Nobody walks around IKEA thinking about a spider skimmer. You buy plates, a pan, a knife block, and you go home happy. Six months later you are hunched over a pot of boiling water fishing for dumplings with a fork, and you say it out loud: how did I forget this.
I have made every one of these mistakes. Now I will show you the most underrated kitchen tools that would totally change your cooking life with only little costs.
1. Slotted Skimmer
Without one, getting anything out of boiling water means lifting the entire pot, carrying it across the kitchen, and tipping two litres of scalding water into a colander while steam goes up your sleeves. Then you want to cook a second batch and the water is gone.
With one, the pot never moves. Dumplings out, eggs out, mussels out, water stays for the next round. I use mine more than any knife I own and I cannot believe I cooked without it for years.
2. Pasta Fork
The spoon with teeth around the rim. The teeth grab the strands, which is why a normal spoon comes up empty and a fork brings you four noodles at a time.
And the hole in the middle is not a drain. Push dry spaghetti through it and that is one portion, roughly 80 to 100 g. I owned mine for three years before somebody told me that. It is also the easiest way to move pasta straight from the pot into the pan, which is exactly what you want in our spaghetti carbonara recipe.
3. Meat Thermometer
This one is not only for your tongue, but also for your stomach. Undercooked chicken is genuinely dangerous and can carry various of germs or parasites. The way most people check is to cut it open and look, which tells you very little and drains all the juice out of it. So you either serve something you are quietly nervous about, or you cook it another ten minutes to be safe and eat dry chicken. But with an instant-read thermometer ends it in three seconds. Chicken is done at 74°C, which is the safe minimum temperature for all poultry. Pork at 63°C. Steak is 55°C for medium rare and 60°C for medium. Bread is around 93°C in the middle, which is how you know the loaf is actually baked and not just brown on top.
One thing worth knowing: meat keeps cooking after it leaves the heat and climbs another three to five degrees while it rests. So pull it out just before the number, not after. Nobody tells you this and it is why perfectly timed chicken still comes out overdone.
4. Kitchen Scale
Most people take the scale out for baking and then put it back in the drawer. Meanwhile the thing it helps most with is the thing you cook every week: rice. Rice to water is a ratio, and a ratio only works if both sides are measured the same way. A “cup” of rice and a “cup” of water are two different things once the rice settles. Weigh both and it comes out the same every single time.
Same with pasta. 100 g per person, measured once, and you stop either running short or eating leftovers for two days.
5. Spice Grinder
If you cook food from other countries, this changes more than anything else on the list.
Ground cumin loses its smell within weeks. That jar at the back of your cupboard, the one you bought in 2023, tastes of dust and is quietly flattening every curry you make. You blame the recipe. It was never the recipe.
Toast a tablespoon of whole cumin seeds (about 6 g) in a dry pan for a minute, grind them, and the smell fills the room. People will ask what you did differently. Twenty euros for a small electric grinder. A mortar and pestle does the same job by hand and grinds saffron far more evenly than your fingers, which is why we reach for one in our seafood paella recipe.
6. Mini Food Processor
The small one, not the big machine that lives in a cupboard because it takes ten minutes to wash.
Curry paste, herb sauces, garlic, ginger, pesto, breadcrumbs. Chopping garlic by hand for a paste takes fifteen minutes and your hands smell for two days. This does it in twenty seconds and has three parts to rinse.
Thirty euros, and if you cook anything from South or Southeast Asia it will be out on the counter every week.
7. Silicone Baking mat
Baking paper is a thing you buy again and again, tear badly, and throw away. A silicone mat replaces all of it. Nothing sticks, nothing needs oiling, cookies come off clean, and it goes in the dishwasher.
Quick note since people ask: food-grade silicone is stable at oven temperatures and does not leach into food. The way to spot a bad one is to twist a corner. If it goes white, it has cheap filler in it and you should not buy it. Proper silicone keeps its colour.
8. Oil Spray Bottle
A refillable one you fill yourself. Spraying puts a thin even layer on a pan, a tray or an air fryer basket, where pouring gives you a puddle in one corner and a bare patch everywhere else. You will use less oil without trying.
Skip the aerosol cans from the supermarket. They contain propellants and emulsifiers that build up into a sticky film on non-stick pans, and once that layer is there it does not wash off.
9. Steamer Basket
The folding stainless steel kind that opens out like a flower and sits inside a pan you already own. Five euros, takes up no space, and almost nobody in Europe has one.
Steaming is the most forgiving way to cook there is. Nothing sticks, nothing burns, you cannot overcook fish by two minutes the way you can in a pan. Whole fish, dumplings, broccoli that stays green instead of turning grey, leftover rice brought back to life in four minutes.
If you want to cook anything Chinese, steaming is not optional, it is half the cuisine. And you do not need a bamboo basket or a dedicated steamer to start. A folding basket in a pot with 2 cm of water and a lid does the same job.
10. Rice Cooker
As an Asian food lover, I would buy another the same day if it died. Everybody who has tried cooking rice in a pot would know that you have to check on the hob all the time holding a steady low simmer. Some days it is perfect, some days the bottom is welded on and the top is raw. A rice cooker removes the variable completely, then keeps the rice hot for three hours while the rest of dinner runs late. A basic 1 litre model cooks up to 450 g of rice, which is enough for four to five people.
Most kitchens in Europe still do not have one. If you eat rice weekly, this is the cheapest upgrade to your cooking you will ever make.
What tools do you find also useful but badly underrated in the kitchens, leave your experience in the comment.
Also check our seafood paella recipe and spaghetti carbonara recipe for your weekend menu. Happy cooking!
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