Truly Essential Cooking Tools

The ten kitchen items no home cook should live without.

The world of kitchen supplies is truly endless, with new gadgets designed to make cooking easier and more pleasurable being introduced every day. Some of them are indeed life changing. And some just end up creating more clutter in your kitchen. So if I could only have 10 cooking tools on a desert island – or for that matter in an Airbnb rental – here’s my list:

• Messermeister 8” Chef’s Knife – Endlessly versatile—as long as you keep it sharp.
• Wood Handle Microplane – Another multitasker: I use mine for citrus zest, garlic, parmesan cheese, chocolate…
• Staub 10” Cast-iron skillet – A true workhorse in the kitchen. Perfectly sear meat and fish, make a frittata, bake a cake. 
• Vitamix Blender – Trust me, this one will really up your cooking game. Friends will be shouting “oui chef!” when they taste your silky smooth soups, homemade sauces and nut milks. 
• KitchenAid Mini Food Processor – A tiny but mighty time saver. Why individually chop all the ingredients for salsa when you do it all with the press of a button?
• Dough Scraper – A seemingly esoteric item designed for pastry chefs but one I use to scrape up anything I’m chopping and transport to the pan in one swoop.
• Mini Whisk Set – I love minis for their precision; standards for everything else.
• Mini Spatula Set – Ditto
• Nordicware Sheet Pans – I use these mini and half sheet pans daily for baking, roasting, and reheating. 
• Goop Non-stick Cookware – Non-stick meets non-toxic in this ceramic cookware from GreenPan. You won’t get a perfect sear, but the ease of cooking almost everything has made me a convert.