12 Must-Have Kitchen Tools for All Beginner Cooks

By Ruchi Sharma

Confused what are kitchen tools for beginners? Well, ever wondered how to get those perfectly diced onions and tomatoes without chopping off your fingers first? Well, we are sure all the beginner cooks like us will agree that it’s a distant dream to get perfectly chopped veggies. Not only chopping, frying, getting that egg white separated from the yolk and even petty things like draining rice is a huge nightmare for novice cooks. The whole cooking and maintaining kitchen becomes a nightmare for beginners and we all new cooks will agree that for some of us the only thing we are confident about is cooking Maggi! But this lockdown period got most of us dragging our feet to the kitchen, willingly or unwillingly and taught us many nuances of cooking. Still, we all wish for that magic wand to appear and get us out from miseries of finger cuts, burns, crying cutting onions and even food stuck in kitchen sinks. Well, we still couldn’t find that magic wand but we got some solutions to make cooking a sweet experience for beginners like us, and what’s more? All these solutions are pocket-friendly, thus quite within the budget. They are purely manual essential kitchen tools not requiring any electricity source for functioning as well. Here are some excellent must-have kitchen gadgets to make life easier kitchen tools for beginner cooks.

12 Essential Kitchen Tools for Beginners

1. Vegetable Chopper

Those perfectly diced tomatoes, onions, etc. are no longer a dream. These manual vegetable choppers just require you to cut up veggies roughly, put them in the chopper, secure the lid and pull the string a few times. And viola, those perfectly, evenly chopped veggies are there at your disposal! Now those onions can no longer make you shed buckets of tears. Quite cost-effective, most of these choppers are available under multiple brands like Pigeon, Ganesh, Prestige, etc., and are present on most of the online platforms as well. Some of them work well for even making coarse chutney kind of things.

Buy Vegetable Chopper here.

2. Clever Kitchen Knife

Now this one is not exactly a chopper but actually a scissor! No, it’s not a normal scissor, it’s a scissor to cut veggies and fruits. Want to cut cucumber slices, ladies fingers, beans, etc. but worried about chopping off your nails? This innovation is a perfect answer. Though not really good for very small veggies, it works quite well for medium-sized vegetables. 

Buy Clever Kitchen Knife here.

3. Multifunction Washing Vegetables and Fruit Draining Basket Strainer

Draining rice and even fruits like grapes etc. after washing them without spilling half of them in the drain is quite an issue for beginner cooks. These specialized draining baskets flip and are quite effective in ensuring it’s the water that goes down the drain and not the rice!

Buy multifunction washing vegetables and fruit draining basket strainer

4. Stainless Steel Filter Spoon and Clip

We all love those yummy crispy fried goodies, be it hot steaming pooris (fried wheat flour bread) or crispy golden bread rolls but at the same time totally worried about getting that hot oil splashing on our hands. Also, getting those fiddly fried goodies out of hot oil seems even more difficult than fishing actual fishes in a river! These specialized steel ladles have got a spoon and clip system making it quite easy to clip and hold fried things out from the hot oil with much less fear of burning both the hands and the food!

Buy stainless steel filter spoon and clip

5. Garlic Press Crusher Squeezer cum Lemon Juicer

That awesome garlic clove crush tastes wonderful in so many food items but even after using all the heavy jars in the kitchen to crush garlic, it does not work to get that full flavour profile. The garlic press is the best solution to get the perfect fine and evenly crushed garlic. A perfect product for all those garlic lovers out there. The product even claims to work as a lemon juicer but before trying it out don’t forget to wash it thoroughly or you might be subjected to garlic flavoured lemonade!

Buy Garlic press crusher squeezer cum lemon juicer

6. Kitchen Sink Steel Drainer Jaali

Washing utensils is a pain in the neck, and quite literally too. But nothing much can be done about it since not everyone can afford dishwashers or household help. At the same time, the biggest problem crops up when the leftover food clogs the kitchen basin drain and it just becomes a huge mess. An overflowing and stinky drain is an issue for everyone who has undergone the ordeal of washing utensils regularly. However careful one is, some leftover food or for that matter, even the ‘chai patti’ or leftover tea leads to clogged drains. A solution for this is the steel drainer jaali that ensures all these leftovers literally get sieved on top and thus don’t go all the way down clogging the drain pipes. Its anti-clogging mechanism lets the liquid flow easily into the drain but blocks all the food particles. Quite an effective solution though one needs to clean these jaalis regularly if you want to avoid overflowing kitchen sinks!

Buy Kitchen sink steel drainer jaali

7. Egg Yolk Separator

All the bakers out there as well as health-conscious people craving for egg white omelets understand the pain of separating egg yolk from egg whites. It isn’t easy at all and makes us feel like scientists trying to get an experiment right. A quick and easy solution for it are these egg yolk separators. Though not perfect, yes they do the job of separating the yolk from the whites quite well.

Buy egg yolk separator

8. Multipurpose Vegetable and Fruit Chopper Cutter Grater Slicer

Want multiple slicing, chopping, shredding options? These multi slicers come with 8-10 attachments claiming to give those perfect 1 cm x 1 cm cubes, juliennes of veggies, sliced veggies, etc. and that too in different shapes and sizes. Some of the attachments work quite well while a few of them gives ok results. But this one is a definite must-have for beginner cooks as it saves a lot of time as well as helps in avoiding the chopping board nightmarish experience for beginners who fear chopping off their fingers. A few multifunction rotating vegetable grater slicer cutter shredders are also available in the market that comes along with a drain basket instead of a box.

Buy multipurpose vegetable and fruit chopper

9. Chapati rolling/ baking sheet

Ever wondered why all these rotis are shaped in different sizes varying from little bangle-sized to all the way full pan size? A solution to avoid this comes in the form of these non-stick silicone reusable mats. They come with proper measurements embedded in them so that you never go wrong as far as size is concerned. A perfect solution for rolling evenly sized chapatis as well as rolling out other goodies like pizzas, fondants, etc. What’s more? They claim to be heat resistant, non-stick as well as microwave safe!

Buy chapati rolling sheet

10. Fruit tools- Apple Slicer, Pomegranate Extractor, Pineapple Corer

Want to eat those yummy pineapples but worried how to peel that prickly skin or maybe how to get those perfect apple sizes pieces without using the knife? A good solution comes in the form of these fruit tools. Pineapple corer helps in getting rid of the tough skin as well as getting most of the fruit, thus reducing wastage.

Pomegranate seed extractor claims to get most of those yummy seeds out by simple tapping without them falling all over the place. Apple cutters help in getting those beautiful even pieces without the seeds. Many other such tools are available for peeling corn, watermelon, etc. Though some of them are not very effective, they do the basic job.

Buy apple slicer

11. Measuring spoon set

Those wonderful cooking books all come with measurements perfectly mimicking those science experiments we all did in schools. No surprise here, considering cooking is no less than science! But these quite specific measurements like a teaspoon, tablespoon, quarter cup, etc. leave us wondering which spoon is actually a teaspoon and which one is a tablespoon? Also, which cup is actually the perfect one for measurement? So, we suggest that we all must rely on a proper measuring spoon set, irrespective of whether you are a beginner or an experienced cook. They always help in getting the perfect output from those recipes and leave little or no room for any error at least as far as measurement is concerned.

Buy measuring spoon set

12. Pasta maker and rolling machine

All the Italian food lovers amongst us understand the craving for some homemade pasta. It’s not easy to master that perfect dough, but even more difficult than getting that dough perfect is rolling out those beautiful layers of pasta. Also, getting that thickness and evenly cut pasta is a difficult job. This machine does all the job right from rolling to pressing to cutting. Just you have to get that dough right, for the machine to do its job!  If you are really passionate about making those beautiful homemade noodles, then this is a must-have kitchen accessory in your home!

Buy pasta maker and rolling machine

Some of these kitchen equipments are definitely must-haves in all kitchens, especially if you are just at the starting point of your beautiful cooking journey. There are many other common kitchen utensils that may already be present at your house like steel handle juicer or lemon squeezer. The list of such lovely kitchen tools is quite endless but we tried to cover the ones we felt were most useful for beginner cooks. Also, most of them are easily available online on various platforms like Amazon, Flipkart, etc. 

Cooking is a beautiful art and quite a stress buster. So, if the whole cooking process and after cooking chores become easier, nothing like it, right? We hope next time you use some of these wonderful kitchen tools and feel more happy and comfortable with cooking, you don’t forget to remember us and also bless the people who invented them!