Minimalist Kitchen
There are many reasons why one might have or need to have a minimalist kitchen.
One might be a new bride or a college student away from home for the first time, and need to make do and get by while slowly adding to kitchen supplies as need and finances meet each other.
One might have a small place without much space, and need to minimize the junk that takes up space.
One might be moving and need to reduce the 'stuff' that will be transported.
Understand that I do not really have a minimalist kitchen, although I have gotten by with one before. I had far more than half my kitchen goodies in storage for almost three years, so I know I can do minimalist, but the truth is, I like my kitchen gadgets too much to have left as many of them in storage as I should have.
But if you are just starting out, or you're moving and need the smallest amount of stuff possible, or you are in a tiny kitchen and need to make space, here are some tips that might help spark your own ideas for simplifying your stuff down to a minimalist kitchen:
1. Kitchen towels can double as hotpads. Just fold them up very well, and be careful. Do I like my hotpads? Very much. But I can function without them if I need to.
2. Turn a glass upside down and use it to cut biscuits and round cookies. I don't remember my mother ever using anything else to make biscuits or rolls. Actually, you can just use your hands to make rolls in a quick, assembly line fashion as a baker once taught me. I demonstrate her method here.
3. Nobody needs a cake tester
4. In a pinch a bottle works as a rolling pin. It needs to be about the shape of an old glass soda bottle, so something like a bottle of ketchup, a bottle of worcestershire sauce or soy sauce will work. If you fill it up with ice water and put the lid on tightly you have a great rolling pin for keeping your pie crust flaky.
5. While I vastly prefer a good pastry Blender
6. If you are crushed for space and/or funds, you don't have to have a spray bottle of oil such as PAM. I never use the stuff. You can spread oil on your baking sheets the old fashioned way, with your hands, or the other old fashioned way, with your children's hands. There are spray bottles you can fill yourself, but I found they usually end up getting clogged up and I returned to the use of my hands.
7. A colander is really, really handy, in fact, of all the 'dispensable' things on this list, this is the least dispensable. However, it is a tool I lived without for years. You can get by with a little coordination and a cooking pan with a lid. You just carefully hold the lid cracked a wee bit and tilt your pan to pour the liquid out (using your towel for a hot-pad, of course) while holding the lid and the sides of the pan. It's a good idea to pour the liquid into a bowl in the sink rather than directly into the sink, so that if you drop your pan the pasta won't go in the sink. Pour away from you, not towards you. Ladle out some of the liquid first to make the pot lighter and easier to poor. If you have a steamer basket you can have that double as a colander- put it inside a bowl or pan and ladle the food from pan to steamer basket. Or, ideally, get a colander but make sure it's one that can also double as a steamer.
8. A vegetable peeler can be used in place of a cheese slicer. Some people use a paring knife, but I never mastered the art and skill of paring fruits and vegetables well with a knife.
9. A giant mixing bowl is a very nice thing for a large family to have, but you can also use a large, clean bucket, and even an ice-chest. I have mixed yeast breads in buckets and large pasta salads in ice-chests before.
10. Specialty racks just for cooling your cookies- I've never owned one and neither did my mother. She would tear apart brown paper bags, spread them open on the counter or table, and use a spatula to get the cookies off the pan and onto the paper. Brown paper bags are harder to come by, now, but a clean counter also works well.
11. Citrus Zester- many people never zest citrus and use it in recipes at all. However, I love the sweet burst of flavor that the zest of a citrus peel gives to food, foods like Fennel Salad, wheat-free lemon poppyseed banana bread, lemon love-notes, or my special chocolate orange pound-cake?
I finally found a good citrus zester at a thrift shop, but for years what I did instead was to store all citrus peels in a container in the freezer. When I needed the zest of citrus, I used my vegetable peeler to peel off a bit of orange or lemon peel (the colored bit, not the white) and then I used a pair of child's scissors to snip the rind into my batter.
12. Grain Mill- I love my grain mill. But if you don't have one, there are two ideas I have for making do without. One is to find a friend who has one and grind grains and legumes in hers, keeping the flours in the freezer. The other is to make the blender pancake batter like this one, which grinds the grains in the blender with the liquid ingredients.
Some people consider tongs to be dispensable. I am not one of them. Tongs are good, in lieu of collanders, for scoooping out spaghetti. IN lieu of pot holders they are good for pulling out the oven racks, for serving salads, for serving pasta, lifting jars and tiny dishes out of hot water baths, reaching the jars that are up high inthe cupboard, turning cake pans in the oven (so you don't put your thumb in the top of the cake), serving ice, lifting, turning, stirring, moving, picking up and putting down. We must have our tongs.=)
What are some of your substitutions?
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21 Responses to “Minimalist Kitchen”
February 18th, 2011 at 5:28 am
I now have what’s probably considered a fair amount of kitchen stuff, but most of it I’ve built up from making purchases at charity shops, or at discount stores like tk max rather than than from expensive companies like pampered chef
(as an aside, I was recently asked if I’d like to host a Pampered Chef party and I thought about it and realised that although it might be fun, if I wouldn’t spend that much money on those things, how could I justify asking my friends to do so?!)
Anyway, I think the point I was going to make is that I have only ever cut (or ‘rubbed’ as I’d say) butter into flour with my fingers. It would never even occur to me that I might use a gadget for that.
February 18th, 2011 at 5:35 am
I don’t have any tongs and never had!
I used to use a grater to get the zest off a lemon or whatever, until I found a zester super cheap at a local charity shop.
February 18th, 2011 at 6:37 am
If you don’t have muffin pans, you can bake muffin batter in a square or rectangular pan, or a casserole dish, then cut them into squares.
I use large lidded casseroles as cookie jars or to hold other baking, like muffins. When we’re finished eating whatever it is, they go back in the cupboard.
If you don’t have a grater and a recipe calls for grated cheese, you can often just chop it up with a knife and cutting board.
Clothes pins–I use those all the time to close up packages. I also consider a Sharpie marker an essential kitchen tool. Stick Tack is nice to stick a recipe to the cupboard door so it doesn’t get splashed.
And I use empty cottage cheese containers as quick 2-cup measuring tools.
My essential tools? A whisk and a rubber spatula.
February 18th, 2011 at 8:00 am
It may sound odd, but I use a potato masher (the sort with a grid) as a pastry cutter. It can scoop pasta out of a pot, if held carefully against the edge of the pot. I use it as a sifter to stir together muffins by lifting the ingredients up and allowing them to sift through the grid. It’s good at mixing up meatloaf ingredients before getting one’s hands dirty. And, of course, it mashes potatoes, cauliflower, etc. nicely.
February 18th, 2011 at 8:22 am
I’m a minimalist in terms of space. Even though I buy many spices and baking ingredients in bulk, I can only keep small containers in my kitchen cabinets. My pantry is in the basement. To keep the trips up and downstairs to a minimum when menu planning, I put a rubberband around spice jars, etc. to remind myself that I have more of an item in the pantry.
Also, I “store” our fruit and veggies that don’t need refrigeration as decorations in a wooden salad bowl on the dining room table.
February 18th, 2011 at 8:44 am
I had to stop putting fruit in a bowl on the table because my 16 month old grew tall enough to reach it and she’d take bites out of multiple pieces of fruit – she got at 5 apples one day!
February 18th, 2011 at 9:17 am
I have a pastry cutter, but my favorite way to work in butter is to take a frozen stick of butter and grate it. You end up with small, pea-size balls of butter, which you can just stir into your flour mixture and be done. Plus, since it starts out frozen, you don’t have to worry about overworking the batter and getting the butter too hot.
February 18th, 2011 at 11:18 am
My mother never had a peeler of any kind–she used a paring knife for everything. So I learned how to peel with a paring knife. We have a peeler now, but I still usually reach for the knife. I also have and don’t use a pastry cutter–I nearly always use my hands.
The big space-saver in our kitchen is not having a big coffee pot. We go low-tech, with either a French press or a single drip filter. Makes better coffee, cheaper, saves counter space.
February 18th, 2011 at 1:09 pm
For me it’s not the little hand held things that can easily be put away in a drawer, it’s all of the single use electrical gadgets… the food processors and choppers, rice cookers, popcorn poppers, waffle irons, mini grills, yogurt makers etc, etc, etc.
It’s not that I don’t own a few kitchen countertop appliances (like a blender) but most of them just seem to be clutter as far as I’m concerned. And I have found that while they may save you a few seconds over doing whatever it is by hand, the time you spend hauling the thing out of its hiding place, cleaning it and cramming it back into an over-stuffed cabinet, not to mention all of the time wasted dealing with the clutter caused by having too much stuff, far outweighs whatever time savings you may have gotten by using the thing in the first place!
February 18th, 2011 at 7:42 pm
Grace, I prefer a French press, but we have so much company over that it’s not really efficient for us. My husband requested a large coffee pot for company, and we use it at least once a week, sometimes more.
EcoCath, I agree with you on most of those, but my rice cooker is a multipurpose tool. I do a lot of cooking in it.
February 18th, 2011 at 9:15 pm
I too love my tongs!
One item I’ve learned to live without was our potato peeler. We clean our veggies and fruits well and use them as is. No one has complained about my mashed potatoes or potato salad so I’m sure they probably can’t tell the difference whether the peel is on or off, and it’s healthier too.
February 19th, 2011 at 8:09 am
For some years, the only knives I had were a Chinese knife that looked like a square cleaver with a thinner blade, and a paring knife. As it happens, I am about to set up a new kitchen from scratch–but one that will be quite small. Thus, I’m looking at things like the cutting board whose corner folds up to serve as a colander. I’ll also use a magnetic knife and gadget holder and a pot rack that both attach to the wall. We prepare almost everything from scratch, though, and I wouldn’t want to give up my food processor that also has a blender attachment. (We most often use the grating blades, since we use a huge amount of grated vegetables in Ukrainian cooking.) I am also looking at a magnetic spice rack that also mounts on the wall. Thus, knives and gadgets and the spices will be in one area, pots and lids on a rack above them. We could get by with less, and we do stress multi-use items, but still if something is used often enough it should have place in our kitchen.
February 20th, 2011 at 9:52 am
I got an electric rice cooker a couple of years ago, and it’s one of the few electrical gadgets that have proved really useful to me. For some reason, I could never cook rice well (I usually burned the pan) but the rice cooker never fails. I also like the convenience of it. I can turn it on when I like, and once cooked the rice will stay warm and fluffy for hours, so I don’t need to worry about getting the timing right.
February 20th, 2011 at 12:18 pm
Here’s my take on your list.
1. I highly disagree with your idea to substitute a kitchen towel for potholders/oven mitts. It is possible to use a towel, but there is a good chance that you will slip and burn yourself. Also if a towel is damp it will conduct the heat much faster and can burn you through it (possibly causing you to spill the pot of hot food on yourself). The dangling end can also fall on an element and catch fire (I’ve done this before, but luckily only singed the edge of the towel).
I think however money or space poor you are, they are still worth it for your safety. I have seen them in dollar stores for a dollar and others for $3-5 and they would cram into a very small part of a box (or even use between dishes instead of packing paper).
2. Yep, I do this, although I do have a (totally unnecessary) heart shaped cookie cutter that I use for valentines day treats.
3. Yep, toothpicks work well for me.
4. You can also use a large straight sided glass for this, although then you can’t fill it with water. If using a bottle, I prefer a large wine one, rather than a smaller coke one.
5. I prefer a pastry cutter too, although have done without and it turned out okay.
6. I prefer to use a paper towel to spread the oil rather than my hands. I also save butter wrappers for this, then you have spreader and grease in one, and don’t waste the last bit of butter.
7. Again for the small cost, I’d use the colander rather than risk burning myself and/or dumping my dinner in the sink. You can get one that stacks with your mixing bowls to save space.
8. You can also use dental floss (just not mint flavored – yuck) to cut softer cheeses (fresh mozza, etc). Just wrap it around the cheese, then pull the ends together.
9. Yep, any container would work, just make sure the bucket hasn’t been used to store something yucky first. A large stock pot would also work if you have one.
10. The purpose of a cooling rack is to let air circulate underneath, so putting them on paper wouldn’t do the same thing, but for most things it probably wouldn’t make much of a difference. I also use my cooling racks for keeping meat (especially bacon) out of its grease while cooking in the oven, so they do double duty for that.
11. I use a microplane grater for zesting, and I also use it for nutmeg and garlic, so it gets plenty of use.
12. Never used one of these. I just buy plain old flour from the grocery store.
February 21st, 2011 at 7:43 am
[...] Do you have a minimalist kitchen? [...]
February 24th, 2011 at 11:19 am
Regarding the grain mill- we don’t buy plain flour from the store because we prefer cooking with whole grains, and whole wheat flour at the store has a bitter aftertaste, indicating rancidity. We also have a child with wheat allergies, and it’s cheaper to make our own mixes for her rather than buying them.
I’ve never set a towel on fire. It’s true that if it’s damp it conducts heat far too well, but that is also true of hot pads.
That said, we have hot pads. But sometimes when you’re moving, or for whatever reason having to make do temporarily, they just aren’t available, and running to a dollar store just isn’t that easy (that’s a ten mile trip by highway for us, and there’s not always a car here, for example).
David, I also have a magnetic strip in my kitchen for knives. I love it! My husband’s boss gave us a very nice set of knives for Christmas a couple years ago, too.
Before that, I had a cutting board with a drawer underneath- it was very cool, and sat on top of my kitchen counter. I think I gave it to one of my married daughters who lacked drawer space. It was handy to have the knives in a drawer attached to a cutting board.
February 26th, 2011 at 11:37 pm
If I haven’t inherited it from Mom or Gram, I don’t have it, with the few exceptions.
I inherited a Feemster, pastry blender so old it has a red wooden handle, grater, peeler, tongs, serrated long knife (love), pots and pans and china.
I did splurge on silicone spatulas and Farberware cooking spoons (made in the U.S.A.) from WalMart. Oops, almost forgot, a glass cutting board.
February 28th, 2011 at 3:07 pm
I use a fork for a lot of things – instead of beaters or a wire whisk or a cake tester. I’ve used a knife to “grate” cheese and a grater to zest citrus. I’ve used both a rolling pin and a rubber mallet (at different times) to crush graham crackers into crumbs instead of a blender. I cool cookies on plates (mostly to free up the cookie pans).
Muffin batter can also be cooked in a bread pan and sliced like banana bread. I use clothes pins and rubber bands to close up packages.
The handle on my rolling pin is broken; I might try a wine bottle. And I’ve always just hated recipes where you try to mix cold butter with things, but I might try grating frozen butter. I’ve always used a paper towel to grease pans–it never occurred to me to just use my fingers (doh!).
February 28th, 2011 at 11:44 pm
@Laura S.:
A glass cutting board is guaranteed to dull your knives faster than a wood or plastic one. Wood is also naturally anti-microbial.
As you may know, a sharp knife is safer than a dull one–they tend to cut the item rather than slipping off and injuring the cook.
March 1st, 2011 at 6:32 pm
I went without a funnel for years. What I used was an empty two liter bottle. Just cut the bottom half of the bottle off, then turn upside down. works great.
I use my cutting board to cool cookies to free up cookie sheets for the next batch to go into the oven. The cutting board gets a nice coat of oil in the process.
March 3rd, 2011 at 1:11 am
@David:
No worries. It’s an old stainless serrated knife with very tiny teeth. I barely touch the board with it because the sound makes my teeth hurt
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