Essential vegan kitchen accessories
This page will list all the essential kitchen accessories to start cooking on your own (if you do not have them already), explaining what they are needed for.
DISCLAIMER: the links you will find below are affiliate links, and it helps the site to buy from them. That said, we do recommend what we consider best and what we would buy ourselves as well.
Necessary accessories
Stir-fry pan
Pans are necessary for all kinds of recipes, from steaming vegetables to sautéing things with a little bit of oil.
Considering the amount of vegetables in vegan cooking, having a good pan is one of the key things to making your life simpler.
It is recommended to have a non-stick pan, to preventing sticking and to have an easier time cleaning the pan afterwards - it is a quite big quality of life addition.
Here you can find a non-stick pan (ceramic coated):
Frying pan with lid, ceramic coated, non-stick (you can choose different sizes)
While here you can find a set of non-stick pots and pans, in case you want more cookware:
Sets of pots and pans, ceramic coated, non-stick: 8" frying pan, 11" frying pan, 3.75QT sauté pan with lid, nylon slotted turner, and nylon solid spoon (you can choose different sets)
Kitchen knife and cutting board
Vegan cooking requires a lot of cutting (mainly vegetables), and with a lot of cutting should come a good cutting board and a good kitchen knife.
These will be your 'bread and butter' to make anything at home that is whole-food and healthy, but good quality does not necessarily mean expensive.
Here you can find a cheap - but good quality - kitchen knife:
Here you can find a more expensive - but very good quality - kitchen knife:
7 inch, stainless steel, Japanese-style knife
Here you can find a bamboo cutting board (which is all you need for a surface on which to cut ingredients):
Bamboo cutting board (you can choose different sizes)
Blender/food processor
Another key thing in vegan cooking is a blender and/or food processor, to be able to make things from smoothies, to sweets and pies, to fake meat blends, to dips.
There are different ranges of prices for blenders that you can get, with high quality ones worth getting if you are going to use them often.
The ones we recommend are below.
Here you can find a hand blender - cheaper and does the job for certain things, but a full-on blender is needed for certain recipes:
Hand blender with whisk and frother
Here you can find a very good quality blender:
Ninja Professional Plus Blender with Auto-iQ, 1400 watts
Here you can find a full set of very good quality blenders, including a food processor, crushing pitcher, and smoothie blenders/cups:
Oven
Ovens are needed for everything baking related, from baking some lasagna, to baking pumpkins, to cooking some [fish and chips], to baking some cookies or even some savory pies.
Getting a good oven is as important as getting a good pan, as these two accessories (combined with the blender) are the ones you will use the most by far when it comes to whole-food vegan cooking.
Here you can find a cheap - but good quality - multipurpose oven:
CuisineArt's multipurpose oven
Silicon mat and oven mittens
To accompany the oven, you need a non-stick heat resistant silicon mat (to put on a tray in the oven, on which you can put any food) and a set of oven mittens (to safely grab things from inside the oven).
Here you can find an oven-safe silicon mat:
Non-stick, heat resistant silicone mat (you can choose different sizes and formats)
Here you can find a pair of oven mitts, including small oven mitts (to grab more delicate things) and a pair of pot holders:
Set of silicone oven mitts and pot holders
Good accessories to have
The accessories listed below will not be necessary, but having them would give you a considerable increase in quality of life, save you time, and/or simply make more things possible.
Spices/herbs/seeds containers
Containers for spices, herbs, and seeds are very convenient, keeping things in order and saving a lot of time when it comes to finding what you need - as opposed to simply leaving the powders in the store-bought bags.
Here you can find a set of containers with a convenient rack to put them on:
Set of 24 containers with rack and labels
Here you can find a set of containers without a rack, in case you already have a place where to put them:
Set of 24 containers with labels
Spatula (non-stick, heat resistant)
A spatula is very useful for different things in the kitchen: from flipping fries in the oven, to scooping up the leftover tomato sauce from the pot, to mixing the dough for a cake, a non-stick, bendable spatula does the job much better than a spoon or a fork.
Here you can find a set of 3 silicone spatulas:
Set of heat resistant, non-stick, silicone spatulas
Bread/dough machine (automatic)
A bread machine is a very good investment to make, when you take into consideration that flour costs much less per weight than bread, and that you can make bread with whatever ingredients you want - you can make some whole-wheat bread with whatever added mixed seeds and nuts you want, for example.
A bread machine also does not require you to manually do anything besides pouring in the ingredients and set what kind of bread you want. The machine mixes it by itself, then cooks it until completion. When it is complete, you simply open the lid and pull out the bread loaf.
You can also make raw doughs (for pizzas or sweets), without having to kneed, dirty your hands, or waste time.
All in all, it is a very useful appliance to have in the long run.
Here you can find a bread machine with different settings for different kinds of things, from different crusts of bread, to raw doughs, to fermentation, to simple bread.
Non-stick with ceramic coating, multipurpose bread machine
Pasta machine (automatic)
Following the bread machine, a pasta machine makes pasta by itself, mixing the dough and extruding the pasta in the chosen format.
You can use different flours (such as chickpea flour) to make the pasta, and add juices instead of water to make your pasta tastier and more nutritious (such as carrot, beet, or spinach juice). This is a useful appliance to have if you want to save money in the long run - flour is cheaper than pasta, especially when it comes to special flour vs special flour pasta (such as chickpea flour vs chickpea flour pasta, with the former being much cheaper) - and if you want to make your own type of pasta.
The process to make the pasta is not long, roughly 10 minutes, but the drawback is that the appliance parts need to be cleaned after. However, on top of saving money and being able to make the pasta that you want, it is also much better in texture than store-bought pasta. If you really love pasta but you are worried about the not-so-great nutrition of it, this can help you make pasta the main staple without drawbacks in nutrition, by being able to use chickpea, lentil, or pea flour (or other nutritious flours of your choice).
As this is getting more expensive than other appliances, it is only worth getting if you are planning to eat your own home-made pasta often. You can choose something cheaper than what recommended below, but quality usually goes down pretty fast with price when it comes to this.
Here is a good quality pasta machine:
Pasta machine with different pasta shape discs (you can choose more pasta shape discs selecting the option with more accessories)
