My Kitchen Essentials

As a SAHM of three (with one on the way) who cooks majority of our meals from scratch. No trendy pans required.

I thought it would be fun to make a post with my kitchen essentials; my workhorses in the kitchen! If you’ve been following me for awhile, you know cooking is my thing. It’s a true love of mine, which is a good thing because I cook a lot. I mean a lot, a lot. I’ll touch on the reasons why I cook so much below, but my hope in sharing why I love to cook and how often I cook is to establish a bit of credibility when it comes to my essentials list. This isn’t coming from an influencer who has two kitchens and is shilling the latest colorful cookware line, but rarely shows herself using said kitchen(s) and cookware. This is coming from a mother of three small children, a baby on the way, and wife to a hardworking husband, who cooks breakfast, lunch and dinner just about every single day.

Yes, of course we eat out—we are normal humans, I swear! But I’d say the eating out is pretty minimal. Yes, I feed my kids pre-packaged snacks like cheddar bunnies and granola bars and potato chips. Yes, we love Annie’s cinnamon rolls and a Costco frozen pizza on the weekends. But what we really love is real food. Meals made with real ingredients. Not processed, no junk, no seed oils, I know every ingredient, I know where it all came from, it’s fresh, it’s flavorful, it’s nourishing, it’s life-giving.

I saw something on Instagram that said “my kitchen is my favorite restaurant” and that resonated so deeply with me. So, with that, here are the reasons why I cook so often, and the tools I use in my own personal restaurant!

Why I Cook as Often as I Do:

Before reading my list, please understand that I recognize the whole, “well easy for you to say, you’re a SAHM, you have time to cook!” I get it. My time probably seems unlimited and no, I don’t have school drop-offs before and after a job outside of the home with sports until 9 p.m. I probably do have more time to cook than many! But perhaps part of it is that I prioritize it? Just because I’m a SAHM, that doesn’t mean I sit around at home all day with my feet up, scrolling social, eating popcorn. My time is precious, my time is occupied, my time is limited… I am busy! But we prioritize what’s important to us, and cooking food at home is important to me, so I make time for it.

Here’s why I cook:

1. I love to cook, it makes me happy.

2. Cooking is the healthiest choice for our family. Food that I cook is nourishing to my children and husband (and myself). I have growing kiddos, I want to support their growing bodies, I want to put good into them, not bad. I want the food they eat to make them feel good!! I don’t want what I feed them to make them feel sluggish or have bad behavior or come with crashes. I want the food they eat to support their immune systems, their brains and hearts and moods, their activity and movement, their longevity as a whole. I want what they eat to help them flourish.

3. You might come at me with your pitchforks for this one, but I feel cooking is a responsibility that comes with the role of stay-at-home mother. Perhaps you don’t feel that way, or scorn it for being too traditional or gender-stereotype, whatever you want to call it. But in my personal opinion, cooking comes with being a SAHM.

4. We live in the country: there’s no food delivery, no UberEats, no DoorDash, not even a pizza delivery to our house.

5. We have food allergies in our family and eating out is simply not an option. This is a big reason for all the cooking. I’m talking food allergies, not food sensitivities. Epi-pen, anaphylaxis, the whole nine yards. There are two or three restaurants we feel comfortable with our children eating at, and even then, it’s still nerve-wracking. If I have to pack food to bring to a restaurant anyways, I might as well just cook one meal for everyone at home!

6. I believe food is meant to be enjoyed!! Real, good food. Not fake food; I mean the good stuff, made with your hands, shared at your table, ingredients from the earth. A rich pasta dish with cream, chocolate chip cookies out of the oven, warm bread with a big ol’ pat of butter melting on it, a salad with every color of the rainbow, a perfectly cooked, medium-rare steak…. we’re not meant to be denying ourselves of the goodness of food! Diet culture isn’t really a thing in our home.

7. Cooking is a love language for me, plain and simple. It’s how I show love to others. I love to host and cook for people, I love to feed my family their favorite meals as an expression of my love for them, I love to bring food to people…cooking is love.

8. I want to live a long life and feel good, I want to show up for my family. God-willing, I will get to be present for my children as they become adults, I will get to be an active, involved grandparent, I will be able to move my body as I age, my mind and spirit will be sharp, I want to be as healthy as I can be for myself and my family. I know one of the best ways to take care of myself is to nourish my body with good food. Food made in my kitchen, not in a drive-thru kitchen. Feeling my best allows me to take care of my family well, and that means putting nutritious, quality food into my body.

My Kitchen Essentials:

The following is a list of my kitchen must-haves! If one of the following broke, I’d replace it tomorrow, no matter the cost. I’m not big on gadgets; we don’t have a microwave, we don’t have an air-fryer, no rice cooker, no Instapot, no toaster oven. That’s not to say those aren’t all fabulous kitchen additions, I just don’t have them in mine, and tend to keep things fairly simple. When we lived in our single-wide, kitchen space was very limited, there wasn’t room for fluff or extra, everything in the kitchen needed a purpose and it needed to be used often.

If you’re a home-cook yourself, you might have some different things on your must-have list, and I love to hear what’s important to each chef. This is my list!

• Dutch oven. This is number one, hands down for me. I love my Dutch ovens, they do everything for me; a Dutch oven is an ox in terms of cooking. Soups, pastas, stews, braising, meats, breads, roasts sauces, they do it all. If we’re home for most of the day, I use my Dutch oven over a crockpot. Lodge, Le Creuset, Staub are three brands I recommend, in order of affordability. The thing with a good quality, cast-iron Dutch oven is that it will last a lifetime. You can pass it down! A good one is worth every penny. There are a number of Dutch oven sizes, which can be a little overwhelming when shopping for a new one. Here’s a graphic from Lodge’s website. I have both a 4.5 quart and a 7.5 quart. I wrote a note about what it meant to me to purchase the 7.5 quart Dutch oven; an answered prayer!

  

• Mixing bowl set. I like a nesting mixing bowl set with multiple bowl sizes. I had a melamine set that we received while we were engaged that I just recently replaced with a stainless steel set.

• Kitchen utensil set and measuring spoons and cups. Self-explanatory, but having these basics is part of a well-stocked kitchen! I like stainless steel or wooden utensils.

• Saucepans. I think the size and quantity of saucepans is a personal preference, but I have two different ones, a 2 qt. and a 4 qt. The 2 qt. is what I’ll make sauces, gravy, reheat soups, make rice in, small quantities of pasta or grains, desserts and the 4 qt. is for larger quantities of soups, sauces, stews, pasta, vegetables, etc.

• Rimmed baking sheet. I always buy rimmed baking sheets! Having them rimmed allows them to be used for a wider variety of cooking. You can’t exactly cook something with runny oil or sauces if the sheet pan isn’t rimmed—messy!

• Garlic press. This might be a personal one, but I use a lot of fresh garlic in my cooking and my garlic pressed is used almost every day.

• Wooden spoons and utensils. Ditch the melamine and plastic, go for the classic wood!

• Decent knives. This is another biggie for me, I think good knives are important. I’m not saying you need top of the line, Japanese steel, artisan knives, but just a decent, complete set. I love our knives we were gifted when we were married, they’ve been amazing! One of the best parts about our knife set is that the block has built-in sharpeners. Sharp knives are a necessity!! The knife block sharpener makes it easy to quickly give my knives a good tune-up.

• A skillet of some kind. Don’t be intimidated by cast iron! You can use soap on it, I promise. I don’t care if that’s taboo, I use soap on mine and they work just fine. But you need a skillet! I have a classic cast iron skillet, as well as an enameled cast iron skillet with a lid that I use very often for weeknight dinners (or biscuits and gravy on the weekends!), as well as a smaller enameled cast iron fry pan that’s in between sizes of my first two. That seems like a lot of skillets but they get put work regularly! All of mine are cast iron, I don’t have any nonstick or other kind.

• Baking dishes. 8x8 and 9x13 baking/casserole dishes are pretty standard. You need some baking dishes, you don’t need many, they don’t have to be fancy by any means, but you need some on hand!

• Colander. You need a colander for washing and straining, a basic!

• Mixer. Hand or stand, you need a mixer! I have both; I have my KitchenAid stand mixer that’s out on the counter and used often, and I have a hand mixer that I owned before I was gifted my KitchenAid. I rarely use the hand mixer these days but still keep it around just in case! The stand mixers are an investment, but they’ll last forever. My mom has had hers for over 30 years (I think!), another piece that can be passed down.

• Can opener. Pretty basic, I have a cheap, hand-crank one. Never figured out the automatic ones!

• Crockpot. If you work outside the home or aren’t home to be able to use a Dutch oven, you need a Crockpot! You can make busy weeknight dinners doable by utilizing this kitchen tool. The Crockpot can be a super useful tool for any busy mother! I don’t think you need to go super fancy on these; as long as they get the job done, you probably don’t need all the bells and whistles that come with super expensive ones (in my humble opinion).

• Cutting boards. Choose at your preference, but I prefer wood cutting boards!

There you have it, my home restaurant kitchen tools! I’m sure I’m forgetting a handful, but these are the must-haves that immediately came to mind. I’m always happy to share my recommendations, what I use in my kitchen, talk shop, etc. I have more kitchen favorites on my ShopMy page, with all the items above listed in one place, as well as items I love, but not necessarily ‘essential.’ Please let me know if you have any questions, and thank you so much for taking the time to read!