Joseph Joseph (affordable quality cooking utensils)

The difference of a few pounds between spending hours grating and peeling (and cursing) and easily peeling potatoes and grating vegan cheese is immense):

Joseph Joseph makes wonderful items (along with amazing knife sets). They cost a few pounds more, but will last you years, save you money (as you’ll be inspired to cook with fresh seasonal ingredients), and most also store easily away.

Potato mashers are comfortable to hold with a unique D-shape design and a non-slip grip. They feature quirky designs like pan-scraping edges and curved mashing plates, that fit into the edges of pans.

Peelers don’t just peel vegetables, but have special features to julienne carrots for salad. And even have little gadgets included, to remove potato eyes. The main version has a guard, to safely store in the cutlery drawer, protecting the blade.

Graters & Zesters are also comfortable to hold. You can use them to grate vegan cheese, or zest lemons and limes. They have an ergonomic design, making grating a bunch of carrots so much easier. Keep citrus fruits away from pets.

Collapsible can openers don’t just open cans. These can also open bottles and pull up on ring-pull cans too. One folds away, so it’s easy to stash away in a kitchen drawer.

Measuring Cups & Spoons nest into each other, to easily store away. They feature both metric and imperial measurements, sold in a range of colours to match your kitchen decor.

These stainless steel bowls nest inside each other, perfect for space-saving kitchens.

It’s UK law that whoever sells you an electrical appliance, has to take the old one back for recycling. A good excuse to treat yourself to a quality stick-blender for smoothies and sauces (to replace big clunky blenders). And a quality air-fryer (to replace chip-fat fryers, the biggest cause of kitchen fires).

Before cooking, read up on food safety for people and pets (many foods are unsafe near animal friends). Just bin allium scraps (onion, garlic, leeks, shallots, chives) as like tomato/citrus/rhubarb scraps, acids could harm compost creatures. 

For tinned ingredients, pop lids inside cans (or pop ring-pulls back over holes) to avoid wildlife getting trapped). Also read our post on nontoxic cookware.