect temperature, down to the ideal texture. Rice cookers also keep your rice, quinoa, and farro warm until you’re ready to serve the rest of the meal, simplifying side dishes like never before.
The Aroma Housewares Aroma Rice Cooker allows you to quickly cook rice in just one touch. This kitchen gadget creates 2 to 6 cups of any variety of rice or similar grain. Once completed, it switches to a keep-warm mode so you can eat whenever you’re ready without having to monitor the process.
Pressure Cooker
As long as we’re talking about set-and-forget cookers, we’d be remiss not to mention the even more versatile cousin of the traditional rice cooker – pressure cookers. Pressure cookers use pressure, steam, and water to cook your favorite dishes quicker than you could on the stove or in the oven. Just plug in your desired cook time and pressure settings and proceed with making the rest of your meal. It really is that easy.
You can’t go wrong with picking up an Instant Pot for your pressure-cooking needs. This 9-in-1 tool comes with options for pressure cooking, sauteing, canning, and even yogurt making. Additionally, you can download the Instant Pot app and access loads of amazing recipes.
Cast Iron Skillet
Ready to cook with cast iron? Yes, chef! Cast iron pans come with numerous benefits compared with your more space-age non-stick options. These workhorse skillets get hot and stay hot. Cast iron pans are designed to keep heating temperatures consistent while you’re cooking, which allows you to control how your food cooks to a greater degree. Pro tip: Use your cast iron to achieve the perfect sear on filet mignon. These pans are also easy to clean, requiring very little scrubbing and soap. Best of all, they’re not coated in chemicals like some other non-stick products.
The Lodge Cast Iron Skillet is the perfect introduction into the wide world of cast iron cooking.. Lodge pans come pre-seasoned (they’re ready to cook) and are available in multiple sizes. Some models even come with a reversible cast iron lid that, when flipped upside down, becomes a smaller skillet.
Pepper Mill
Ever wonder why freshly ground pepper tastes so much more potent than the pre-ground kind? The answer is oxygen. When pre-ground pepper sits in its little shaker, it gets exposed to oxygen. This kills the flavor as well as some of the health benefits of pepper freshly ground from peppercorns. Investing in a pepper grinder also allows you to control the coarseness of your final product, which can be important if you’re making a rustic pasta one night and a silky-smooth curry the next.
The OXO Pepper Grinder has five adjustable coarseness settings and is easily refillable, making it everything you’d want from a pepper mill. OXO also offers a matching salt shaker.
Air Fryer
Air fryers bring a new dimension to your cooking by circulating your food in hot air with a powerful fan. Air fryers are essentially convection ovens with a bit more versatility under their belts. They are perfect for making healthier breaded chicken tenders, crispy fingerling potatoes, and irresistible air-dried tomatoes. They’re also uniquely capable of reheating fried takeout favorites like french fries and egg rolls. Adding one of these to your kitchen will drastically open up your cooking options.
With a maximum temperature of 450°F and a cooking time of up to 60 minutes, the Cuisinart Air Fryer has everything you need to roast, bake, broil, and air fry any meal.
Wok
Speaking of opening up cooking options, why not start introducing home-made stir fry into your diet? Purchasing a carbon steel wok will allow you to create delicious and fresh meals at will.
The Todlabe Nonstick Wok is made with pre-seasoned carbon steel, so its non-stick properties are completely natural rather than being chemically induced. This tool comes with a comfortable handle and vertical lid to ensure your food is easy to cook to perfection.
A Can Opener That Works
Many people use outdated, rusty can openers that force you to battle your cans of beans and tomatoes. Make 2023 the year that you invest in one of the more easily-stored, handheld options. Modern can openers are food-safe, easily handled, and quicker than your grandma’s clunky, crank-operated device.
The Kitchen Mama Auto Electric Can Opener uses 4 AA batteries to open almost any can. Just press the button to start and enjoy easily opened cans with smooth edges, rather than jagged cuts that could hurt your fingers.
KitchenAid Mixer
Last but not least, we want to highlight the use of a KitchenAid Stand Mixer, which is great for cooks who want to bake creations such as cookies, souffles, tiramisu, pretzels, and bread (ehem… pizza dough). If you have the cabinet space, these powerful mixers really increase your capacity for easy baking.
We prefer the Artisan Tilt-Head Mixer due to its built-to-last construction and inclusion of three mixing blades and a perfect-fit 5 qt. stainless steel bowl. This model is equipped with 10 mixing speeds, so you can effectively mix any recipe.
Improve Your Kitchen Experience in 2023
You may have noticed a running theme with all of these tools: ease of use, diversification of recipes, and affordability. As you continue with your goals for improving cooking in 2023, we want to encourage you to keep these aspects in mind as you try out new recipes. What could make your cooking experience simpler and quicker? Is there a tool that could make this just a little easier in the future?
Constantly investing in these kinds of tools (and yourself) is a winning recipe to achieve your goals this year and beyond, both in and outside of the kitchen.
