Kitchen Essentials for 2021

We love cooking and hence over the years have purchased a wide array of kitchen equipment all aimed at making life easier, after all, if it is too difficult to cook homemade meals then we'll just not bother.

Although we say essentials you could do most of what you need with a mixing bowl, pan, knife and a blender.  What are your essentials?  Have we missed any?

Amazon Alexa or Similar

We use the Alexa Dot and it is a gamechanger for the kitchen. Here are the best features.  For under £20 this is incredible.

1 - Listen to tunes whilst you cook.

2 - Use it for its fab shopping list, when you run out of something just say Alexa add "whatever" to my shopping, it works a treat and means we never forget.

3 - We have also set up lists for freezer and pantry, this way we say Alexa add "curry [date]" to my freezer list.  You then know exactly what is in your freezer, when you take it out just ask Alexa to remove it.  Use this same trick to manage your pantry items.

4 - The timers, oh how good they are.  just say Alexa set Rice timer for 25 minutes and then Alexa set Potatoe timer for 15 minutes.  Not only can you have multiple timers but Alexa lets you know which one it is.  This made Christmas Dinner an absolute sinch this year.

Ninja Foodi 9 in 1 or an AirFryer, Steamer, Stove Top, Pressure Cooker, Crock Pot etc.

About 2 years ago we purchased a Ninja Foodi 9 in 1.  We have since used it about 5 times every day (we have a large family and cook everything from scratch).  This machine is epic.  We love the Air fryer (great for crispy chickpeas and kale chips as well as almost anything you'd do in the oven), the pressure cooker (we can do dried chickpeas, beans brown rice in under an hour with no soaking overnight), then saute option (just sizzle the onions and then add in the beans, pressure cook and bingo), finally, the steam and slow cook options are also brill.  THis machine replaced about 4 others that I had cluttering my kitchen

Blender & Food Processor

The other go-to kitchen accessory is a decent blender.  We again use Ninja is our Ninja 3-in-1 food processor.  We use this for making smoothies, grating all sorts, making hummus, making sauerkraut, the list could go on and on.  

When we once cracked one of our Ninja jars I rang Ninja up and a free replacement arrived within 3 days.  Great job Ninja 🥷

Other things that we find incredibly useful are...

Stacking Stainless Steel Bowls

These bowls all stack neatly away, they are fab for prepping food, serving food and also can be used for storing food.  These are another daily use item.

Tupperware for leftovers

We bought this 10 pack for under £20 and they are great for storing leftovers in a portion-sized container and when not in use stack neatly away.  We are big fans of after plating up dinner to also put the leftovers into Tupperware so to make extra portions harder unless we are hungry in which case dig in (often it is just greed or boredom though 🤣)

Knife Sharpener

A sharp knife really does make kitchen life much easier and quicker.  We use this one, 4 pulls towards you and your knife is surgically sharp.  Do this once a week and whizz through your prep.  You can get this one for under £10.

Hand Blender

These are so useful for making soups and sauces amongst other things.  We just burnt out our old and have just reordered a new one for under £10. 

Grater with tub

Not essential but super-useful, you don't need the tub.  I would never use this for grating lots of stuff to make Coleslaw etc. (I would use the food processor for that) but for grating cheese, chocolate or zesting lemons and limes this grater is great 🤣 and tidy.

Measuring Cups

Lot's of recipes include ingredients measured in cups.  Getting a set of measuring cups for under £5 is going to save you time.  If you get this set then you'll not need to get the spoons as this is an all in one measuring solution. 💥

Measuring Spoons

For under £5 these measuring spoons are great and used many times during every meal.  One of the secrets of cooking a super scrummy and healthy plant-based diet is the tactical use of spices.  These spoons will speed up your meal making.

Scales

These are the scales that we use and they cost about £10.  What I love about them is that they are super easy to clear, strong, easy to store and that you can keep resetting to zero when adding ingredients to your bowl.  They work really well with a clear plastic mixing bowl so that you can still see the display when the bowl is on.

Spice rack

I reckon I spent hours a year looking for spices.  Then I found this beauty that fits snuggly on the inside of my kitchen cupboards (for under £15) and makes spice organisation easy.  I actually need 2 for the number of spices I have aquired.

Spiralizer

Ever heard of Courgettini?  Well, it is spiralized Courgette and when seasoned and splashed with a little Olive Oil and combined with a fresh pasta sauce you have a fabulously healthy and tasty pasta replacement.  We all love pasta but sadly those carb fests have a price to pay.  Trying to spiralize with out one of these I guess is impossible.  So not an essential but well worthing adding toa. future birthday list.  This one costs about £20.

Mandolin

Jeez this machine scares me, I can't even watch Jen use it.  The blade is so friggin' sharp.  however, if used safely and with full focus, it makes light of chopping veggies super thin.  I would certainly suggest getting one with gloves or even a chain mail suit.  This one is under £30.

What are your kitchen essentials❓ Let us know in the comments section.