The Kitchen Tools I Keep on My Counter
How I make cooking from scratch easier
(and a lot more delicious)
One of the first, and definitely biggest, fights of our marriage was over chicken.
Very newly married and settling into life on Russell’s family farm in rural West Texas, I made dinner while he worked a long day. A confident but wildly inexperienced cook, I found what I thought was an Italian herb blend and generously coated the chicken before popping it in the oven.
As Russell crunched into the first bite, I quickly realized it was not, in fact, an herb blend.
It was herbed sea salt.
I had coated chicken tenders in a thick, inedible crust of coarse salt.
Russell immediately found the humor in the situation and made a sarcastic joke. I, already embarrassed, did not find him nearly as funny. Sixteen years later, it’s one of our favorite stories.
Ironically, cooking is now one of the things I’m best known for in our family. Years of living with limited access to restaurants and gourmet foods meant that if I wanted fresh pasta, great hummus, homemade bread, or something I’d eaten while traveling, I usually had one option: learn to make it myself.
So I did.
And somewhere along the way, I learned another trick: make it easy to make the good stuff.
Knowing how to make fresh pasta or homemade hummus doesn’t mean much if it always feels like too much trouble to actually do it. The more I cooked, the more I realized that small conveniences – the right tool, stored in the right place and ready when I need it – often make the difference between I could make that and I will make that.
And with that in mind, these are the tools I’ve made permanent room for on my kitchen counters.
What Stays on My Counters
- Wooden cutting boards + knife block
- Good salt + salt cellar
- Vitamix
- KitchenAid stand mixer
- Bonus: our espresso setup
Wooden Cutting Boards + Good Knives
Almost every meal I make starts here, so my cutting boards and knives get some of the easiest-to-reach real estate in the kitchen.
I keep several large wooden cutting boards leaning against the backsplash with my knife block right beside them. As I’ve tried to move away from plastics in the kitchen (not perfect, but working on it!), I’ve found it helpful to have heavier boards for meats, light ones for veggies and aromatics, a variety of sizes, and a few boards that can double as quick serving pieces for bread, cheese, fruit, and appetizers.
Shop my Cutting Boards + Knives
Good Salt
Given how this article started, perhaps I shouldn’t be trusted to recommend salt… But I promise I’ve learned a few things since the salt-chicken incident!
Good salt is one of the simplest ways to make food taste better. And after reading Samin Nosrat’s Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat, I became much less timid about using it.
I used to bring this salt home from trips to France—until my husband had the bright idea to check whether we could buy it in the U.S. Turns out, we can. So now it’s sprinkled on just about every meal, taking simple things like a sliced tomato, roasted vegetables, or warm bread with good butter from fine to really good with almost no additional effort.
Apparently the lesson wasn’t to be afraid of salt. It was to learn how to use it
Vitamix
There are so many things I used to automatically buy that I now think, I’ll just make it.
Hummus is probably my favorite example. Homemade takes minutes, I can make it exactly the way I like it, and the Vitamix gets it ridiculously creamy. Suddenly Greek chicken and vegetables become a meal with homemade hummus, warm flatbread and good olive oil—the kind of food I genuinely look forward to eating.
It’s the same with pesto when the basil in my garden inevitably gets out of control, sauces that make simple food more interesting, creamy soups, and, yes, plenty of smoothies.
The KitchenAid
My KitchenAid has its own little nook in the kitchen for one very practical reason: I knew that if I had to lug it out of a cabinet every time I wanted to use it, I wouldn’t use it.
With it so easily accessible, I make a lot more bread now. Not complicated, all-day bread projects, but quick flatbreads to go with Greek chicken, pizza dough, and simple loaves that are healthier and better than what I’d normally pick up at the grocery store. And possibly a few more desserts too.
Because the mixer is already sitting there, adding homemade bread to dinner doesn’t feel particularly ambitious. I can start the dough, walk away while it rises, and keep making the rest of the meal. And honestly, warm bread has an unfair ability to make an otherwise pretty simple dinner feel like you really had something special.
Shop my Favorite Kitchen Appliances
Espresso Nook
I owned a coffee company for several years, so I have strong opinions about coffee—and very little interest in starting my morning with a mediocre cup of it.
When I designed our kitchen, I gave coffee and tea their own little station. The espresso machine, beans and accessories stay out and ready to use, so making a really good latte at home is just part of the morning routine. Our electric kettle sits right beside it for hot water at night.
The catch is that both rituals create a surprising amount of mess. So the whole station sits behind cabinet doors. Everything we use every day stays out and accessible, and I can close the doors on the evidence when I want to.
