Cooking without essential kitchen tools is like running a marathon without shoes. Okay, some people would be able to pull off a long-distance run without shoes. But for us people without superpowers and with delicate feet; we just won’t get very far.
Set up your kitchen for healthy cooking
In order to be able to cook healthy meals, you need a proper kitchen set-up. I’m talking core essential items. You’ll make cooking faster and easier with the right equipment. This gives you more confidence in the kitchen and you’re more likely to follow through with your healthy lifestyle.
Making an omelette with a spoon is just not gonna cut it.
If you want to live a healthy lifestyle, you need to be cooking most of your own food
When you eat out, grab a take-away breakfast, or heat up a ready-to-go meal from the supermarket, you’re never 100% sure what’s actually in your food and if it’s nourishing your body.
Without knowing, you’ll be eating lots of additives, sugar, and unhealthy fats. The food manufacturing industry and restaurants add these things to make your food taste ‘better’, and to enhance flavour, to make it look and smell better, preserve longer and to manufacture it cheaper. You can read more about that in my blog post about processed foods here.
The thing is, when your food is ‘upgraded’ like this, it has a negative impact on your overall health and wellbeing.
There’s a really easy fix for this: take control of your food and cook your own meals.
Probably not what you wanted to hear hey? I know, but you want to be nourishing your body as it needs real food with nutrients to perform all the necessary bodily processes. Otherwise, you’ll end up feeling like c.r.a.p.
5 essential kitchen tools for healthy eating
When setting up a healthy kitchen, it’s key is to keep it simple and basic. You really don’t need a mango peeler, egg slicer, or pineapple corer. They’re rarely used and just take up space in your kitchen drawers. If you don’t add clutter to your life, it saves you time from decluttering 💡
Quick tip: tools that only have 1 party trick are a no-no. Focus on tools that can be used for multiple jobs. Unless they’re a garlic press or vegetable peeler. They’re awesome, I use them almost daily. A garlic press and vegetable peeler are definitely essential in a busy mum’s kitchen, because they speed up your food prep and just save you that extra bit of time.
For now, we’ll focus on the 5 most essential kitchen tools for healthy eating. They will help you to eat well and get excited about cooking healthy meals in your own kitchen.
1. Pots and pans
Perhaps a bit of an obvious one, but definitely one of the most important things to be able to cook in your own kitchen: pots and pans. You need them for soups, curries, stews and for cooking vegetables, etc.
Get a good set of different sizes. Preferably an extra-large pot too, so you can do some bulk cooking and you’ll have leftovers for another day.
Skillets or frying pans are different names for the same thing. They’re used for stir-frying, frittatas, omelets, preparing meat, etc. Get a large one for bigger meals and a smaller one for a smaller dish.
In regards to materials: stainless steel is the safest and most affordable option for your pots and skillets. If you don’t mind your cookware being heavy and you can afford them, go for cast iron.
Definitely stay away from aluminium pots, as cooking with them can be quite toxic for your body if you add acidic ingredients like tomatoes and lemon in your cooking. Also be careful with non-stick Teflon in skillets and frying pans.
It would be such a shame to put toxins in your body when you’re doing such a health-supporting thing like home cooking.
2. Knives and chopping board
A healthy kitchen needs good knives. Unless they come in bite-size pieces, we don’t eat ingredients as a whole. Which means that we need to be able to chop up vegetables and meat.
You don’t need a block with 10 knives, as you won’t use all of them. Knives that you’ll use the most in healthy cooking: a chef’s knife and a paring knife. Treat yourself to some good quality ones, as it’ll make your time in the kitchen more efficient and also more fun.
Keep your knives really sharp too. Dull knives are more likely to cause accidents in the kitchen as they require more force when you’re cutting, which means you’re more likely to lose control.
Don’t use your knives on anything else than a chopping board. Yes, I’m looking at you: no quick sneaky cutting on a plate. This makes your knives dull.
When it comes to chopping boards, you can use wooden or plastic boards. Wooden boards are known to be better for your knives and food safety. Stay away from the glass chopping boards, as they dull your knife.
3. Measuring tools
Depending on the country you live in, your measuring tools are either spoons and cups, or a bit more precise: kitchen scales.
No matter what part of the planet you’re from, when you’re cooking a recipe you want to be able to (roughly) follow instructions. Especially in baking, a wrong measurement can have a non-edible result. Such a waste of time, not to mention the demotivating effect this can have on you. Trust me, I know.
Spoons and cups are very inexpensive and kitchen scales don’t have to cost much either.
Measuring tool tip: when shopping for recipe ingredients, be mindful that the weight/volume in the recipe is without skin, seeds, etc. Take into account the weight of things that have to be removed from your ingredient, otherwise you’ll end up not having enough of it for your recipe.
4. Long spoon, spatula, ladle, whisk
You’ll use these items. A lot. Stirring, flipping, serving, and whisking – all essential food prep processes.
Use wooden spoons and spatulas. They’re better for your pots and pans because they don’t scratch the bottom like metal utensils. You’d want to stay away from plastic utensils as well to prevent exposure to Bisphenol A (BPA). BPA is an endocrine disruptor, which means it affects the hormonal system in your body.
A ladle is a very big spoon which saves you time because you don’t have to use a tablespoon 25 times per bowl to fill it up with soup. Who’s got time for that? Ladles are very inexpensive too. When you do the math, it’s a winner. Get a stainless-steel ladle to stay healthy and limit your exposure to BPA.
A whisk is necessary to blend ingredients into a smooth mixture. It’s used a lot in baking, but also to make an omelet. A whisk will only cost you a couple of dollars. Get a stainless-steel whisk, to again, limit your exposure to BPA.
5. Colander and Sieve or Strainer
When you’re cooking your own food, there’s also going to be lots of draining, rinsing and washing. Draining your chickpeas, rinsing your quinoa and rice, washing your vegetables. A colander and a sieve will make your life easier in that department.
You use a colander for the bigger things and a sieve for the smaller things that would otherwise ‘escape’ into the sink, like quinoa.
Depending on where you shop, they can be under $10. As my Dutch mum would say: you’ll enjoy your money out of that really quickly. A good investment in plain English.
There’s always going to be more…
There you have it, the 5 basic tools to set up your kitchen for healthy success.
Of course, there are many other tools that will make your healthy food prep easier, but let’s not overcomplicate things for now. Get cooking first. Then expand. You’ll be able to pull most cooking jobs off, with the items mentioned above.
One of the recipes you’ll definitely be able to cook with these 5 kitchen essentials, is my nourishing beef stew. Have a go at it here when you’ve set up your kitchen.
Happy Cooking!
P.S. Leave a comment below when you’ve made a healthy meal with these 5 kitchen tools. I would love to see what you’ve been cooking! 👩🍳
