Love it or list it! Here’s a list of my favorite kitchen appliances and why they earned the real estate.
Ironically, I had more appliances when I had a smaller kitchen. I had a whole section of our living room buffet that was overflow storage for our largest kitchen appliances. As of today, I think we have the fewest I’ve had in years. But the ones we DO have, I couldn’t live without.
I have a love/hate relationship with kitchen appliances. Most of them are designed to save you time. But aside from a high speed blender or juicer, I can’t think of any you couldn’t just use full-size appliances or kitchen tools for. I also know that they can be very hit or miss! I went without a microwave for a year (before I had kids), but now I couldn’t live without it. Some of you live and die for your crockpot / instant pot / air fryers. But two of those three I have long since given away.
Here is a list of my must-have favorite kitchen appliances, along with the ones we passed on to someone who would love it more.
If you want a tour of our kitchen, see it here!
My Favorite Kitchen Appliances
Love It, Use It Daily
Blender
We use our Vitamix every morning to make family smoothies. It’s so important, it gets to sit out on the countertop! It would be pretty hard to make a green smoothie without one, so this is at the top of the essentials list.
Toaster Oven
We use our Breville Toaster Oven daily for toast or baking small things like an individual pizza for Mazen. I’ll never go back to a pop-up toaster because you can do so many things in this kind! I DO think this is sort of a duplicate item because you can technically toast or bake anything in your full-size oven. However, it heats so quickly and is more energy efficient, so it’s worthy!
Microwave
I love our Breville microwave because it has a turn wheel to add time – so much faster than pushing buttons! It fits snugly in our kitchen island, and we use it multiple times a day for reheating food, making quick kid oatmeal, defrosting bagels, or cooking Blue Apron prepared & ready meals.
Coffee Maker and Grinder
Breville Precision Brewer Coffee Maker – We love this coffeemaker. The carafe isn’t glass so it’s fine to toss around, coffee tastes great, and the dial is super easy to program. Needless to say, we use it everyday!
Thomas bought this OXO Burr Coffee Grinder on a whim, and it’s been LIFE CHANGING! Not only does it fit a whole bag in the top at a time, but you grind just what you need, to the exact size you want, every day. Saves time. Saves mess. Fresher coffee. Triple win!
Electric Kettle
I have gone through a phase where I had a kettle sitting on my stovetop. It was cute but also was always getting dirty when I cooked. An electric kettle heats up so much faster, and we use ours nearly every day for nightly tea.
Milk Frother
Aka: hot chocolate maker. This is getting in the essentials list because it’s winter and we’re making hot chocolate on the regular. It’s PERFECT for evening heating milk, not too hot, and mixing in the chocolate at the same time. Mine is an older model (8-9 years old?) and the frother doesn’t work like it used to, so I mayt replace this one when it dies.
Like It, Use It, But Not Often
Nespresso
Whenever I wake up here alone, I use the Nespresso. But admittedly, it doesn’t get used as much as it should. If it were to break, I’m not sure I would buy another. However, I do really like it and do have the occasional afternoon coffee combined with the frothed milk above!
Slow Cooker
While I do not use my slow cooker daily, it’s on the list because there is nothing like it. When I do use it, I love it! I wish and want to use it more, especially this time of year. I once had a very, very large one and the one we have now is the perfect size.
Check out: Slow Cooker Black Beans and Chicken Taco Soup
Cuisinart Food Processor
This is another “when you need it, you need it.” I use it to grate cheese only occasionally because it’s a pain to clean, but most often I use it for Sherry Cheese Dip, pesto, or No Bake Cookie Dough Bites!
KitchenAid Mixer
We use this mostly for baking cookies, occasionally for whipping cream or making something fancier. It is very nice to have when the cookie craving calls, but it’s also a beast that I could do without.
Stick Blender
We have been using our stick blender to make milkshakes lately! I also use it for pureed soups.
Waffle Maker
This one falls under the category of “can’t make them without it” because I’m not sure you can bake a waffle, but maybe you can?! We have an inexpensive one we use a few times a year.
Listed It: Once Had But Gave Away
Air Fryer
We had an Air Fryer because I worked with a brand to develop some recipes for their instruction manual years ago (Check out these Air Fryer Avocado Fries and Air Fryer Kale Chips!). However, my beef with the air fryer was that it wasn’t really big enough to make our whole meal! For example, four baked salmon filets wouldn’t fit with enough space without overlapping. So I ended up just baking them in the oven. Even french fries had to be made in pretty small batches. I know people LOVE their air fryers and I think if I lived alone and was cooking for 1-2 all the time I would have loved it more, but the bin is smaller than you think.
Instant Pot
Here is another polarizing one – so many of you use your Instant Pot daily! I get it – it’s magical. We went through a phase when we were making lots of Instant Pot eggs! Egg salad, hard-boiled eggs. But it’s just SO BIG, and I have to also blame this on Thomas a bit because he really doesn’t like “mushy food,” so all the delicious shredded chicken and stew recipes you guys love, he didn’t. Since this is a beast of an appliance to store, I gave it to my neighbors.
Juicer
Once upon a time, I had a fancy juicer (See this post). It was fun to DIY juice for a while, and I even experimented with juice pulp crackers. But when it came down to it, the cost of the juice ingredients was often the same or more than the juices you could buy in shops. And if you buy those, you didn’t have to clean all the pulp out! I think a juicer would be most ideal for someone who loves gardening and can grow their own veggies to juice. Or someone who is just juice obsessed! That person is not me (team smoothie).
Rice Cooker
RIP early KERF rice cooker! It finally died on me this year. I love any appliance you can set and forget, and I used to make nearly all of our grains in one, from quinoa to steel cut oatmeal (I still remember the day when Emily @ Daily Garnish made me steel cut oats in her rice cooker for the first time!). But these days, I tend to make rice and oatmeal on the stove-top anyways. So when the rice cooker stopped cooking, I didn’t feel the need to replace it.
What are your ride-or-die appliances?
Let me guess – your air fryer and instant pot!! Haha!
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