Useful Kitchen Tools

• Good Knife: One good knife is equal to 100 not great knives. A dull knife can be very dangerous, so make sure to keep your knives sharp.  Aside from sharpening your knives when appropriate, make sure to only hand wash your knives.  A dishwasher can ruin knives. 
  
  
• Flexible Cutting Boards: These tend to come in multi packs in bright colors. These are helpful when cutting lots of items, like for a salad.  You can pick up and scoop everything into a bowl in one shot.
  
  
• Stiff Cutting Boards: Solid cutting boards are important for cutting meat/fish, and other items that can be slippery.  Wood cutting boards are beautiful but can be expensive and hard to maintain.  
   
• Kitchen Shears: There are many circumstances where shears can make cutting large items so much easier.  You can break down an entire chicken quickly with a good pair of sheers. These are very sharp, kitchen specific scissors. 
  
  
• 4-sided grater: A four-sided grater can help you in all sorts of recipes. One side can help you grate vegetables for zucchini pancakes.  One side can create thin slices of food like potatoes, radishes, and eggplants. The third side can finely grate items like hard cheeses (parmesan) or zesting citrus foods. The fourth side is right between those two sizes and is useful to shred cheese into fine strips or help mince garlic and ginger.
  
  
• Cast Iron Skillet: The best feature of a cast iron skillet is that it heats evenly. These pans can also heat to a high temperature which is useful for frying and baking. Cast iron pans make amazingly charred vegetables.
  
  
• Non-Stick Frying Pan: A nonstick pan makes cooking gentle items so much easier. Eggs can be quite sticky in a regular pan but will slide right off a non-stick pan.
  
  
• Dutch Oven: Dutch Ovens tend to also be cast iron which allows for even cooking. They are also large and come with lids. So, you can make a MEAN pot roast in a Dutch Oven.
  
  
• Aluminum Sheet Pan (Cookie Sheet): Traditionally called a cookie sheet, a sheet pan is usually used for cookies. They are actually better used in roasting vegetables. There are also tons of sheet pan recipes out there now – which is the new one pot meal.
  
  
• Mixing Bowls with Lids: There are a plethora of mixing bowls out there. But there isn’t anything that beats mixing bowls that nest inside each other and have lids. You can make a salad and stick it straight in the fridge. Saves on dishes!
  
  
• Blender: Aside from a smoothie, blenders can be useful in so many other ways. You can make dressings/marinades, make smooth soups, chop nuts, crush ice... 

Bonus: 

Herb Scissors: These strange looking scissors help cut almost all herbs and small, soft ingredients like green onions.  Soft herbs can bruise when you try to roll and cut them with a knife. Herb scissors protect items from being bruised, at the same time cut them so much faster.