The kitchen utensils, cooking tools and gadgets I can’t live without are basic cooking utensils. When I found myself setting up a kitchen from scratch, it was these fundamental kitchen tools I was missing most from our kitchen in Siem Reap. Sure, a Kitchen Aid blender would be nice, but it wasn’t fancy machinery I was missing, it was the simplest and most essential kitchen gadgets.
I’m sharing my list of essential kitchen utensils, cooking tools and gadgets that I can’t live without, in case you find yourself setting up a kitchen for the first time. Whether you’re a novice cook moving into your first home and setting up your first kitchen, or you’re an experienced cook moving interstate or overseas, or returning back home from abroad and re-equipping a kitchen, this is what you need.
For the first time in my life, after returning to Australia to stay with mum, I found myself re-equipping a kitchen that had been neglected, as my elderly mum had sadly lost interest in cooking. The grill and oven – which hadn’t been used since Terence baked a batch of homemade meat pies for mum to freeze on our last trip to see her, the year before the pandemic – were full of cobwebs.
Aside from the top cutlery drawer, the other kitchen drawers hadn’t been opened in years and were full of dusty cooking utensils that were blunt, tarnished, rusted, and stuck together. No amount of cleaning products, vinegar or baking soda (I researched all the home remedies), or heavy-duty scouring would clean them or prize them apart. So I found myself re-equipping a kitchen for the first time in years. If you find yourself in the same situation, here’s what you need.
Essential Kitchen Utensils, Cooking Tools and Gadgets I Can’t Live Without
It felt a little strange putting together this list of essential kitchen utensils, especially after having spent a lifetime cooking – cooking at times with passion, other times out of necessity, often obsessively after discovering a new-to-us cuisine, more recently with the love of a devoted daughter cooking for her dying mother.
When Terence and I first moved in together many years ago, we set up our first kitchen in the compact garden basement apartment of a two-story terrace house in Balmain in inner-city Sydney. I was a first year university student working part-time in cafés and on my way home from classes I’d trawl op shops for pre-loved kitchen utensils and cookware.
With new jobs and promotions, moves to bigger homes, and a growing love of cooking and entertaining, Terence and I bought new kitchen gear, but still on an as-needed basis. We’d head to Sydney’s Chinatown, or to Ikea, and, after Terence got serious about cooking and did a stint in a friend’s Italian bistro kitchen, to cheffy shops for restaurant-level gear.
When I got a teaching job in the Middle East and we moved to the UAE, we had to set up a new kitchen from scratch in our Abu Dhabi apartment. As Terence took on cooking duties, he equipped our kitchen with all the ‘essentials’, from a good espresso machine to a deli-level charcuterie slicer.
And after settling in Southeast Asia, following over seven years living out of suitcases, travelling the world as a food and travel writer-photographer team, it was Terence who set up our first Cambodian kitchen in Phnom Penh. I was all-consumed with work again, at that time as the editor-at-large of a Thailand-based Southeast Asian travel magazine.
I vividly recall Terence arriving home and recounting stories of his adventures scouring the local markets for Asian kitchen essentials – for everything from cleavers, a cast-iron wok and clay pot and brazier to steaming baskets and draining spoons. I’ll never forget Terence lugging home our first granite mortar and pestle, which weighed a tonne.
When I returned to mum’s in Australia at the end of December 2023 (!! yes, it’s been that long!), it was with a 7-kilo carry-on and a plan to stay a month or two to help mum find a new rental home, move her, and settle her in. I had no idea how bad the housing crisis is in Australia and never envisaged still being here all this time later.
In the first few weeks, as I gave the house a good clean and started to help mum sort through more than 20 years of possessions, fill countless charity donation bags, and even begin to pack, I made toasted sandwiches and quick and easy pastas, never imagining I’d be here long enough to make anything more complex than that, let alone develop a cooking routine.
My mother was a great cook when I was growing up, having learnt to cook Russian-Ukrainian food from my grandmother and great-grandmother. My parents had a French seafood restaurant when I was a child, and a beachside takeaway when I was a teen. For Christmas, birthdays and Mothers Day, we always gave mum cookbooks, from Larousse to Margaret Fulton.
But living alone for so many years, mum fell out of love with cooking. Dad died of pancreatic cancer 25 years ago, my sister and her kids are on the other side of the country, and while Terence and I visited once a year or so for a month or more, we hadn’t been able to get back since the pandemic. And when we did get to mum’s, Terence did the cooking, making mum’s favourite dishes.
When I returned this trip, mum was eating pre-prepared meals she’d re-heat in the air fryer – which is how kitchen drawers of cooking utensils went unused for years. After getting increasingly frustrated every time I cooked, I realised I had to re-equip the kitchen, as silly as that seemed while washing cupboards-full of cookware, crockery and glasses for donation.
And that’s how I came to create a list of the kitchen utensils, cooking tools and gadgets I can’t live without – which I thought you might find useful if you ever find yourself in the same situation, are setting up a kitchen for a child leaving home, or are moving abroad and starting afresh in a new country.
Before I tell you more about my essential kitchen utensils and cooking tools, I have a favour to ask. Grantourismo is reader-supported. If you’ve enjoyed our recipes, please consider supporting Grantourismo. For instance, you could buy something on Amazon, such as one of these classic cookbooks for serious cooks or cookbooks for culinary travellers; book a cooking class or meal with locals on EatWith; or buy a handcrafted KROK, the best mortar and pestle ever.
Kitchen Utensils, Cooking Tools and Gadgets I Cannot Live Without
These are the kitchen utensils, cooking tools and gadgets I can’t live without, moving from left to right (sort of) in the image above. Not pictured, but a few more kitchen essentials I had to buy: a digital kitchen scale (which I use constantly), a wok (surprisingly super affordable for a small non-stick wok), and a rice cooker (indispensable after 15 years living in Asia, where everybody uses a rice cooker, and we eat rice almost daily).
Fine Mesh Strainer
I use both the small fine mesh strainer pictured above and a large fine mesh kitchen strainer almost daily. These fine mesh strainers are fantastic for sifting flour; washing rice, grains, legumes, and fresh herbs; and removing solids and impurities from stocks. I also use the strainers for draining jars of olives, peppers and gherkins when I want to keep the brine or oil for cooking.
Good Knife
A good knife would top this list of essential kitchen utensils if I wasn’t ordering it to match the image above. Aside from a serrated-edged bread knife I managed to clean, all of mum’s knives were tarnished and blunt. I know I could have bought a knife sharpener but Terence is the master knife sharpener in our family. I figured all I needed was one good sharp all-purpose knife, something affordable, not fancy.
I went with a utility knife, specifically a Global Utility Knife and it’s served me very well. It’s super sharp and is brilliant for chopping, slicing, carving, peeling, dicing, and mincing. I’ve used it for a year now, and haven’t needed to sharpen it. Terence has a whole guide to kitchen knives for home cooks here.
Wooden Spoon
Not pictured, but my wooden spoon vies for my most-used cooking utensil alongside that knife. After tying on my apron, setting down a cutting board, and getting out that knife, it’s the next kitchen tool I reach for when I start to prepare to cook – even if I’m not yet sure what I’m cooking!
A wooden spoon is perfect for sautéing, stir-frying and mixing, for stirring sauces, soups and stews, and for scraping the bottom of pots and pans. One of the best things about a wooden spoon is that while it’s strong, it’s also gentle and won’t scratch cookware, like a metal spoon.
Wooden spoons don’t conduct heat, which means you’re not going to burn yourself if you leave it in the pot for a while, and it won’t alter cooking temperatures. It also won’t begin to melt like a plastic spoon. Wood is non-reactive, so won’t affect the flavour of food and leave a metallic taste like some metal spoons can.
Soup Ladle
A soup ladle has so many uses, not only for ladling soups, broths and stews from pots to bowls. I prefer ladles to serving spoons for transferring sauces, gravies, curries, and risottos from pots to plates, as I feel like I have more control over how they’re going to spread out – essential for plating for photo shoots.
And just as I prefer a wooden spoon to a metal spoon, I’m also a fan of wooden soup ladles over stainless steel ladles. Although I have to confess that my fondness for a wooden soup ladle is partly aesthetic (they just look so beautiful) and partly nostalgic. They take me back to childhood when my baboushka ladled borscht into bowls at the family table.
Vegetable Peelers
A small vegetable peeler is another kitchen utensil that gets well used in my kitchen. I use them for peeling vegetables and fruit, but also for shaving citrus rinds. You can also use vegetable peelers for shaving butters, cheeses, and chocolate.
My mum had half a dozen fancy vegetable peelers with multiple blades, including serrated blades, in her kitchen drawers yet none of them worked. I have to say that when it comes to vegetable peelers the simpler the better and they last forever.
We’ve never had a blunt vegetable peeler – although we’ve heard of them and even celebrity cooks who recommend replacing vegetable peelers annually! Please don’t do that. Think of the landfill. In Siem Reap we still use the same vegetable peelers we bought when we set up our first apartment way back in 2013.
I use a good old-fashioned straight peeler for most vegetable peeling tasks, including peeling potatoes, although I also love the Y-head vegetable peeler, which does the same job, but some of you will find the ergonomic handle more comfortable for big peeling jobs. The Y peeler is also better for shaving when presentation is important, as it gives you more control.
In Siem Reap I have a U-shaped peeler (also known as the Rex peeler), which is brilliant for vegetables with tough skins, and we use these nifty crinkle-cut vegetable peelers for making Southeast Asian salads, but I haven’t seen them here in Australia.
Grater
I’ve only included a stainless steel hand grater in the image above, but I also love my box grater. I mostly use the hand grater for grating hard cheeses over pastas at the table. It’s also called a handheld grater and cheese grater and is useful for grating over dishes that have been plated.
A box grater is better for bigger grating and zesting jobs as it’s shape creates a solid base which gives it stability on a cutting board, while the best box graters have well designed plastic handles with good grip that are more comfortable for big grating jobs.
A variety of grating blades and blade sizes on all four sides of the box grater, means you can grate and shred virtually anything, whether you want finely grated cheese or more coarsely shredded carrots. Not pictured, but a microplane is great for grating cheese so fine it’s almost fluffy and a mandoline is also excellent for shredding and slicing.
Mini Scissors
The mini scissors sit in the spice box that I keep on the kitchen island as I use them continually for everything from snipping herbs off stems to cutting open packaging.
Digital Kitchen Thermometer
Terence has a great guide to digital kitchen thermometers, also called digital meat thermometers, so I’ll keep this brief. But these days I’m mainly using a digital kitchen thermometer to check the temperature of chicken – fried chicken and poached chicken – to make sure the chicken is cooked.
Measuring Spoon Set
You can only see three of the plastic measuring spoons pictured, but the set includes six plastic measuring spoons, which perfectly slot together. The largest measures 1 cup/250ml and the smallest measures 1/2 tbsp/10ml. In between, there are measuring spoons for 1 tbsp/20ml, 1/4 cup/60ml, 1/3 cup/80ml, and 1/2 cup/125ml.
I use that plastic measuring spoon set continually throughout the day for measuring both wet and dry ingredients, from cooking oils, vinegars, soy sauces, etc, to different kinds of flours, rice, grains, fresh herbs, you name it. When I’m recipe testing, it barely leaves the cutting board.
Wooden Rolling Pin
Call me old fashioned, but I use a wooden rolling pin to roll out dough for making the casings for Russian-Ukrainian dumplings such as pelmeni (filled with savoury minced meat) and vareniki (stuffed with mashed potatoes and caramelised onion), the Russian ground meat filled hand pies called piroshki, and the Crimean street food snacks called chebureki that my baboushka used to fondly recall from Black Sea beach holidays.
One of the things that saddened me most sorting through mum’s kitchenware was discovering she no longer had baboushka’s dark wooden rolling pin that papa had carved for her. I grew up seeing baba use that rolling pin as she lovingly prepared food her family and I learnt to make dough using the same rolling pin. I’d hoped to take it back to our kitchen in Cambodia.
Tongs
Tongs are brilliant and are another essential kitchen utensil in our kitchen in Siem Reap, as well as my temporary kitchen here. I bought a pack of tongs in three sizes, but probably use the small tongs and long tongs the most, although I do use the medium sized tongs.
The long tongs get used for frying, so my hand is far enough away from the pan to avoid getting burnt from oil spitting and splattering, the short tongs get used for plating up, especially for assembling salads and layered dishes, while the medium sized tongs are mainly used for transferring spaghetti and long pastas from pots of boiling water to the sauces in pans.
Terence prefers the tongs with silicone tips and silicone handle grips, which we have at home in Cambodia, and I agree that they’re better. I occasionally forget that these tongs aren’t those, accidentally leave them in a pot or pan, and pay for that oversight when I pick them up. Ouch! They very quickly get very hot.
Other advantages of those heat resistant silicone tongs is that the tips won’t scratch your favourite frying pans, and that they come together better and hold food better, so it doesn’t slip through, especially those long pastas.
Silicone Spatula
The word ‘spatula’ covers a few kinds of kitchen utensils that come within the spatula family. There’s the spatula used for turning and flipping everything from pancakes to burger patties, that’s also called a turner or flipper. It gets used for grilling and barbecuing.
There’s a similarly shaped slotted spatula, which has slats for oil, grease and liquid to drip through and is fantastic for flipping fish, which is why it’s also called a fish spatula and fish slice. It’s also handy for transferring pieces of pie and lasagne to plates.
Lastly is the spatula used for scooping, stirring, mixing, folding, and scraping. While a traditional metal spatula (also used for flipping and turning) is best for grills and barbecues, the silicone spatula is brilliant for glass, plastic and stainless steel bowls.
A silicone spatula is fantastic for preparing sauces, batters for pancakes and breads, and frosting for cakes, and for scraping all of the above from bowls, without scratching your cookware. They’re flexible, non-stick, and don’t conduct heat.
Silicone Pastry Brush
The silicone pastry brush has some of the same qualities as the silicone spatula, with the added bonus of not leaving hairs from the brush on your pie, pizza base or chicken when your applying an egg wash, spreading around a sauce, or basting juices on a roast.
Measuring Glass
I love the adorable little measuring glass you see above. I use it mainly for measuring olive oil, vinegar and lemon juice when I’m making variations of my classic salad vinaigrette.
Whisks
A stainless steel whisk is another one of those genius kitchen utensils and I use both the larger standard whisk and a mini whisk almost every day. Whisks are used for mixing, whipping, blending, and beating, and are brilliant for combining wet and dry ingredients like flour and eggs.
Whisks are used to remove lumps from gravies and sauces, to create emulsions like homemade mayonnaise, and are wonderful for whipping cream to lighten the texture and increase the volume, and for aerating egg whites to create a foam to make meringue.
After I use that cute little measuring glass to measure the ingredients for a classic salad vinaigrette, I pour the lot into a small mason jar and use my mini whisk to stir them up. Or just give the jar a really good shake.
If you’re new to cooking, see our post on 12 dishes beginner cooks should learn and if you’re not, but always looking to improve your kitchen skills, see Terence’s post on 10 dishes to master to become a better home cook.
You might also like Terence’s posts 10 things I’ve learnt working in restaurant kitchens that are useful in home kitchens, some pro chef lessons for home cooks, from precision in the kitchen and why size matters, if you want to be a better home cook, work in a restaurant kitchen, and a night in the kitchen with Michelin-starred French chef Pierre Gagnaire.
