5 Cool Cooking Gadgets You Didn’t Know You Needed

This post may contain affiliate links. Purchasing through them helps support this website.

As a stay-at-home-mom of two young kids, I spend a TON of time in the kitchen. Most days, we eat three meals a day at home. (And 185,672 snacks for the kids.) So there’s tons of meal prep, cooking, and cleaning going on in our kitchen. Over the years, I’ve stumbled onto a few neat kitchen tools that really make my life easier. And when the ravenous beasts…er…kids come into the kitchen demanding food – I want to make sure I can whip up something to appease them easily and quickly! Here are 5 cool cooking gadgets you didn’t know you needed.

1. Pasta Measure

I have a confession. I’m having an affair. A love affair with pasta.

I seriously can’t control myself when it comes to those yummy carb-filled noodles. My kids can also put away some spaghetti. That’s why I invested in one of these super cool pasta measuring tools. I can quickly portion out normal-sized helpings of spaghetti noodles for me and my family. Of course, sometimes I throw caution to the wind and make a whole box, convincing myself that we’ll have leftovers for the next day. Spoiler alert – we never do. So if you’re anything like me and love pasta, this is a great tool to have in your kitchen.

Also – how cute is this “I could eat a horse” one?! This would make a cute gift for a pasta-loving friend!

2. Citrus Press Juicer

I know, I know – you can just squeeze lemons by hand. But this thing really makes it so much easier to get ALL the juice out of a lemon or lime. It also saves your skin. (Because it HURTS when  lemon juice drips onto hands that are raw from cooking and cleaning up after kids all day!) My husband is a wanna-be bartender and is always using the Citrus Press to whip up some tasty cocktails for us at the end of the night. So we use this thing a ton in our house!

3. Salad Spinner

Bagged salad sucks. It usually has a weird taste and only lasts for like a day before it starts to turn brown and gross. So we try to buy lettuce from the produce section for our salads. Our salad spinner makes it so much easier to wash and dry all of that fresh lettuce. This one is neat because you can fill it up with water and strain it without taking off the lid. (Also – funny story – my son thinks the salad spinner is super cool. If he sees it in the cabinet, he’ll usually steal it to play with it. Once, when he was 3, he pitched a tantrum when I told him he couldn’t take it to school. I ended up giving in – it wasn’t a battle I was willing to fight that early in the morning. So my 3-year-old took a salad spinner to preschool. He got some funny looks from teachers and parents when he strutted into the building, holding his prized salad spinner.)

4.  KitchenAid Stand Mixer

Graham has his salad spinner, and I have my mixer. My Kitchen Aid Mixer is probably my most prized kitchen appliance. I love it so much! A few of my mom’s friends went in together and bought it for me for one of my wedding showers. Mine is pink – my favorite color – and it just makes me happy when I see it on my counter. I actually don’t do a ton of baking, but when I do – it makes it 100 times easier and faster!

We also have the pasta attachment and love to have at-home date-nights where we put the kiddos to bed early and make fresh pasta together. (I’m telling you – we REALLY love pasta. Lo amo mangiare la pasta!)

5. Rapid Egg Cooker

The Rapid Egg Cooker is the gadget that inspired this post. I actually ended up with this thing at a dirty Santa/white elephant gift exchange last Christmas. I won’t lie – I totally dismissed it as a joke and made fun of it during the dirty Santa game. But I gotta tell ya, it’s actually really neat! I never perfected soft and medium boiled eggs and the few times I tried to make poached eggs, they always ended up a soggy mess. The Rapid Egg Cooker makes perfect eggs every single time. My favorite part is that I can set it up in the morning and leave it while I’m running around the house trying to get the kids (and myself) ready for the day. There’s a timer that goes off when the eggs are ready, and I can hear it even when I’m back in my bedroom putting on makeup and styling my hair. (Yeah right. You know all I’m doing is running a toothbrush over my teeth and spraying my hair down with dry shampoo. #keepingitreal) Seriously though – this thing is great! Anyone that likes eggs should invest in one of these babies. 

Also – I wasn’t aware that there is a deluxe model until just now. My kids are getting older and eating more…we might need to upgrade…

What are your favorite kitchens gadgets that you can’t live without?