My Favorite Tools
Shop my favorite tried-and-true kitchen tools! From my favorite appliances to my trusty cookbooks, this is a roundup of all my faves!
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While I love keeping an eye out for intriguing new ingredients and clever tools to use in cooking and baking, there are tried and true favorites that I return to time and time again. And that's because they just work so well.
Kitchen Tools
- Digital Kitchen Scale: A simple, two-button scale that measures in grams and ounces, and has a tare function as well.
- Digital Thermometer: I use it to check everything from cooked meats to baked loaves of bread.
- Zester: This tool makes the task of testing citrus so easy!
- Small mason jars: Keep these on hand to make mason jar desserts, cute margaritas, make salad dressing, or store food and dry ingredients.
- Stand Mixer: I use this KitchenAid Lift Stand Mixer with a 7-quart bowl, but the smaller models are also excellent. It's an appliance you'll have and use in your kitchen for years.
Baking Tools
- Tapered Rolling Pin: This is my favorite for rolling out pie crust dough and any kind of dough. It looks beautiful, it's light, and it makes rolling so easy.
- Bench Scraper: It's a must-have tool for pie making, but is also very handy when working with cookie and bread doughs. I like the wooden-handled bench scrapers for their sturdiness and good looks.
- Metal Measuring Cups: A good, heavy set of metal measuring cups is such a good, long-lasting investment!
Pie-Making Tools
- Pastry blender: To cut butter into the flour, this tool makes it easy.
- Bench scraper: This flat tool gets underneath and moves even sticky doughs.
- Rolling pin: My choice is the long, tapered, French rolling pin.
- Pastry Guide: This guide helps you cut out dough that's the right diameter for your pie pan.
- Metal Pie Pans: Metal pie pans conduct heat more evenly and more reliably cook the crust all the way through.
- Pie weights or dried beans: A must for blind-baking a pie shell. You can buy metal or ceramic pie weights, but cheap, dried beans work just as well.
- Pie Shield: Made from aluminum or silicone, the shield protects the pie edge. You can also use aluminum foil.
Favorite Ingredients
- King Arthur All-Purpose Flour: You can't go wrong with this high-quality flour. Plus, anyone who knows me knows I'm a huge fan of Vermont's own King Arthur Baking Company.
- Nielsen-Massey Pure Vanilla Extract: Really good vanilla is a great investment, as it will elevate the flavor of everything you make with it.
- Runamok Vermont Maple Syrup: This company has the most incredible line of pure Vermont maple syrup in flavors like ginger root and merquen pepper—they're amazing in cocktails. For baking and recipes in general, I look for Grade A dark maple syrup from any of Vermont's network of sugar houses, like Butternut Farm.
- Odlum's Coarse Wholemeal Flour: I ALWAYS have a bag of this Irish flour stashed in my freezer: it's a must-have flour to make traditional Irish brown bread!
- Boiled Apple Cider: I always have a bottle of this on hand! It amps up the flavor of everything from apple pies to applesauce to marinades.
Favorite Cookbooks
- Food Lover's Companion: This is a dictionary of foods and food terms; it's an invaluable tool to have when exploring new recipes and ingredients to try.
- Irish Traditional Cooking: Written by Darina Allen who found the Ballymaloe Cookery School in Ireland. It's full of traditional Irish recipes gathered from families across the country.
- The Flavor Bible: For anyone who loves to play with flavor combinations! This books has thousands of ways to combine different ingredients.
- My Vermont Table: Written by Gesine Bullock-Prado, it features traditional Vermont dishes organized by season.
- My Life In France: Written by Julia Child, it details her years living in Paris where she discovered her passion for food and French cooking.
- 7 Ways: Several of our family's all-time favorite dinners come from this cookbook by Jamie Oliver!