We watch cooking shows showcasing all the latest and greatest kitchen gadgets, but quite frankly, you don’t need that to make a great meal. Sure they help, but they are not essential. And if you are in a small kitchen, there’s limited space to house all of them. Great, simple meals can be accomplished with essential yet limited kitchenware and fresh ingredients in any size kitchen.
Take, for instance, lemon herb chicken with broccolini and wild-rice. This is not a fancy meal. All these components are relatively simple to make, combine well and require only a handful of essential kitchen utensils to create. We outlined in a previous post entitled Bare Essentials: A Simplified Kitchen the necessities for a kitchen. However, for most dinner creations, you could even accomplish a great meal with less cookware and utensils.
For our lemon herb chicken, for example, you would need a knife, a cutting board, a saute pan, a strainer, and a larger saucepan. On a side note, any kitchen would definitely benefit from a set of sharp, high-quality kitchen knives, including a paring knife, a chef’s knife, a serrated knife (bread knife) and potentially, a cleaver/meat pounder. There’s no need for a food processor, a rice cooker, or a vegetable steamer as this meal can be combined into the large saute or saucepan and cooked together. We found this recipe as an example.
What you need more than any kitchen gadget are fresh ingredients. Great, simple meals made in your tiny home can taste better than a 5-star restaurant depending on the quality of the ingredients, the freshness of the vegetables, and the newness of the spices. Did you know that your spices can expire? Recall when you last bought your spices and perhaps purchase new ones. Splurge at the local fresh butcher when you have company coming to see your tiny home. Find fresh, organic ingredients with great flavor from your local farmer’s market.
Great, simple meals have flavor, satisfy you, and leave you wanting more. They can be made in any size kitchen with the right ingredients and the essential kitchenware.