Beginner's Guide to Tiny Home Cooking

It's time to get cooking in your tiny home! With tiny home living rising in popularity over the past few years, tiny home kitchen hacks have been on the rise. Whether you need a little help planning your space or you need a few easy food ideas—we've got you covered.

Maximize your Kitchen Space

When you're working with a few hundred square feet for your kitchen, you've got to double up and save space. First, when you're designing your space, you're going to need tiny house appliances.

These small appliances are built specifically to help you save space in the kitchen area of your home. You should also decide what appliances you don't need. Maybe you can skip the microwave when it comes to larger appliances and nix a few smaller appliances like a KitchenAid.

If you don't have room for a stovetop, you can opt for an electric skillet or griddle of some sort that can be easily stored away when you need the counter space for other things.

You'll also have to get crafty when it comes to maximizing the storage in your tiny kitchen. Think outside the box and add storage beside the built-in cupboards. Floating wall shelves can be customized to fit your space.

You can also use pegboards to hang pots and pans from on your walls. If you need a place to store your spices, use a decorative basket and store them on top of your fridge. And speaking of fridges, you can get a magnetic shelf or two for the side of your fridge as a great place to store everything from spatulas to spices.

It's important to remember that in a tiny home, less is more. Buy quality items that will last. You don't need seven spatulas and fifty pans. Minimize your kitchen gadgetry so you can always find what you need and don't have to store unnecessary items.

Stock Up

In your tiny home, you'll need to keep some foods stocked. Canned food is a great thing to keep on hand, as well as any staples like flour, sugar, noodles, rice, and oatmeal that have a long shelflife. These items may be tempting to buy in bulk, but remember your storage space when you're out shopping.

For the rest of your food needs, you'll likely need to get your fresh foods and perishables once a week from the grocery store. The best way to make sure you're not overbuying is to make a weekly meal plan. Decide what meals you want to make, list all of the ingredients, and purchase what you need for those meals.

When you bring your groceries home, try to do a little food prep. Wash and prep all of the fruits and veggies you plan to snack on throughout the week and keep them in clear containers in your fridge. Because your fridge and freezer are smaller, you're going to need to save space. Purchase only one brand of container so that everything stacks nicely in the fridge.

Keep leftovers in the same type of container so that you don't forget about all of the yummy food you have to eat.

If you can, plant a small garden outside your home and fill it with fruit and veggie staples that you eat often. This will save you money and space.

Easy Tiny Home Meals

Start collecting recipes that are simple to make and don't require a thousand different kitchen items. When you can keep it simple, everything gets easier.

Look up recipes that tote "one-pan dinner" in the title, or if you have a small crockpot or instant pot, look up recipes you can dump in the cooker after just a little prep.

One of our favorite easy one-sheet meals is a veggie bake. Wash and cut up any veggies that you'd like in your bake. We love squash, zucchini, potatoes, mushrooms, broccoli, cauliflower, and anything else that's in season. Then place the veggies on a lined baking sheet and add turkey Kielbasa sausage or a meatless alternative if you'd like. Drizzle a little olive oil and a seasoning of your choice over the meal and bake at four hundred degrees for thirty to forty minutes—or until everything is cooked through.

When you have a handful of recipes handy, it helps you avoid the temptation to eat out every meal (or the temptation to just eat Top Ramen).