We are having another hot pot tonight for dinner. My mom and step dad got us an actual table top hot pot and we love it so much. My kids keep asking for another hot pot, so that is what we are having for dinner. Since I’ve already shared that post with you, I am doing something different today.
I often mention tools I love in the kitchen and sometimes having the right tool can make all the difference to how food comes out. Most of these are inexpensive, but super useful. I am putting links to all of them here for easy access.
1 – Set of Stainless Steel Mixing Bowls – I use these literally every day and for everything. Since they are low and wide they make mixing and stirring really easy and they are super easy to clean up. Having a bunch of sizes makes them even more useful. I use them for mixing up cake and cookie batter, for marinating meat, for tossing salad, for putting my kitchen scraps in for my chickens, for collecting eggs, for washing herbs from my garden in, and so on. They are really inexpensive and they last forever.
2 – Baker’s Joy Pan Spray – I absolutely love Baker’s Joy. It is an oil spray mixed with a bit of flour. It takes the place of having to manually grease and flour your cake or cupcake pans. Instead you just spray and you are done… nothing sticks. I use this for all my muffins and mini muffins when I don’t use liners, cakes, cupcakes, and loaf bread like banana bread. It has a hint of vanilla so not to be used for savory items.
3 – Silicone Spatulas – These silicone spatulas are heat safe up to 600 degrees, won’t scratch or damage any dishes, are dishwasher safe, and they are fantastic at scraping every last bit of batter out of a bowl, or for spreading frosting or whipped cream. I have a bunch of these and use them pretty much daily. You can also use them for stirring regular food you are cooking too. They hold up super well. I’ve had mine for ages and they are still going strong.
4 – Cookie Scoops – I mentioned these yesterday in my Crumble Copycat Brownie Batter Cookie post. I use them for any round cookie and they make it easy to have all your cookies bake evenly since they are the same size/weight. It is also less mess using them and it is so fun to scoop the cookies. Once you try them you won’t go back to shaping balls by hand.
5 – Kitchen Scale – I purchased my kitchen scale mainly for making bread, but I have ended up using it for so many other things too. If you buy meat or other items in bulk at Costco or Sam’s or other warehouse stores, the scale is really useful for equally portioning items for freezing. Many recipes give amounts in grams or oz and the scale makes it easy to get the amounts correct. I even use it to weight packages for my etsy store to calculate shipping. It is a purchase I have never regretted.
6 – Bench Scraper – A bench scraper is another purchase I initially bought for bread baking but have ended up finding super handy in the kitchen. I use it every time I bake bread, but I also use it for cleaning up my counter top or island if I’ve made a mess, cutting cookie, scone or biscuit dough into pieces, scoring the edges of pie dough or empanadas or anything crimped, or scraping junk off my cookie sheets or pizza steel.
7 – Pastry Wheel – This tool can be used to cut pie dough with or without a decorative edge. Cutting pasta into strips or using the fluted end on ravioli is also common. I used the fluted edge on my Brown Butter Shortbread Cookies because I think it looks cute. You could use it on any cut out cookie type project.
8 – Parchment Paper Sheets – I love these precut parchment sheets for sheet pans. I use these for almost everything I bake on a baking sheet. Nothing sticks to them so they are perfect for baking cookies. I also use them for roasting vegetables, cooking frozen food, pretty much anything you’d do on a cookie sheet. They make clean up super easy since your pan doesn’t get very dirty when baking with them.
Hope you have enjoyed this peek into my favorite kitchen tools I use while baking. I hope some of them will be useful to you as well.