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Essential Kitchen Tools for Meal Prep

These essential kitchen tools for meal prep will make your life so much easier and cooking more fun. Expand the recipes that you can cook and the meals you can prepare with our favorite kitchen tools. These are our favorite tools for the value that you get for your money. You don’t have to spend a fortune to get good tools. This post contains affiliate links.

Chef’s Knife

A good knife is the most essential kitchen tool you can have and if you can only spend money on one kitchen item, make it here. A good knife can maintain an edge better and a sharp knife cuts smoothly. This means you can predictably control your cuts rather than hacking at your food. Precise cuts improve efficiency and lower fatigue making meal prep more of a breeze.

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Top Kitchen Knives on Amazon

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Mercer Culinary 8-Inch

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WÜSTHOF Classic 8″

Cutting Board

If you have a good kitchen knife, then you need a good cutting board as well. You don’t have to go crazy expensive to get a good cutting board but get a decent one that fits your kitchen size and meal prep size. 

What does it mean to fit your kitchen size and meal prep size? Bigger is often considered better but if it can’t fit on your counter, it’s too heavy for you to move around the kitchen, or too big to fit in your sink then you are less likely to use it. Alternatively, if it’s too small and you find yourself constantly running out of space when chopping vegetables or proteins, you’ll get annoyed as well. There are a lot of options but these types should help you decide.

Wood: Wood cutting boards are popular because they are gentle on knives and have a natural self-healing surface that minimizes knife marks. High-quality wooden boards can also inhibit bacterial growth because wood absorbs moisture, which dries out bacteria. 

Plastic: Plastic boards, usually made from polyethylene, are affordable, lightweight, and dishwasher-safe, making them easy to sanitize. 

Bamboo: Bamboo is a sustainable and eco-friendly material that’s harder than most woods. It’s more resistant to moisture than wood and requires less maintenance, but it can be slightly tougher on knives due to its hardness.

Composite: Composite boards, made from compressed wood fibers, offer a balance between wood and plastic. They are durable, knife-friendly, and often dishwasher-safe. 

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Farberware Large Cutting Board

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Bamboo Cutting Board

Food Processor

A food processor can speed up a wide variety of tasks around the kitchen. Chopping, slicing, shredding, and pureeing are all done with ease with one machine. If you’re prepping large amounts of food then this is an essential kitchen tool for meal prep. 

  • Chopping vegetables, herbs, or nuts
  • Shredding cheese, cabbage, or carrots
  • Slicing vegetables like cucumbers, potatoes, or zucchini
  • Pureeing ingredients for soups, sauces, or baby food
  • Mixing and kneading dough for breads, pizzas, or pastries Its versatility makes it a go-to tool for many meal prep tasks, reducing the need for multiple kitchen gadgets.

Preparing homemade sauces, dips, and dressings is effortless with a food processor. From smooth hummus to chunky salsa, the machine can blend or chop ingredients into the perfect consistency in seconds, allowing you to create flavorful additions to your meals without extra effort.

Some foods take a lot of effort to prepare by hand, like pie dough, nut butters, or certain types of pastry. A food processor can mix dough or grind nuts in seconds, eliminating the need for multiple steps and making the process much simpler.

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Hamilton Beach Food ProcessorSubtitle for This Block

Mandoline Slicer

A mandolin slicer is a board with a fixed blade in it that allows for the user to move the food over the board making quick and consistent cuts. This is one of the best kitchen tools for meal prep. It speeds up cuts and makes it much more efficient. As long as you’re careful when you use it as the blade is sharp and users tend to go faster and faster. Keep your fingers out of the way though and you’ll find this to be one of the most fun tools to use as well.

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Best Selling Mandolins on Amazon

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Gramercy Adjustable Mandoline

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Benriner Japanese Vegetable Slice

Storage Containers

We’ve already written a couple of articles on our favorite meal prep storage containers. There are a lot of great options out there but if you’re interested in some of the best containers across a range of price points check out our articles here:

Best Meal Prep Containers – Gift Edition

This is a perfect time to update, upgrade, or replace your meal prep containers with more of the Best Meal Prep Containers – Gift Edition. Whether you’re treating yourself or the meal prepper in your life, this list will provide you plenty of options from cheap to expensive, full meal to portions, and silicone to…

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Best Meal Prepping Containers

Containers are one of the most important parts of meal prepping. They are what allow for food to be portioned out, stored and reheated later. There are a ton of options out there for storing food and everyone can have different needs so we put together a short list of some of the best meal…

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Blender (or Immersion Blender)

Blenders and immersion blenders open up a whole new set of opportunities. From soups to smoothies and dips to nut butters. Smoothies are a great option for quick meals that can be chocked full of nutrients. Using an immersion blender to process fresh ingredients for your soup can elevate the flavors way beyond a basic soup. Making your own dips or butters seems like a little much but it’s actually really easy and fresh dips are delicious.

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Best Selling Immersion Blenders on Amazon

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KitchenAid Hand Blender

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Best Selling Blenders on Amazon

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BLACK+DECKER Blender

Measuring Cups or Spoons

These might be some of the most essential kitchen tools. Measuring cups and spoons are necessary in most recipes and guessing at amounts is really tough. A good set of measuring spoons don’t need to be expensive and can last you a lifetime. One good measuring cup can carry you. You don’t necessarily need a whole set unless you don’t want to have to rinse it when you need it multiple times on a recipe.

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measuring cup

Pyrex 4-Cup Glass Measuring Cup

measuring spoons

Farberware Plastic Measuring Cups

Instant Pot or Slow Cooker

For bulk meal prep or soups, these are essential kitchen tools. Instant pots and slow cookers can cook a lot of food, require little effort, and blend flavors amazingly. They also don’t require much experience to use. Anyone can pour all of the ingredients into a pot, put the lid on and check back a few hours later for a meal. Consider marinated chicken or pork, tortilla soup and chilis. This is one of our favorite kitchen tools and the one we use the most after a knife and cutting board.

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instant pot

Instant Pot Rio

crock pot

Crock-Pot 7 Quart

Sheet Pans

Sheet pans are a hard tool to do without. When you need a sheet pan, not much else will do. From baking to roasting, sheet pans get incorporated into a lot of meal prep recipes. Sheet pan meals are a great way to make an entire meal prep in one go. Good sheet pans don’t have to cost a lot and if you take care of them, can last a while. And who doesn’t like cookies?

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sheet pan

Goodcook Baking Sheet

Kitchen Scale

This final tool may be a little less essential than the rest of the tools unless you’re meal prepping to lose weight or build muscle. A food scale is necessary for precisely portioning out food and making sure you get the nutrients that you need each day within your calorie goal. Don’t need to go expensive on this tool either. Around $10 can get you a decent food scale.

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Best Selling Food Scles on Amazon

food scale with fruit on it

Etekcity Food Kitchen Scale

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