Must Have Kitchen Appliances

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Cooking up a wonderful dish requires the right tools, and having the right kitchen appliances can help you get there. After grabbing your basic appliance essentials such as microwave, toaster and kettle, it can be hard to decide what to add to your collection next, especially if you’re limited on space. Not to worry, I’ve curated a list of essential kitchen appliances that I believe should be in every kitchen so that you can tackle any dish.

Hand Mixer

Hand mixers are the next best thing if stand mixers are a space issue, or it isn’t in your budget just yet. KitchenAid is my go to for hand mixers because I’ve tried other brands and the beaters seem to go really fast, even on the lowest setting, spraying sugar and flour all over my kitchen bench. Within the last few years, KitchenAid have even released a cordless hand mixer, allowing you to charge it and use it without the cord attached, making your mixing experience less restricted.

I also really like the Sunbeam Mixmaster Combo Mixer Pro White and Kenwood Chefette Dual Purpose Stand & Hand Mixer are hand mixers that are removable, can be docked on a stand to act like a stand mixer with the same paddles that are used like on a traditional hand mixer. These are fantastic options for those who want to be able to use both functions and are on a tight budget. The Kenwood mixer even has a splash guard just in case your mixing gets messy.

Slow Cooker

A slow cooker was one of the first appliances my brother and I bought when we moved out on our own. Neither of us were great at cooking so we relied on YouTube and stumbled upon the One Pot Chef which introduced us to the wonders of the slow cooker. It’s great to be able to put together a one pot meal before work and come home to a hot meal. Slow cookers are especially great for tougher and larger cuts of meat, cooking them low and slow for hours, tenderising it and providing wonderful flavour. I have a Breville slow cooker, however, Russell Hobbs and Sunbeam have some budget friendly options that are also very good quality. If you’re after a multi-cooker that has a slow cooker function as well as others such as a pressure cooker, look into an InstantPot cooker.

Immersion Blender

Immersion blenders are an extremely helpful tool and one of my most treasured kitchen appliances. I love making soup and having an immersion blender replaces the tedious task of having to move soup from the pot to a full sized blender, allowing you to do blending in the one pot. I also love making homemade mayonnaise and a stick blender makes it so much easier. I have a cordless, rechargeable KitchenAid stick blender, although their corded version is often cheaper. Otherwise, consider something from Braun, NutriBullet, Breville or Kenwood.

Each have removable motor heads so that the blade attachment can be cleaned separately and also come with other attachments such as a small enclosed chopper that has a blade in it that is powered by the motor head. I really like that brands such Braun and Breville include them because it can make for an easier user experience, as they do come in handy for grinding or pureeing smaller amounts of food.

Blender + Food Processor

Food processors are a kitchen must have, saving you from heaps of prep work and can tackle any meal. Many food processor machines will also come with a blender so that you can make smoothies and milkshakes. There are many great machines out there from brands such as Breville, Sunbeam, Ninja, and Kenwood have many great models to chose from. I like these machines as they have extra processing attachments that allows for grating, shredding and slicing, providing users with greater versatility.

While most food processors do come with a blender, I do have a smaller blender from Ninja which is great for blending smaller amounts of liquid like protein shakes. Blenders that come with food processors are often much larger and are great for larger batches of liquid.

Special Mention

While you can get away without having one, I absolutely love my KitchenAid Stand Mixer. It comes in handy when I’m baking, taking over mixing ingredients and some of those other tedious baking tasks like whipping. The KitchenAid also comes with the ability to use other attachments from the head of the machine like pasta cutters/rollers, pasta presses and meat grinders. I recommend getting a KitchenAid that has a few of the extra attachments, however, if you’re just after the basics, you can get a model with the single bowl, dough hook, whisk and paddle beater.

As much as I love my KitchenAid, for many, it’s out of reach and there are many mixers that work just as well; my mixer is candy apple red and I loved it when I saw it in the store, I had to get it. Look for a stand mixer that has metal mixing attachments and Kenwoods tick all those boxes. As much as I love Breville and Sunbeam for their small kitchen appliances, my experience with stand mixers is quite different. The paddle beater attachments are made from plastic and over time when it was mixing food together that was a little harder to mix, it developed a crack and eventually broke. If you want to go all out on a Kenwood, they do have a pricier model that has many outstanding functions such as an in-built scale, a function to warm up the bowl with the machine and preset functions. They also have a range of stand mixers of different colours, if you’re something a little different from your standard mixer colours.