Gifts For the Busy Home Cook

Is there anything the Instant Pot can’t do? NO, because it truly does everything. Make soups, stews, main dishes, grains, and even desserts in a flash, you’re going to be amazed at how quickly you can make a meal.

An air fryer can save you so much time cooking healthy crispy food with little to no oil. It’s fantastic at roasting delicious veggies and main dishes, and you’ll love that it doesn’t heat up the entire kitchen.

Check out all my air fryer recipes for cooking inspiration.

This mixer will become a member of the family. Your life is incomplete without it. It can pretty much do everything from mixing up doughs, cookies, homemade ice cream, to making your own brown sugar to making your own healthy pizza dough for homemade frozen pizzas.

This is a tool that will get used almost daily in your kitchen. From making amazing homemade tomato soup to your own one-minute mayo to a quick on the go smoothie, immersion blenders are a workhorse.

So many recipes and meal prep days are made easier with the food processor. You can chop, dice, blend, or even grate with a trusty food processor in your kitchen.

A staple of any kitchen, cast iron is meant to work and it works hard! Amazing for any recipe that needs to go from stove to oven, searing, or baking, you’ll LOVE that you don’t have to wash your cast iron after each use.

You NEED an enameled cast iron in your kitchen. It’s wonderful for soups, casseroles, and even can produce lovely loaves of rustic no knead bread.

These reusable silicone containers are super easy to use and clean (they stay open in the dishwasher!) and are made in the USA.

There are so many uses for these versatile sheet pans! You can use them to roast veggies, create sheet pan meals, bake desserts, freeze your own produce, and even as a makeshift lid for pots on the stove.

I mainly use the slow cooker function on my Instant Pot, but if you’re not into pressure cooking, a stand-alone slow cooker can be a heavy lifter in your kitchen! Make dinners, breakfast, or soups/stews, the slow cooker can even help with meal prep by cooking up large batches of beans, or shredded meat.

A powerful blender isn’t just for smoothies (but does make an amazing smoothie)! You can whip up homemade sauces, or batters, and you’ve never made homemade hummus until you’ve made it in a Vitamix. And for tired and busy cooks, it also makes amazing blended iced coffee.

These lids are so useful in the kitchen for meal prep or covering fast meals. You can fit them over (almost) any sized bowl to stash in the fridge or freezer, or even take a dish to a potluck or dinner party. They are user-friendly and can help you cut down on your plastic wrap use.

Everyone needs Pyrex in their kitchen, and Pyrex with lids are game-changers! Amazing for meal prep, you can prepare and/or bake dishes ahead of time and keep them safely covered in the fridge. And they last FOREVER and are incredibly affordable.

The dream of every Type-A person is to have a well-organized spice cabinet. These little metal tins come with almost 100 various labels for all of your spice collection. They keep spices fresh and save you a ton of money by allowing you to refill them at the grocery store instead of purchasing new bottles of spices. This also helps you “green” your kitchen in a manageable way.

There won’t be a day that goes by without you using this handy mixing bowl/measuring cup. Perfect for measuring large quantities for ingredients, you can also mix doughs, batters, or sauces in this cup. It is fridge or freezer safe and it’s the perfect size without being too heavy.

Sure, it’s great for heating up toast and smaller quantities of food, but the convenience of roasting a small cast iron skillet of veggies can’t be underscored. A countertop convection oven is great for all kinds of cooking and it won’t heat up your kitchen during warmer weather.

Wonderful for anyone who loves to meal prep but wants to cut plastic out of their kitchen. Divided glass containers are incredible for storing separate components of dishes in one handy place.

Anyone who has read this blog for longer than 10 minutes, knows how much I hate clutter. This gets one more thing off of your counter, which means it allows you to meal prep without having to search for a particular knife.