You don’t need to have acres in the country to live like a homesteader and even if you have a small urban homestead, as the season progresses you will be in the kitchen quite a bit so make sure you get the right homestead kitchen supplies before the harvest season arrives!
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Homestead Kitchen Supplies
How you set up your kitchen is really a personal preference but there are a few things we really couldn’t be without especially as harvest season approaches! A well-equipped homestead kitchen will help you cook nutritious meals from scratch from your garden and preserve the surplus to enjoy throughout the year.
Decent Knives
A good set of knives will make chopping all those fruits and veggies for canning a breeze. A chef’s knife and a paring knife that you can sharpen will see you through the bulk of your kitchen activities. A good boning knife is essential if you are raising meat on your homestead or are a meat-eater!
Photo by Caroline Attwood on Unsplash
Get yourself a wooden chopping board to keep your knives working well and avoid bits of plastic in your food and honing steel or sharpening stones to keep your knives sharp.
Good Quality Cookware
A good quality pan is a key to almost all of our cooking and most homesteaders agree that cast iron and enamel is THE essential homestead kitchen tool! I’m kinda obsessed with cast iron and enamelware right now and totally in love with this Dutch oven for soups, stews, biscuits and gravy, tender pot roasts, and everything in between!
Photo by Rayia Soderberg on Unsplash
Cast iron cooking is enjoyed by many homesteaders and has the benefit of suiting the kitchen and cooking over an open fire. Cast iron holds up to a lot of abuse, heats food more evenly, and holds the heat. You can use them on a stovetop and in the oven making them super versatile. Oh and the best thing about cast iron? The more you use them, the better they get!
Stainless Steel Utensils
Cooking utensils like a spoon, slotted turner, and a spouted ladle all pull double duty in the kitchen for meal prep, canning, home brewing, and rendering beeswax at honey harvesting.
Photo by henry perks on Unsplash
Stainless steel won’t ruin your cast iron or melt and set on fire like plastic cooking utensils (don’t ask me how I know this). Stainless steel is also easy to sanitize which is especially important for brewing or fermenting to avoid the risk of contaminating the batch you are making.
Stockpot
Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash
My stockpot holds 10 quarts. This size is definitely ideal for my family of 3 adults. I use the stockpot to make bone broths, stocks, sauces, and soups for canning and I fill the pot with water when blanching and preserving fresh greens, turnips, rutabagas, broccoli, cauliflower, corn, green beans, and even potatoes out the garden.
Food Mill
This goes side by side with the stockpot when I’m making tomato sauce. Food mills work by forcing the food through holes in the screen you select and reduces the skins they end up in your cause if you just don’t have time to skin all the tomatoes you are canning. I hear you!
Look for stainless steel and dishwasher-safe food mill models that will save you time when it comes to cleaning up; you’ve spent long enough cooking, canning, and preserving my friend!
Canner
A pantry filled with homegrown preserves and bottles of fruit and veggies is a homesteader’s badge of honor.
Pressure canning isn’t as scary as it used to be and is how you preserve broth, soup, meat, and low acid veggies. like beans or potatoes. I use a 21.5 QT All American Pressure Canner to make the most efficient use of fuel for a canning batch. Most beginner homesteaders start with a water bath canner to get started making jams and jellies.
Meat Grinder
A good meat grinder is essential if you want to make your own sausages or ground meat for burgers, meatloaf, spaghetti bolognese with your own tomato sauce.
Look for a model with metal parts that can be cleaned and sanitized easily and hold up better to a lot of use than the cheaper plastic parts. We use the LEM Products 1158 Mighty Bite electric meat grinder for making everything from sausages and burger patties to meatloaf.
Stand Mixer
Making fresh bread, biscuits, cakes, and cookies are always fun activities. Making your own from scratch is even better! You’re already busy on your homestead so save time and use an electric stand mixer. My KitchenAid stand mixer is still going strong after almost 10 years and is used frequently.
Your stand mixer can also make homemade whipped cream or butter to top homemade scones, cakes, and more.
Crock-Pot Slow Cooker
Busy weeknight dinners, soups, stews, pot roasts, breakfast casseroles, even hot chocolate and so much more are sorted with a Crock-Pot Slow Cooker!
Photo by Andrik Langfield on Unsplash
Perfect for batch cooking or set it and forget it dinners made easy whilst you are out at work. Our Crock-Pot Slow Cooker gets used year-round but fall and winter are perfect for comforting meals made from scratch without all the pots and pans that need cleaning afterward!
Fermenting Tools
Part of the fun of homesteading is to preserve your own produce and experiment with those recipes. I LOVE sauerkraut and I have a traditional fermenting crock and the Easy Fermenter. I love the Easy Fermenter which fits on any wide-mouth mason jar. The one-way valve makes fermenting a breeze and you can keep track of the number of days fermenting right on the lid!
Instant Pot
Photo by Katherine Chase on Unsplash
Another busy homesteader’s time-saving hack! The Instant Pot is mostly used on our homestead to cook dried beans without soaking. Such a huge time saver! It also churns out perfect rice and hardboiled eggs!
Dehydrator
We use an inexpensive electric round dehydrator to make dried apple and pear slices. Psst toss the slices of apple in a little brown sugar and apple pie spices first – they are soooo good! Dehydrators are great for making these shelf-stable snacks as well as fruit leather, dried herbs, even jerky or dog treats!
What are your favorite homestead kitchen tools?
Let me know in the comments or over in the Facebook Group!
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