Instead of linking to the various bits and bobs of equipment I use in each recipe, I thought I might go over the main things all in one place. This probably won’t be an exhaustive list, so I won’t promise that there aren’t going to be any links in further posts. But what follows are the pieces I use most.
(By the by, I got the title from Anson Mills. They put that in all their recipes and it just stuck with me.)
I don’t much use the oven in our house. With only the three of us, the oven has always seemed a waste of energy. One of the first additions to our kitchens that we bought was Breville Smart Oven. We’ve had this same toaster oven for almost 5 years now (the newer version has an oven light and a slow cook setting) and other than some discoloration (which is my fault for not cleaning it as much as I should) it’s as good now as when we bought it. I’ve used it for everything from filet mignons to muffins to pizza.
The one item we absolutely couldn’t do without is our Breville Barista Express. Trying to figure out how to save money and time without giving up our White Chocolate Mocha from the coffee shop that was about a 10 minute drive away, we decided to make our own. It was a pretty high initial investment, but unless we’re out of town, this gets used every day for WCM and the occasional hot chocolate.
Our newest acquisition is the Breville (you see a pattern here) Fast Slow Pro. It’s a combination slow cooker and pressure cooker. We had been interested in pressure cooking, and after watching several videos (especially those by Flo Lum) we took the plunge and got this one. We’ve made several recipes using the pressure cooking function, and I see this piece of equipment being one of our most-used in the future.
To round out the Breville pieces we have the Hemisphere Control Blender and Custom Loaf Bread Machine. The blender is mostly used for smoothies and I used to make loaves of sandwich bread in the bread machine, but I mostly use it now for mixing and proofing dough for a different type of sandwich bread.
I have a KitchenAid stand mixer which I use for bread dough and pasta. With a pasta attachment, I’ve made sheet pasta for lasagna and to make ravioli. I’m going to try using it for making butter one of these days as well.
We have other things that get their use, but not as much as the items above. I try not to buy things that only have one use, unless its pretty specific (i.e. the olive stuffer for cheese-stuffed olives for martinis) since I don’t have a ton of storage space in my kitchen. Probably why I stay away from catalogs and kitchen-centric websites.
