Some say the kitchen is the heart of the home. I say it’s the first place you can serve your family in multiple ways. Provide comforting meals, save money, and test your creativity in the kitchen. Here are kitchen skills that will help you do all those things and more!
When I became a homemaker, I had dreams of cooking everything from scratch. As we had babies and realized our love for whole-food eating, learning how to cook became more important!
You don’t need to love working with ingredients to benefit from kitchen skills because kitchen skills are more than cooking! Kitchen skills include baking, budgeting, time management, and food safety.
These are all things you can use to bless your family, and others, on multiple occasions!
Why I Like to Cook
Cooking for me started in my childhood home. When we kids wanted cookies, my father was the first to drop everything and say, “What kind of cookies would you like?”
Now that I have children of my own, I can bring the same magic to my home!
The dream is even better, though, because I can be a blessing to my family. By crunching the numbers, I found out I could stretch our budget by stocking up on bulk goods. During the holidays, I can double our cookie recipe and gift the goodies to neighbors and friends.
As my children grow, I can teach them the kitchen skills I use every single day, thus passing on that legacy of instantaneous cookie-making and a refreshing cup of milk.
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Kitchen Skills Every Homemaker Should Know
I’ve broken these down into a few different categories. If you would like to jump around, click on the topic you’re most interested in reading about!
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Basic Cooking Skills
Basic cooking skills allow you to prepare and serve food. Plain and simple. We aren’t looking to recreate the wheel here.
However, we are looking to equip you with common sense skills you will use again and again. Remember that when you feel like giving up! These skills will come to you as you practice them over time.
1. Knife Skills
I recommend learning how to use a common chef’s knife. It’s the only knife I recommend any home chef use!
If you know how to use a chef’s knife, you can do everything you need to do in a kitchen. You can easily forego pairing knives, boning knives, and steak knives. You don’t need them if you have a sharp chef’s knife!
That’s the other key to knife skills I’d like to stress – your knife needs to stay sharp. Do some research into knife sharpeners because there is a difference in what they’re able to accomplish. You need something that will sharpen your knife (literally strip away the material of the knife) versus straighten your knife (realign what has been warped due to use).
Not all knife sharpeners are made equal.
Not all knives are made equal, either. However, a budding home chef doesn’t need to invest in top-tier knives to learn proper knife skills. A chef’s knife from your local retailer (mine was $10) will suit you just fine.
2. How to Work with a Whole Chicken
Chicken is the cheapest cut of meat in my area. Sometimes pork will beat it out, but not by much.
Whole chickens are an incredible way to save money and get bang for your buck. You can cook them in many different ways and use the bones to make homemade bone broth. Win-win!
I recommend you learn how to cook with a whole chicken. They’re easy to work with, affordable, and a multi-purpose ingredient to make staples in your home.
3. How to Season Food
Did you know that the tongue picks up on four different classifications of food? You can add spice to a dish and it will overwhelm your senses if you don’t know how to balance it out!
Seasonings also develop their flavors at different times in the cooking process.
Is it better to season a cut of meat before searing it or after searing it? What kind of spices can you substitute for in a pinch? Is a garnish the same thing as a seasoning?
Knowing how to season food can take any dish to the next level. And if you’re goal is to build a working pantry, where you have ingredients to draw from, it will be all the more important to know how to work with seasonings to cater them to your family’s interests.
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4. Food Safety
Food safety is among the top five tips for kitchen skills every homemaker should know, and it could easily be the first tip I recommend to every homemaker.
When you understand how to store, cook, reheat, and preserve food, you will be a blessing to your family!
This includes everything from knowing what temperature different cuts of meat need to be before they’re considered safe to eat to how long leftovers can be safely stored in the refrigerator.
5. Knowing Your Ingredients
I did a grocery pick-up order a few years ago and requested spaghetti squash. When I got home, I was given a lemon. I thought it was a joke until I looked at my receipt and realized that the lemon had been weighed – and therefore processed – as a spaghetti squash.
We are living in a day and age where citrus is being mistaken for squash!
When you know your ingredients, you can begin to get a feel for which cuts of meat pair well with certain vegetables and how all of them can be seasoned.
You can also be on the lookout for cost savings at the grocery store and farmer’s market because produce is usually on sale when it’s in season.
Related:
Simple Homemaking Skills for the Modern Homemaker
Easy Tips for How to Cut Up a Whole Chicken
Want to learn more about stretching your dollar at the grocery store?
Cooking skills and budgeting go hand in hand. As your family grows and food becomes more and more expensive, these are tools you can use to be a blessing to your family!
My ebook “How to Stock a Pantry on a Budget” walks you through how to shop seasonally, shop frugally, and create meals using what you have on hand.
For the FREE version, supply your email below and I’ll send it right over! To dive even deeper, head over to the Homemaker and Happy Shop and purchase the full ebook for $5.
Practical Cooking Skills
6. Recipe Substitutions
There seem to be a few different personalities when cooking yummy food for our families.
One of the main camps I find are homemakers who don’t like to cook anything unless they have all the recommended ingredients in the recipe. Another camp is homemakers who sub in ingredients or omit them entirely because they cook with what they have.
I have been a “rebel chef” for as long as I can remember. I am constantly making substitutions or omitting ingredients because I cook with what I have!
Making recipe substitutions is a great way to test your chef skills. It perfectly balances a few things we’ve already talked about – working with ingredients, balancing spices and flavors, and staying within a set grocery budget.
You could also consider recipe substitutions among vintage homemaking skills. In depression-era recipes or recipes created out of either of the World Wars, women were forced to cook things like cakes, casseroles, and other dishes within their food rations. Talk about getting creative!
7. Food Preservation
When I say, “food preservation,” I don’t mean growing a garden and canning.
For the purposes of this blog post, I mean storing unprocessed food and leftovers in a way that prolongs its life. That could be anything stored in your freezer, fridge, or pantry.
For example, say that you’re working with raw broccoli for a recipe and you realize you have some left over. If you are unfamiliar with working with broccoli, you may just throw it away or let it sit in your refrigerator until it goes bad.
Instead, you could cut the crown into pieces, blanch it, and freeze it in a vacuum-sealed bag. Now, the leftover broccoli is ready to be eaten down the road and no food was wasted!
8. Baking
You don’t need to become a pastry chef to know how to bake. It’s also not a requirement to create your shortcrust pastry or brown sugar (yes, you can make brown sugar at home!)
Even though baking is not on the list of essential homemaking skills, it is something you can use to bless your family. Special treats are a great way to pass down memories to your children. And if a special recipe develops out of it, that’s just icing on the cake (pun intended!)
9. Hosting
Hosting is the best way to get direct feedback for everything you do in the kitchen. What did your guests gobble up? What was left over?
These days, hosting doesn’t have to cost an arm and a leg, either. My local craft store has sales on paper plates and cutlery every other week or so. And with the rise of thrift stores, I can find simple table decor for any season for a great price!
Hosting is also among my top kitchen skills because I don’t think there’s anything more special than sharing a meal with someone. What a way to bring someone into your home and care for their needs.
Hosting can teach you empathy, such as when dealing with a food allergy. Hosting can teach you foresight, like always keeping frozen cookie dough in your freezer so you can prepare cookies when someone is on their way. Hosting can teach you how to be graceful, like dealing with someone who may not enjoy your food but you want to return their rudeness for kindness.
If you have never hosted a small dinner party, find ways to do so! Hosting is a great first step into other homemaking skills.
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10. Adaptability
We live in the midwestern United States, which usually means we experience all four seasons. Because of that, we experience all of the produce grown at different times of year.
There is nothing quite like a sun-ripened strawberry fresh from the Farmer’s Market. Or a carrot that’s been sweetened by the fall’s first frost.
As the seasons change, so can your cooking. Adapt roast recipes to winter by subbing in more root vegetables. Change it to a spring recipe by creating an abundant salad to serve alongside it, instead of potatoes.
Adaptability also simplifies complex tasks.
For the budding home chef, cooking a steak on the grill may be difficult without first mastering how to maintain heat in something like a charcoal grill. Cooking a steak in the oven, though, is much more feasible.
While it may not be the best steak of your life, it’s a great way to simply get started! If you’re able to adapt cooking skills and recipes, you will find out how much you’re truly capable of learning.
11. Creativity
There is nothing quite as boring as eating chicken, rice, and vegetables every day for a week straight (to all my meal-prepping friends – don’t take it personally! I ate a rotisserie chicken, microwaved rice, and microwaved vegetables every week for an entire semester in college. Meal prepping has its time and place!)
But what do you do when you have leftovers piled up in your fridge? You have a few options. But chief among them – get creative!
You can use leftovers for a meal, almost like an all-you-can-eat buffet. Line everything up and let everyone choose what they want to eat!
Or you could take something like leftover chili with macaroni and cheese for an ooey-gooey chili mac. If you have a few vegetables and some seasoned chicken, throw them on a pizza!
Creativity in the kitchen also gives you greater control over what you eat. When you make recipe substitutions, you’re always at risk of creating something that isn’t quite appetizing. When you get creative, you can balance what you know about food to create something that will turn out great every time.
Creativity is also a great way to save money. If you’re adventurous and willing to try something new, you can easily create meals at home versus spending that money on an overpriced meal in a restaurant.
12. Make Food Preparation a Part of Your Daily Routine
When my children began eating solid foods, I felt like I was always at a cutting board. I made our baby food, which means boiling things like sweet potatoes and carrots and blending them until they’re puree.
When my children graduated from purees we began tackling soft sandwiches. And then proteins. Now that I have toddlers, they can eat exactly what the adults eat, but they still need things chopped into smaller pieces.
And don’t get me started on snack time!
My growing children are a blessing to me, even if it is a hit to my grocery budget. So to stay on top of things, I always try to prep one or two things anytime I’m in the kitchen. Do you know how motherhood is sometimes compared to juggling balls? These are the balls I never want to drop.
Making food preparation a part of your daily routine can take shape in a few different ways.
Some days, that means simply prepping for the next meal. So at breakfast, you’re figuring out what you will eat for lunch. At lunchtime, you’re setting out meat to thaw for dinner.
On other days, that means creating several snacks or side dishes in an hour or two of spare time.
For my current season of life, it’s always a good idea to knock out whatever I can whenever I’m in the kitchen. At breakfast, I’m thinking about dinner. When I’m making dinner, I’m concurrently prepping a side dish or a snack for the following day.
If I already have the cutting board out, I might as well make headway on food prep for tomorrow! I never know what activity is going to run long, what boo-boos will need to be kissed, or what the day will bring. So it’s always best I stay ahead.
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13. Keep Your Kitchen Sink Clean
This is a note from old-fashioned homemakers.
Old-fashioned homemakers recommend keeping your kitchen sink clean after every use. And this is an incredible goal! This ensures your kitchen is tidy and always ready for you to work in.
Professional chefs spend hours breaking down and tidying their kitchens. For good reason! You can’t just leave food sitting out. The food will spoil, attract pests, and create an unsanitary environment for you to work in.
Your home kitchen is no different. While you don’t need to keep your kitchen sink clean after every meal, you should aim to clean it out at least once a day. A regular scrub-down can become a part of your homemaking routine.
14. Start with Simple Meals
Creating a home-cooked meal can be overwhelming when you turn to Pinterest for inspiration. Even if you are a seasoned home cook looking for new recipes, you find beautifully photographed pastries, candle-lit tables, and juicy cuts of meat overwhelming your Pinterest feed!
It doesn’t take a lot to create a simple meal. Instead of using a seasoning blend, maybe start with a roasted chicken with fresh herbs. Instead of using store-bought broth, maybe you use the chicken bones from your roast chicken to make a good stock for soup later in the week. Nothing is easier than boiling chopped vegetables on the stove!
When you start small, you gain the confidence to tackle bigger projects, like a three-course meal with dessert.
Meal Planning Skills
15. Creating and Managing a Grocery Budget
There are plenty of schools of thought about what your grocery budget should be for the size of your family. I’m going to leave that up to you to determine.
What I will encourage you to do is be a good steward of whatever finances you set aside to purchase groceries. Although stocking up is a good feeling, it can get out of hand if you’re using a significant portion of your grocery budget.
Weigh your family values with what you can afford and find a happy medium.
16. Revamping Leftovers
Being a good steward means letting little to nothing go to waste!
And when you find ways to revamp leftovers, you’re stretching that creativity and adaptability we talked about earlier in this blog post.
17. Mastering Grocery Shopping
When you begin mastering cooking with basic ingredients, the grocery store sorts itself out. Avoid the middle aisles. Everything you need lines the outer walls of the store.
However, that doesn’t mean you won’t fall prey to things on end caps, seasonal sales, and other marketing tactics grocery stores employ. That’s where mastering the grocery store comes into play.
If you have a grocery budget, stick to it. The easiest way to do this is to grocery shop with a list. I even go so far as to price-check my ingredients before heading to the grocery store.
Since the internet lets me check prices, the internet also lets me compare prices to other retailers. There are some things available for much cheaper at other grocery stores, or available for much cheaper if I buy that product in bulk. These are all good things to know before grabbing my car keys!
Sales flyers, seasonal promotions, and clearance food items are also things I pause for when it comes to grocery shopping. If there’s a way I can combine produce or meat on sale with my food preservation skills, I can stock up and save my family big bucks!
If all of this sounds like it makes your head swim, don’t get overwhelmed! I have price comparison charts and monthly sales tracking sheets in my ebook “How to Stock Your Pantry on a Budget.”
And in it, I share a few more reasons why it’s important to have a stocked pantry. I also share more of my favorite kitchen products and ways you can figure out how much food you need to store.
Not sold? Get my free ebook and see what you think! You can always purchase the $5 ebook and all the goodies we just talked about, in the Homemaker and Happy Shop.
Supply your email below to get the free addition to the $5 ebook!
Homemaker and Happy’s Final Kitchen Tips
18. Use Modern Conveniences
Modern conveniences turn arduous tasks into simple tasks. And when it comes to homemaking, I always have other things that require my attention!
Sometimes it seems like people think when homemakers are cooking in the kitchen, they’re standing in the kitchen staring at a pot of water waiting for it to start boiling. That couldn’t be farther from the truth.
When I make yogurt, I use an Instant Pot. When I make a beef stew or a chili, I use a crock pot. When I buy cheese in bulk, I use the cheese shredder attachment that comes with my stand mixer.
These modern conveniences allow me to make from-scratch food for my family in half the time. And that has been such a blessing to our family! As I learn these new skills, I’m not overwhelmed with the learning process anymore. I have the time and energy to devote my mental capacity to these skills.
19. Always Aim to Be a Better Cook
When I learned how to make fluffy pancakes, a tender roast, and perfectly crispy potatoes, I could have stopped learning how to cook. Honestly! My family would have been happy.
But my budget wouldn’t have been happy. Our palates wouldn’t have been happy.
When you aim to be a better cook, you take home cooking from being a necessity to a heritage for your family. It’s no longer about wringing everything you can out of your grocery budget; it’s about giving new life to the ingredients you have in front of you.
20. Stay Organized
Organization in the kitchen is multifaceted. So let’s take it step by step.
Now that we aren’t shopping for pre-packed foods, our meals consist of buying more than two or three things at the grocery store. Well, ingredients need to go somewhere. So an organized fridge, freezer, and pantry is a must.
As we prep our ingredients for our meals, we don’t need them helter-skelter all over the kitchen counter. We won’t be able to work! Finding a rhythm, and organization, to food preparation will keep your kitchen clean and keep you focused on the task at hand.
Finally, managing leftovers means not losing them to the back of the refrigerator. Sometimes maintaining your food budget means eating what you already have at home!
Related Blog Posts
Sample Weekly Homemaking Routine
Ways to Save Money and Stretch Meat in Meals
Easy Ways to Stock a Pantry on a Budget
Simple Homemaking Skills for the Modern Homemaker
Easy Tips for How to Cut Up a Whole Chicken
Products I Recommend (Affiliate Links)
These products are not the first thing that I would recommend to a budding home chef. It’s important to remember that as you’re starting out.
As I’ve grown in my skill set, though, these are products I love and use routinely in my home. I check my local thrift stores often and have scored some items from the Facebook marketplace. I have requested others as Christmas presents.
However you go about acquiring these, I highly recommend them as you grow in your knowledge and confidence in the kitchen!
Pressure Cooker
I love using my pressure cooker to make yogurt and desserts.
Deli-Style Freezer Safe Plastic Containers
These deli-style freezer containers stand the test! They are dishwasher safe, freezer safe, and withstand an incredible amount of use.
Immersion Blender
An immersion blender is the thing you need to make mayonnaise. I also use it to thicken soups and stews.
Stand Mixer
My stand mixer was a wedding gift 8 years ago! It has the capability to knead the dough and mix it with the available attachments. Other attachments, not included in the original sale of the mixer, allow me to puree vegetables and grind meat!
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