My Top 5 Kitchen Items For Surviving Life With Flair! {My desert island picks}

To wrap up 2013 and herald in the New Year, I am doing a Top 5 series. I will be working my way through the top Ask Sarah Posts, Beauty/Makeup, Fashion, Kitchen Tools & Recipes. If you find something on one of my lists you must have, there are still sales in the shops. I will try to provide a splurge and steal variation for each item on the list.

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Remember that game where you sit with friends and talk about your desert island book/album/outfit? All that agonising over having only once choice forever. If my plane crashed on a desert island, I guess could live without everything! But the things on this list are the things that if an alien ship beamed up all my stuff, I would be at the shops buying again the very next day! We are all about Surviving Life With Flair here and these are my kitchen essentials……..

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I stood by my old knife when we got our first Global knife…..until I used it. A good quality knife, well taken care of, will last (almost) forever and is so worth the money. It’s quicker, easier and you’re less likely to hurt yourself. If you have a small budget start with a Staysharp and save for the knife of your dreams! For the splurge, you know I love Global.

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I love a really big, wooden chopping board. It gives me plenty of space to work and makes prepping a meal much easier. I like a board big enough for me to leave the things I’ve already chopped at the edges and still keep going. Or make a sandwich without running out of room. Plus you can serve all sorts of things on it an a nice one makes a lovely bench accessory. I have a plastic board for meat and poultry and a wooden Wiltshire one for everything else.

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This kind of pan is great for risotto or pasta sauces where you add the pasta to the sauce. It’s great for shallow frying and can stand in for a wok. I have a great pan I got free from the supermarket by saving those stamps. It’s ancient now but it’s Mr Asks pan of choice. I prefer to use the Le Crueset pan I used in this post. Whatever you choose make sure it has a heavy base and heats evenly.

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I was given my first Le Creuset pot for my 21st birthday and I never looked back! It’s almost impossible to burn things, it cleans well, heats evenly and goes from stove to oven to tabletop to fridge. I’ve given mine a beating over the years and it’s still in great shape as you can see here. You will fall in love with this pot! Absolutely save for one but if you pick up a cheap knock off while you wait (Kmart etc do them) please know they are a different beast. Mummy Ask has a knock off and it’s a good pot but it has nothing on the real thing.

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By tooled up, I mean one with a blender and slicing/grating/julienne blades plus dough blades and whipping/whisking. Not only does it save prep & cook time (grate onions & veg, cook in stock, blend and voila – you have soup in a flash) but dough blades take the work out of breads and cakes without buying a stand mixer too. Be sure to get a big bowl and make sure it’s going to work well for your purposes. I always google review before buying that sort of stuff. Mine is a Kenwood Multi Pro Excel and was quite pricey but it has fancy features like in built scales that are not necessary. Most modern food processors are fine but do your research. You don’t want to buy it with dough making in mind, only to find that’s a feature it does poorly.

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I’m a big believer in more is more because you can’t have too much of a good thing but if I was down to the wire I’d choose these five things. As I mentioned, this is part of Top 5 series. I will be working my way through the top Ask Sarah Posts, Beauty/Makeup, Fashion, Kitchen Tools & Recipes, so stay tuned. I hope you enjoyed this post, I’d love to hear your top 5, so post them in comments or on Facebook xxxx