Eating healthfully doesn’t have to be difficult, especially when you equip yourself with the right kitchen tools to help you do it easily.
The holiday season is marked by sugar plums, decadent meals, and abundant desserts. It’s all delicious, but at the same time, I find that my body is craving vegetables. I am thrilled to see friends posting instagrams of kiwi trees and veggie wreaths!
I suppose this phenomena may be because our tastes are changing, gradually. While my family loved indulging at Thanksgiving, most of the kids commented on how they didn’t feel so good after gorging themselves on Pretzel Berry. I don’t think I’ve ever heard them say that after binging at the veggie tray.
If you’re thinking of changing up your diet or getting a fresh start on healthy eating at the turn of the year, think about how you can tool up your kitchen to make it easier to eat more healthfully. Santa doesn’t have to be all about cookies, ya know?
9 Kitchen Tools to Help You Eat More Healthfully
Here are nine of my go-to kitchen tools to help keep our eating on track:
Cooking at home is imperative to a healthy lifestyle. While folks have lots of opinions and gurus may differ in how they define “healthy eating”, pretty much everyone agrees that cooking at home is the best way to stay on track with good eating habits, however you choose to define them. Here are the tools that make it easier for me to cook at home.
Good knives – It’s imperative to have a good set of knives for chopping, dicing, and slicing. You don’t have to buy a full set; you can do quite well with a chef’s knife, a serrated bread knife, and a paring knife.
Big cutting boards – Protect your blades as well as your counter tops by cutting on good counter tops. I have a variety of boards in different colors so I can prevent cross contamination between raw meats and vegetables.
A salad spinner – I prefer to cut my own salad greens, so having a salad spinner really helps. It gets the excess water off the lettuce so they don’t get soggy. This is great, especially if you want to make several days of lunch salads in advance.
A good blender – We have the Ninja Ultima Blender Plus, a blender with separate to-go cups. My son uses this every day to prepare protein shakes.
A food processor – I use my food processor regularly to blend mayonnaise, shred cheese, chop vegetables, or mix up salsa. It’s a great tool to help you tackle prep jobs quickly.
An immersion blender – Vegetable soups take on a different dimension when you blend them. You can hide all kinds of healthy ingredients in them when you blend them up. An immersion blender helps you do it without dirtying a blender or a food processor.
Pyrex with lids – I am growing a collection of Pyrex, something I didn’t think I’d ever do 21 years ago when ten people gifted us the same baking set for our wedding. We didn’t have cool plastic lids back then. Now we do! And I am smitten. I love these dishes because I can do a lot of meal prep at the beginning of the week and store it easily covered and stackable in the fridge.
A food scale – A food scale is invaluable for figuring out good portion sizes. Too often we don’t realize that we’re eating way more than we really need.
Plastic containers with lids – These are awesome for packing lunches. (The black box with the quinoa above.) I’ve bought several sets for my husband to take to work. They as durable as glass, but they’re good disposable-if-you-wanna (or if it sits in the truck too long before you bring it back to the house). Ahem.
These are my stand-by kitchen tools to help me cook more at home, focus on wholesome ingredients, and prep ahead so we aren’t tempted by pricier or unhealthy take-out. I’d love to hear what helps you eat better.
What kitchen tools help YOU eat better?
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A sharp knife and a food processor goes a long way in our house for sure, but also, my industrial toaster oven saves a lot of time and energy in our house (we don’t have a microwave). I can easily throw vegetables in it to roast and still have the oven free for whatever I need it for. The motor on it needed replacing recently, and anticipating the Thanksgiving hoo haw, my husband graciously took care of it. I love that hunk o’ metal and my husband for realizing just how much I rely on it in my kitchen workflow.
thank you for the reminder and link for the immersion blender. I’ve been without for a few months now and really miss it. great for soups, so much better than dealing with hot liquid and a blender. Another item in my kitchen is a countertop oven – love the efficiency when I don’t have to fire up the big oven to make dinner for 2. Also saved me during the past year as my kitchen update had me surviving without an oven or burners.
Love your posts.
I have two one-gallon pitchers with lids to keep ice water and brewed iced tea in the fridge at all times. I have a dozen 1/2 cup containers with lids to pre-portion fruit and vegetables for school lunches. I do this on Sunday night in preparation for the week. And the big one — my Crock pot. I love throwing a large piece of meat in on Sunday and have meat for several meals to start the week.
I’m with you on the small containers. I am so torn between not wasting food but not eating small amounts left on my kids plates I have to put them in the fridge in a tiny container. Oftentimes I can toss the leftovers on a salad or into scrambled eggs. The other kitchen tool I use to eat more healthy is my freezer. Rather than going out or eating processed food my freezer helps me make more nutritious food ready for me when I need it!
Love this list, I’m happy to report, I’ve got quite a few of these items. I can say, I’d be paralyzed without a salad spinner. What do people do without one? it’s a life saver and aids in the consumption of a variety of lettuces, which is essential to a good diet! thank you!