The Vegetarian Kitchen

Hi everyone!
Khara from Cookware.com was kind enough to provide me with an article which discusses a topic quite pertinent to The Broccoli Hut: the well-equipped vegetarian kitchen. Enjoy!

A Vegetarian’s Guide to Cookware

Being a vegetarian is a choice that can pay a lot of dividends, between the money saved in groceries and the health benefits. But by forgoing meat and animal products, you are forgoing convenience, as your dietary choices become more restricted. The initial adjustment period is always difficult in this regard, and tough decisions and dilemmas are always played out whether in a restaurant, supermarket, or right at home. But there are ways to deal with this, and one of them is having the right cookware in place that will make your own vegetarian meals much easier to prepare. We’ll help out by showing some items that you might want to concentrate on when you’re out shopping for cookware sets.

Eating a vegetarian diet means putting more of an emphasis on fruits and vegetables, which in turn means you might find yourself doing more food prep. So you want to make sure that you have the right tools at hand, whether you are slicing, dicing, chopping, pitting, or peeling. A proper knife set might be a worthy investment in this case, as would specialized kitchen gadgets such as a fruit corer or a julienne peeler. Another thing you might want to look at is upgrading your food processor or blender so that you can whip up sauces, shakes, and other accompaniments in a jiffy!

Other than convenience, the other thing to consider is what cookware items can bring to the table in terms of nutrition. One of the difficult things about becoming a vegetarian is finding ways to bring into your diet nutrients that are primarily found in meat. Iron is a great example of this, which is why vegetarians might sometimes have iron deficiency issues. The best way to compensate for the iron you are losing in your diet is to take nutritional supplements, but another way to do so is to use cast iron cookware. Research has shown that food cooked in cast iron skillets or pots has higher iron levels than food cooked with other types of cookware materials. This can make a huge difference over years of usage!

These are just a couple of things to consider when you’re thinking of the types of cookware that will best accommodate your vegetarian lifestyle. Any way that you can streamline the cooking and food preparation process will help immensely in dealing with those first few weeks without meet and will get you on your way to eating healthy and animal-friendly at the same time.


Although I have quite a few of the items mentioned, I am still in the market for an all-purpose food processor. Cookware.com does sell VitaMix and BlendTec machines...a girl can dream:)

Be back soon with a weekend re-cap!