Best Kept Kitchen Secrets: Tips to Keep It Organized and Functional
A bright and vibrant kitchen. Photo courtesy of Redfin
What’s your best kept kitchen secret? We recently had the chance to tell Redfin about ours. As you may or may not know, the kitchen is central to what we do. Literally, all of our flavors are made in our kitchen. We called ourselves Camella’s Kitchen first and foremost to honor Ms. Camella, Karen’s mom and Nyana’s grandmother. But the “Kitchen” part is equally as important. Ms. Camella’s kitchen was where she made all her goods before selling her local hometown market in Trinidad. It was painted a vibrant bright red and she had a special bench where she made a lot of goods including her specialty pone. The kitchen is such a central place and where we spend a lot of our time handcrafting our products. So, when we had the chance to share our best kept kitchen secret, we were all for it!
We make a variety of sauces and marinades, and as it’s just us two women – often Karen in the kitchen, we shared the one thing that saves us time and makes our lives easier. Our special secret is a high-speed blender. We broke it down in more detail for Redfin.
Blenders are so versatile – we have a few for both at-home use and also for professional use with our handcrafted sauces. You can use blenders for juicing, making smoothies, and speeding up the cooking process – the settings allow us to easily chop, grate, liquify, and blend fruits and vegetables as needed.
Other folks seemed to agree with us on the blenders. According to FoodbyMaria, “not only is it an efficient time saver but it also helps keep [her] space cleaner and allows for less cleanup.” It’s the one thing she could not live without.
Blenders are a must for us, but it’s not the only thing that helps to keep us sane in the kitchen. See below for some other secrets that also resonated with us:
Toaster oven. I replaced our traditional toaster with a toaster oven because it heats up and roasts vegetables so quickly. By doing so I’ve been eating double the amount of veggies I used to eat. I don’t have to heat up the entire house and I get perfectly roasted veggies every single time. – Health Beet
Food-saver. Our best kitchen hack is our food-saver. We use it to vacuum seal all of our meats and cheeses so that they last longer. It also allows us to easily portion, stack, and organize meat in our freezer. This is important because we are always short on space. Not sold on it yet? You can also reseal bags of chips and snacks to keep them from going stale. – Cooking with Janica
Have a countertop fruit bowl. Fill it with seasonal produce and stock up on citrus. It’s amazing what some fresh lemon or lime juice can do to a meal (lemon on fish, lime crema for tacos, lemon based salad dressing). Place it at your kitchen entrance for a colorful reminder to get your fruit in. Because it’s a lot easier to grab a pear that’s in plain sight rather than one that’s hidden in a closed drawer. Especially when you have to bypass 5 less optimal options to get there. – Kelly E. Powers
Have your children help out. Our number one recommendation for cooking with your children is to provide them with their own set of cooking tools such as a child-safe knife (we recommend the First Knife by Foost). My children request their “kid knife” every time we cook together – it really gets them excited about cooking with you, helps develop their fine motor skills, and gets them interacting with healthy ingredients. – Veggie Buds Blog
This last one really resonated with us! Karen started in the kitchen by helping her mother out, and Nyana got started doing the same. Cooking really is a family affair! And if you don’t have children, get a buddy. Cooking with them can be fun too – even if it is through video chat.
Want more best kept kitchen secrets? Be sure to read the full article on Redfin – it has a plethora of secrets for keeping your kitchen organized and functional!
Camella’s Kitchen is run by two ladies from Trinidad and Tobago. Based out of Prince George’s County, Maryland, we’re living our sauciest lives by bringing our bold Caribbean flavors to you! How will you #BeCamellaSaucy? Tell us on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, or YouTube!
