Can you believe it? It’s exactly one week to Christmas, the time of year that your kitchen is really put through its paces. Plenty of planning goes into the day, meal plans, timers and plenty of prep the day before. But it can be the kitchen itself, along with the appliances, that can be the key to the day being a success and everything running a smoothly as possible. Here are a few tips that can help if you are thinking about re-designing your kitchen after the festive period.
Think About the Appliances
When considering the type of oven you’re going to have, a question that often arises is, will the Christmas turkey fit. Other things to consider are perhaps the newer methods of cooking, such as Combination steam ovens. These make cooking for larger numbers simple. Using steam to cook poultry, meat and fish gives you a perfectly cooked, moist result, before adding hot air to brown and crisp the outside. They are also great for vegetables, soft boiled eggs and even the Christmas pudding.
You can combine your steam over with a warming drawer to keep your food warm between courses, heat your plates, prove your bread, or even warm your slippers! Yes we have customers who have admitted to doing this, and why not!?
The NEFF FullSteam® oven combines CircoTherm® oven and steam cooker in a single unit
Changing Your Kitchen Layout
The kitchen on Christmas day is usually busier than normal. It can be people lending a helping hand, kids getting under your feet trying to steal mince pies, or relatives standing around sipping a glass of red wine, offering moral support, whilst you are rushing around trying to prepare a feast for everyone. It’s times like this that you find out how well laid your your kitchen really is. Effective kitchen design makes it easy for you to be able to do what needs to be done without interruption, from people, or from having to move from one end to the other with your hands full of hot dishes.
Food preparation areas ideally need to have a sink nearby, but it doesn’t have to be the main sink, a smaller prep bowl can be installed as well, especially if you want to create a working triangle between the hot, cold and wet areas of the kitchen. Another thing, make sure you give yourself an immediate area near the oven to put hot dishes down, this is something that can be missed if ovens are being built into a bank of cabinets.
Maximise Your Storage and Work Surface
It’s a pain trying to cook in a kitchen where your worktops are overflowing with mess, so when you are planning, factor in easily accessible storage space and plenty of worktop too. Deep drawers and clever internal storage solutions from Kessebohmer such as racks and pull out shelving will help whilst preparing and when cleaning as your cook. All this will help with making Christmas dinner preparation run as smooth as possible.
Kessebohmer Lemans Corner Unit
If you are considering re-designing your kitchen please get in touch with us for a free consultation and kitchen design.
Give us a call in the shop on 01283 701 001 or call Troy directly on 07810 186 573. You can also email us at info@kitchens-complete.com or via our Contact page. If you would like some inspiration please click here for a brochure to be sent out to you.
