What does your kitchen look like?

[neilarey]

After my initial post on ovens, I got curious what everyone kitchen situation is.


How big is your kitchen? What does it look like?
What kitchen gadgets do you have and use? What kind of pots and pans? Knives?

My own kitchen is tiny, I barely have any storage space but I do have a descent pantry. Because space is an issue, I am very particular about the gadgets and cooking utensils I use. Everything is freakishly streamlined

 

[Henryk]

This is not our actual kitchen but a photo from our apartment website, it is the same kitchen layout, same cabinets and appliances. We have a microwave right in the corner there. We never use the dishwasher except for storing plastic food containers. The floor is tile.

 

[PetiteSheWolf]

My kitchen is recent, thanks to having redone it when I moved in soon 2 years ago. It is mostly a very long counter, half-opened on my living room, so not very big but very well organised. Everything has been chosen so that the main appliances are a tad lower than usual, more comfortable for petite me. My main appliances are a good-sized fridge with a sizable freezer space , a regular oven with induction (?) hobs as mentioned in the oven discussion, dishwasher, microwave, a mixer / chopper, and by far my favorite appliance : my multi-use cooker (steam cooker / slow-cooker / pressure-cooker) . And the every trusty electric kettle.
Ah, and a nice set of swedish knives A must if you got enough veggies to chop or meat to prepare, LOL!

 

[Laura Rainbow Dragon]

My kitchen is huge and messy, with not enough work space and not enough storage space.





It is the second largest room in our house. (It would be the largest, but the living room and dining room are combined into one "great room".

We have far, far too much kitchen stuff! Part of the problem is that this is now two kitchens combined. Because I used to have my own house, with a full and well-stocked kitchen. Hosting dinner parties was my primary social activity prior to moving out to the Booming Metropolis. When I sold my house and moved in with my parents, I did not want to get rid of any of my kitchen things, since I used all of them extensively.

My mother, on the other hand, is not a cook. She never hosts dinner parties and mostly eats ready-made dinners from the grocery store and takeout. She is, however, a shopper. Oh my but does that woman love to shop! If there is a kitchen gadget anywhere that she has seen, she has probably bought it. And never used it.



The price stickers on the above items are all from stores I know my mother has not shopped in in over 20 years. And she has never even taken these items out of their boxes!

Then there's this:



Also more than 20 years old. Also has never been removed from its box. Because it is an onion chopper. And my mother does not eat onions.*

*She does, in fact, eat onions. She just does not know that she eats onions. She refuses to eat my cooking because she knows I put onions in it. But she doesn't read the ingredients lists on the ready-made meals and sauces she buys, almost all of which have onions in them. In any case, she doesn't ever cook with onions herself and consequently has no need of an "onion chopper". But she owns one.

An entire double cupboard in our storage-space-challenged kitchen is filled floor-to-ceiling and wall-to-wall with these types of owned and never used gadgets. (And my mother has even more stored in her own bedroom and the supposed-"guest room" (which is really a junk storage room).

I also discovered this in the never-used gadgets cupboard:



It is a giant roll of plastic wrap which, as you can see, is taller than my knee height.

My father used to work for a company that makes flexible packaging. Sometimes he would bring home reject products for us to use. We never purchased sandwich bags for school lunches when I was a kid, because we always had free bags from my father's work. We for the most part did not purchase garbage bags or cling wrap for the same reason. But my father had to stop working due to his MS more than twenty years ago. And this roll of plastic wrap is even older than that. I'm fairly certain it's the same roll I was using to wrap my sandwiches in when I was in high school. But we have been buying cling wrap from the grocery store regularly since moving out to the Booming Metropolis, because my mother had hidden this massive roll of wrap away, and I did not know we still had it!

Note the well-stocked spice rack (to the left of the refrigerator in the top photo above). These are all spices that my mother purchased, in many case more than 40 years ago. She has not used them because of the whole rarely cooking thing. I, on the other hand, cook in large quantities. And I spice my food heavily. My spices live in the cupboard above the dishwasher (alongside even more of my mother's glass jars of spices), because I buy them in bulk whenever possible, and they mostly go directly from the bags I buy them in into my cooking pots. (It would be ridiculously expensive for me to buy spices in frou-frou little glass jars like my mother does.)

And so it goes.

I hugely miss having my own kitchen. It is challenging to be a heavy kitchen-user and have to share the space with someone who is one's polar opposite in kitchen habits.

 

[PetiteSheWolf]

Love the high plastic wrap roll We had one almost exactly like that, and very very thick. In the early 80es, my dad worked on plants doing such plastic wraps - I think it was around Baton Rouge but I may be mistaking with other things he did, and when the plant was up and running, that was one of his "presents". I think we, family of 5 at the time, used this and only this as plastic wrap for around 15 to 20 years, LOL. Brand was Borden, and on it was written, "If it's Borden it's got to be good". So I guess that's one of the first phrases I learned in English, with "once upon a time there were four little rabbits - Flopsy, Mopsy, Cotton Tail, and Peter."

 

[AquaMarie]

My kitchen is a tiny, galley-style, apartment kitchen, and very narrow - I can't open my dishwasher and my refrigerator at the same time. It's got a decent amount of cabinet space, though some are very weird sizes, but not nearly enough countertop and a truly pitiful pantry. I have to use one cabinet and part of my hall closet to hold my spices and boxed stuff! I also bought a three-shelf cart to make a 'tea station' (a.k.a the elixir annex ) that sits just outside the kitchen entry. It holds my teas, pitchers, mugs, and electric kettle, and I use the bottom as extra storage for dishes.

My pots, pans, cookie sheets, and knives are all cheap, big-box store finds and all about 15 years old (well, the knives are about 5 years old). I'm considering replacing the pots this year especially. I have an air fryer, a crock pot, an instant pot, a rice cooker, and a stick blender that I use pretty regularly. I do love to cook, even in my teeny, tiny kitchen.

Oh, and I have LOTS of mini-waffle makers. Way too many mini-waffle makers . I like waffles! And you can freeze them! And the waffle-ers all make different cute shapes! I just can't resist!

 

[Saffity]

I have a tiny one man kitchen, though it technically has a spot for a small table it really doesn’t fit more space than for the kiddos.

We got the extra pantry because there aren’t enough cupboards, and the cart on the left in the third picture is the “gluten area”. Due to my Celiac Disease we try to keep the kitchen as gluten free as possible but gluten foods are just more affordable. So the kids and hubby have a little corner with toaster and prep space for them.

I have so little counter space and most of it is taken up by gadgets. I love gadgets, in these pictures you can see: a rice cooker, a crockpot, a coffee maker, 2 toasters, a Nespresso machine and milk frother, and in a box is my mix master. That doesn’t count the many others hidden away in cupboards.

I have so little space to keep them!! We’re considering putting some cupboards up above where the kid’s table currently is for additional storage.

We just upgraded our big appliances a couple years ago and splurged on an induction stove, so I’m having fun learning the ins and outs on how to cook and bake with that. My other splurge was my Lagostina cookware and my cast iron pans.

My knife situation could be better, I have a random knife block that I got years ago and they are so full that I find myself grabbing steak knives to cut some things. I will have to remember to add good knives to my wish list next year.

 

[VLogan]

I haven't been on the Hive in months and just popped on to this thread. LOVE IT! Kitchen space has always been an issue for me. It seemed like the kitchens I've had have either been tiny, or plenty of floor space but no real usable space....until last year and my phenomenal husband. He wanted a car port but he'd already told me we would redo the kitchen. Looking at costs, they would be about the same. Be the loving wife that I am, I told him if he would replace the one cabinet that I absolutely hated, which was a microwave stand, then I'd put off the rest of the kitchen. A friend had given me a KitchenAid mixer and I needed a place to put it rather than storing it on the floor. He did it. Realized he could do it and not hire any one bc he does have the skills. He then proceeded to redo my entire kitchen, which ended up better than hiring someone else bc he knows HOW I use my kitchen. It is amazing and so much more functional. I don't have a large pantry. I can put what I need for the week in the kitchen but anything that is extra we have storage downstairs. Same for the refrigerator. It is the smallest kitchen fridge that is sold bc it's the only thing that will fit in the space available. That is something we couldn't change. The one thing he did change which was a bit of a challenge was where the oven was located. I will find pics of before and after. The previous oven location was a head shaker for everyone that ever saw it. So very happy with my kitchen now!

 

[Syrius]

My kitchen is small. I don't have enough space to store everything and I have resorted to storing items (like my crockpot) in the server. My pantry is tiny. Thankfully, it holds what the two of us need, but I can't imagine how they intended it to fit a whole family's needs. There is some additional storage shelves in the laundry room (through the door), but that is where we keep the litterbox, so we just use it for the plastic bags and can recyclables that M wants to crush.

 

['rin]

I have a gallery kitchen, which I have made more narrow by putting shelves along the back wall. You literally cannot squeeze past another person in it. My cat cannot eat while my hubby is washing dishes. (My dishwasher is broken, and is storage.) My pots and utensils are hanging from pegboards on the walls, w knives on a magnetic rack.

I have a few very nice chef knives that I need to sharpen more often. (I took advantage of employee discount when working in dept stores, so I have nice brands here.)

Pan wise I am well sorted, including a midsized cast iron skillet; 2 Dutch ovens;a pasta/soup pot; Sautee pan; and several small frying pans.

Gadgets: gas stove; oven that I mostly guess at temperature of bc I washed numbers off of dial; microwave; InstaPot; toaster (not toaster oven, 2 slice model). Also, a waffle maker.