Five kitchen gadgets worth the money

Cooking is my family's favourite pastime. So while we don’t spend tons of money on cars or fancy furniture, we do splurge on great kitchen gadgets that make cooking easier and more fun. In our kitchen, we have five slightly more expensive items we could not do without. I sing their praises below:

1. A cordless wine opener
Don’t let a badly designed wine opener stand between you and your glass of red! We’ve had just about every kind of corkscrew out there and our Waring Pro cordless wine opener is the best by a mile – just position it over the cork and push the button. Pop, you’re done. We bought ours for around $40 at Target in the U.S. but you can find them online too.

2. A Keurig coffee maker
Our kids wake up ready for action at around 5:30 am – which is why our Keurig has made life so much easier. Pop in a little cup that's been pre-filled with coffee (called a K-Cup) and you’ve got a freshly brewed cup of java ready to go. We splurged on a top of the line machine but you can buy them for around $100.

3. Great pans
We have a few really good pans, including two skillets we wouldn’t cook without: an All-Clad and a 12-inch Cuisinart Green Gourmet pan, which I think I love even more than the All-Clad because it’s ceramic and gives great even heat distribution.

4. A Henckel chef knife
There’s only one thing worse than trying to cook with bad pots and pans, and that’s trying to chop with bad knives. A flimsy knife can seriously mess up a recipe, especially if it requires a fine chop or thin slice. Which is why we love our two Henckel chef's knives – a good one can cost you upwards of $100 but I guarantee it’s worth it if you’re able to make the investment. We’ve had ours for many years and we use them all the time.

5. Le Creuset French Oven pot
We use our Le Creuset pot for everything from stews and soups to basic rice dishes. We’ve had it for so long that there are recipes I wouldn’t try cooking without it. It doesn’t have to be Le Creuset but you should invest in a great pot that goes from stovetop to oven to fridge.