Before beginning your meal prep journey, it’s important that you first have the right kitchen tools already in place. Whether certain items or utensils are missing or simply need an upgrade, having the right tools makes a noticeable impact on your cooking efficiency and the overall enjoyment you‘ll get out of the process. Because, of all the chores, at least cooking is one of the more fun ones that allows us to become more creative. So let’s take a look at our culinary paintbrushes and identify whether or not you have everything ready at hand in your kitchen.
Knife
The good ol’ stabby-stabby-pokey-pokey. Knives have always been essential tools for humanity. In fact, it’s easily one of the most important inventions ever alongside the wheel and modern medicine. How do I know this? Because, when I was teaching abroad, I would give my students, all educated adult professionals and college students, everyone’s favorite activity If you were stranded on an island what items would you bring? One guy said his phone which I still can’t understand, trading a coveted tool slot for what was essentially just a brick since ocean water can’t charge electric devices. Besides that guy, everyone always chose a knife (or sometimes an ax) and the reason was simple – they cut stuff.
Having a sharp blade in your kitchen is paramount to your overall cooking experience and the food that you will produce. I want to emphasize sharp too. Not just any knife will do, having some jagged rusty, bent-out-of-shape dull piece of metal isn’t a rustic throwback to your ancestors. If you have the financial flexibility to invest in just one item in your kitchen, a proper knife is the best place to start.
Not only is a low-quality knife going to be difficult to cut with, it will also create unnecessary dangers. When you use a knife, the blade should be doing all of the work for you. There’s no need for additional force or elbow grease. A sharp knife is capable of cutting through any ingredient. When that blade becomes dull or uneven it causes your knife to slip because it can’t move through the cutting motions as easily. This is how people get hurt.
As for your food? The worse your knife is the more torn up and ratty your food will look. When you’re cooking there are a lot of different cuts that you will employ and having a rough knife will make those cuts less fine. This can lead your food to becoming uneven, causing certain portions to cook faster than others or just creating an overall unappetizing look.
But the fun doesn’t stop just there, there’s more! Once you get a proper knife you’ll need to maintain it. All blades wear down over time and eventually a brand new world of wet stones and honing rods will open up to you, leading you closer to your culinary final form.
Also, when you own a chef’s knife you automatically become Chef de Maison and that’s like uber-rad. The kitchen is your dojo, you are the master, and the chef’s knife is your black belt. So rank up and make it official, we’re playing in the big leagues here at Prep Smart Kitchen.
Storage Containers
What would meal prep be without storage containment, our logistical champions of the fridge? You know, I was saying knives are super important, but these are really important kitchen tools too, no cap. Without these containers, where would you put all the food you just prepared? Ya, pretty simple right?
It gets a bit more complex than just simple storage though. There’s a lot that can be discussed and analyzed about how we store our food. Are these containers going to be glass or plastic? Is it hard plastic or soft plastic? Do we want to color code the containers? Are they going to be rectangular or circular? Are we putting these in the fridge? Pantry? The freezer perhaps? What are storage options if we want to bring these containers to work? Are they microwave safe?
You see what I’m saying? The containers you use are some of the most unassumingly important aspects of meal prep and certain companies market towards that. You can find plenty of options in stores and online for storage containers specifically meant for meal prep which have separate compartments built into the design kinda like a really boring bento box.
Frying Pan
We really grow attached to our frying pans. While I’m sitting here wondering what to write next, all that comes to my mind about frying pans and skillets is absolute affection and I can’t tell you why. Maybe it’s the physical connection you get from holding the handle so often or the heat that comes through it, or all the magical creations that happen within? Whatever it is, a good frying pan will quickly feel like a part of the family and, according to Uncle Roger, woks have this same appeal.
One reason is because frying pans are incredibly versatile kitchen tools. You can cook so many different recipes that we’ve even got a name for it: one-pan recipes (sometimes “one-pot”). Whether you’re searing a piece of fish or simmering a sauce, a good frying pan makes it all possible.
Most exciting is all of the different options that exist for frying pans too. At the high-end is the Cadillac, cast-iron skillets (omg). These bad boys are capable of maintaining high amounts of heat, dispersing it with incredible balance that creates an even sear to everything you cook, but the biggest benefit is their ability to remain seasoned. Over time, cast iron-skillets retain the flavors and oils from your cooking, helping create deeper flavors with ease. The only issue is you need a flame to use them. If you got an electric stove forget everything I just wrote.
For all my electro-bros, we’ll need to focus on a separate set of frying pans made from materials like ceramic, teflon, and stainless steel. Here’s where frying pans can get really interesting because at this level is where we start to see a larger variety in the materials, functions, and purposes of most kitchen accessible pans. Materials play a big factor in pans and will determine what utensils you can use with them like teflon for instance. Most everyone knows that metal utensils can’t be used in teflon, but pans can also be limited by the type of heating elements you are using too. Induction stovetops for example, which turn your pots and pans into their own heating elements using electromagnetism and other fancy science magic, require specific pans that are compatible. Attention to detail really matters in this regard.
Also, shout out to my boy the 5-quart pot. You didn’t make the list, but all my homies know what’s up with you. You boil so well it puts pans to shame. Without you, noodles, pastas, and soup would all be a mystery. We salute you Mr. 5-quart pot with honorable mention.
Microwave
I had a friend in college that refused to use my hot water kettle to make his cup of ramen one night, opting for the microwave stating that he “needed the radiation” and honestly, we all kind of agreed. Microwaves make cheap ramen taste better. But we’re not meal prepping for ramen, you can get a cup of noodles for like 40 cents. No, microwaves are important kitchen tools because they are essential for reheating the food we have prepared in the fridge. They are the final cooking step in our weekly meal prep journey. Without it, we’d have cold bricks of food that would be grueling and sad to eat.
If you were to use any other type of reheating method like a toaster oven, sure it would work, but the additional time would defeat the purpose a bit in terms of saving time not adding to it. But that’s your prerogative, I like toaster ovens more than microwaves personally, however we can’t overlook a microwave’s cooking speed. It reduces minutes to seconds, but more importantly softens cookies when you wrap them in paper towels and warm them for 30 seconds. Both of these benefits are equally important to our happiness.
There’s a huge assortment of different microwaves too, offering varying wattages and powers to reheat your food with. What also really helps is that most workplaces have a microwave in their staff rooms. It might seem ordinary, but without that additional meal prepping for work would be dramatically more challenging. So take some time to really cherish that sweet, sweet glow of radiation the next time you warm up ramen. With meal prep, these machines get put to the test.
Refrigerator
I was originally going to put a spatula here, but then I thought “you know, I think a fridge is pretty essential to meal prep.” Unless you’re doing some old school fermentation, burying pots of kimchi underground, chances are that your fridge is how you preserve most of your fresh foods and so now I guess I’m going to start marketing fridges to you my beloved reader because they’re absolutely necessary kitchen tools. I’m almost laughing at the fact that I put them at #5 on this list because we’d basically just shut down the website if we didn’t have these things.
Can you imagine a world without refrigeration? There are plenty of places around the world where this exists, but for most, refrigeration has become fairly accessible to the modern Earthling. In fact we rely on this invention so much that one of the reasons EMP blackouts created by nuclear explosions in the atmosphere is so dangerous is because it would turn off all of our refrigeration indefinitely. With spoilage on that scale, most civilizations would start to collapse within days or weeks (overlooking the probably way more intense reality of a nuclear explosion, those are pretty bad on their own).
Really though, refrigeration is a modern miracle and has helped our population boom because we’re able to store food for much, much longer now and that benefit extends itself into meal prep where we can use fridges as a way to store prepared meals instead of unprepared fresh ingredients (meaning we can aim to use all the groceries we buy in a single day so that nothing is left to spoil).
