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Equipping the Homestead Kitchen A homestead or country kitchen differs from a modern kitchen in many ways! The tools used in a country kitchen differ. A country kitchen is used for more than just meals! It is where meats from the farm are processed for the freezer or for canning or jerking. Garden produce is prepared, canned, frozen or dehydrated. We here at Creative Homesteading use a variety of items that were handed down from four generations of our ancestors! Some of them could only be replaced at auctions, flea markets or estate sales. Some of them are 'new items' that we find in catalogs and could not live without. Let us start with the obvious, food storage. We use tons of jars! Mason jars are not only good for canning they are good for storage of small quantities of various foods, dried, and are air tight, bug proof and reusable. These are suitable for storing teas, spices, mixes, dehydrated foods, soup mixes, gravy mixes etc... You can get them in half gallon size but it's harder to find those. Try places that sell bulk foods, or save gallon jars that pickles come in. We also use a seal a meal system for packaging meats for the freezer. It does help prevent freezer burn far better than zip bags and is far more durable packing than aluminum foil. We buy flour in 25 and 50lb bags. We store self-rising, and plain flour, sugar, cornmeal, rice, beans, and other bulk goods in 5 gallon plastic 'paint buckets' with lids. (The can be purchased at the big local chain store that is eating up all the mom & pop businesses in the world!) They are moisture, bug and humidity proof and they STACK! Cooking Utensils: Cast Iron anything! We have pots and frying pans in a variety of sizes, shapes and they serve different purposes. Our favorite is an old round griddle we use for pancakes, grilled sandwiches. Cast Iron is as durable a pot or pan as you will ever find, and it can go into the fireplace, on top of the woodstove. It is suitable for use on electric, propane, or natural gas stoves and you can bake in them. Seasoned and cleaned properly they are as non-stick as teflon, and heat more evenly. They are without a doubt healthier than teflon. DO NOT USE CAST IRON ON THE NEW FLAT TOP RANGES! It will ruin the range and possibly cause the top to crack. Flat top or smooth surface ranges are impractical in a country kitchen! The may be pretty but they are not durable! Bypass pretty for a more practical range! We found that the 'dots' or raised circular area you cook on can be scrubbed off. The top of the stove can become scratched and your larger pots do not get exposed to even heat. We also have a variety of extremely large pots for making ketchup, salsa, spaghetti sauce, soups, stews, beans and jams for canning. Wooden Spoons. They do not get hot like metal ones and contain no plastics to produce caustic foods should the become hot and/or melt. Small Appliances, we use several regularly, food processor. kitchen aid mixer, a stick mixer, meat grinder, meat slicer, and meat cuber. We also utilize a large dehydrator all the way through the gardening season for drying everything from beans to drying jerky during the winter. We have 2 refrigerators. Both are heavily used during the gardening season when there is always an abundance of eggs and veggies that are being stored for processing. We have a variety of measuring cups. Pyrex 4 cup, Pyrex 2 cup and a single cup measure. To Be Continued...
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