Love Cooking? Upgrade Your Kitchen with These Tips

By  //  February 28, 2021

You can accomplish some pretty great cooking out of a compact kitchen with little equipment, and plenty of talented home chefs do exactly that. At the same time, if cooking is one of your passions, why not treat yourself to a kitchen that helps you do what you love?

Depending on what stage you’re in, you may be researching outdoor kitchen appliance options to incorporate into your design.

Below are some of the things to think about if you’re considering a kitchen upgrade.

Your Budget

Whether you have $500 or $5000 to spend, there’s a lot you can do to improve your kitchen environment. Knowing what you can spend can help you narrow down your choices, prioritize and look for alternatives to higher-ticket items.

If you’re struggling to find room in your regular budget for the spare cash, you may want to take out a personal loan. You can borrow for a set amount of time from a private lender and repay at terms that suit you. A personal loan is usually a better option than putting things on your credit card since the interest rate on a credit card is generally much higher.

Your Stove

You can spend anything from a few hundred to a few thousand on a new stove, but this may be the first place you want to look if you are serious about upgrading your kitchen. On the one hand, if you are used to the quirks of what you already own, know the warm and cold spots in your oven and are happy with your existing unit’s overall performance, you may want to wait to replace this.

On the other hand, going from electric to gas or from an oven with an unpredictable temperature to a more precise one can make a huge difference. If there is an aspect of cooking that you particularly enjoy, such as baking, you can purchase a unit that optimizes this.

Prioritizing Equipment

Once you start to look at all the different types of equipment you could buy, you may find yourself becoming overwhelmed. It is absolutely worthwhile for every passionate home cook to invest in a great pair of knives and high-quality cookware.

Good quality pots and pans retain and distribute heat better and can make a real difference in what comes out of your kitchen. Beyond this, you should think about your specific interests and what type of cooking you most like to do. If you’re on a budget, be careful about getting too caught up in trends.

Maybe you’ll love that sous vide cooker, but a lot of kitchens have dusty, unused pasta makers, juicers and bread machines shoved into one corner. That’s not the say that these specific items are bad choices, but be sure that if you buy them, you’re going to use them.

If pizza is your passion, then a pizza stone is certainly worthwhile, but not all bread bakers prefer to use a machine instead of doing the work by hand. In some cases, getting the best equipment does not always mean getting the most expensive. For example, a good cast-iron skillet is an inexpensive but hugely versatile and useful addition to almost any kitchen.