The first time I used a family kitchen in France I was surprised to find items that looked like they belonged in a cookware museum.
There were gadgets I thought went out with my grandmother, heavy enamelled cauldrons, mysterious tabletop machines, and the terrifying exploding pressure cooker.
At first, I assumed my in-laws’ kitchen was simply old-fashioned. It turned out it wasn’t. It was pretty normal.
Over time, I discovered that these objects appear again and again in French homes – rural and urban, tiny studios and sprawling farmhouses alike. They are not exotic or dated. They are simply classic.
Here are eight items you’re very likely to encounter in a French kitchen – and may initially find surprising if you didn’t grow up here.
1. The Pressure Cooker: The Shrine of Speed
In many countries, a pressure cooker is something your grandmother owned in the 1950s and no one quite trusted. In France, it is still going strong.
Known in French as la cocotte-minute, this metal contraption occupies prime cupboard real estate. It is hauled out for soups, lentils, stews, chicken stock, and any dish that would otherwise take hours.
But surprisingly it is also used for ordinary veg. Potatoes take half the time in a cocotte minute than in a regular saucepan, making it an economical and sustainable way to cook.
When I first encountered a pressure cooker, I treated it as if it might detonate at any moment. But having used one for 30 years now (almost the only thing JF my husband wanted to put on our wedding list!) I’m oblivious to the steam hissing theatrically from the lid and I couldn’t imagine my kitchen without one.
2. The Salad Spinner: Lettuce is Serious Business
Salad in France is not an optional garnish. It is a course.
It arrives almost every evening, after the main dish, and it is expected to be impeccably dressed and, crucially, dry. (And never from a packet).
This is where the salad spinner comes in.
Even the smallest Parisian kitchen seems to contain one, wedged between saucepans like a plastic UFO. Leaves are washed, spun with great vigour, then gently patted into submission before being doused in vinaigrette.
My salad spinner is another treasured wedding present, 30 years old and used with alarming enthusiasm several times a week.
3. The Raclette Set: Winter Social Technology
If you see a strange tabletop grill with tiny trays underneath in a French kitchen, do not panic. It is a raclette set.
This appliance exists for one noble purpose: melting cheese in front of friends while consuming heroic quantities of the said cheese with charcuterie and potatoes.
The moment the temperature drops below a socially acceptable threshold, French households begin dusting their raclette set off. A raclette evening is not just dinner, it is an event. People linger for hours, scraping molten cheese onto plates and declaring they are full while reaching for just one more potato.
The first time I encountered one, I was impressed that an entire machine had been invented solely to encourage convivial overeating. It didn’t take me long to buy my own!
4. The Crêpe Pan: Because Pancakes Deserve Their Own Tool
French kitchens do not mess around when it comes to crêpes. They own a specific pan for them.
Wide. Flat. Almost no sides. Completely useless for anything else but great for perfecting your pancake toss!
Crêpes are not reserved for indulgent Sunday brunches here. They appear on weeknights, at children’s parties, and inevitably on La Chandeleur, when everyone tries their best to flip one while holding a coin in the other hand.
You’ll see plenty of these flat pans in supermarkets in late January in the buildup to la Chandeleur. Grab one if you enjoy flipping your crêpes.
5. Duralex Glasses: The Indestructible Icons
If you have spent any time in France, you have drunk water from one of these.
Small, faintly retro glasses that seem to reproduce spontaneously in cupboards, cafés and school canteens.
They are made by Duralex and they are close to indestructible.
Drop one on a tiled floor and it will bounce mockingly while you apologise to it. But beware, when it does break, it explodes into a thousand sparkling pieces.
Duralex glasses stack neatly, survive generations of children, and somehow manage to look both utilitarian and chic. We provide them in the gîte (Lou Messugo) and I think in 16 years only one has been broken!
6. The Opinel Knife: Small, Wooden and Revered
The Opinel knife is a modest-looking folding knife with a wooden handle and a rotating metal collar.
Do not underestimate it. Made in the French Alps since 1890, it has become a design classic and is considered by the V&A Museum (London) as one of the 100 best designed items in the world.
Almost every French household owns at least one, often several, used for picnics, slicing bread, cutting cheese, gardening, opening parcels, or dealing with mysterious countryside emergencies.
There is something deeply French about its practicality: simple design, affordable, beautifully made, and completely unpretentious.
7. The Oyster Knife: A Seasonal Weapon
Somewhere in the back of a French kitchen drawer you will find an oyster knife.
Short, stubby and alarmingly purposeful, it exists for a very specific season, when crates of oysters begin appearing in markets, supermarkets, and on kitchen counters as casually as apples.
Around Christmas and New Year in particular, French households suddenly transform into shellfish-opening stations, and this little knife comes into its own. (In our household we also have a special glove and wooden oyster holder to avoid injuries!)
To a newcomer, the idea that people regularly shuck oysters at home can feel faintly extravagant. To the French, it is simply what you do when it’s winter, there are guests coming, and the fishmonger had a good batch that morning.
8. The Le Creuset Pot: Heirloom in Enamel
And finally: the great enamelled Dutch oven, casserole dish. A true French icon. If you’re into cooking, you’ll know your Le Creuset.
Heavy, bulky and beloved. Traditionally the Le Creuset pot came in bold colours – green, orange, dark blue – but recent trends are tending towards pastels. It is expensive, but not an extravagance. It’s an investment.
This weighty cast-iron vessel is used for everything from boeuf bourguignon to soup to roast chicken.
The Le Creuset pot may have been bought decades ago. It may have been inherited. It will almost certainly outlive its current owner. Ours is, you guessed it, another treasured wedding present, 30 years old, used all the time and still in perfect condition.
Bonus Thing(s) in a French Kitchen
A Word About Corkscrews
In France, corkscrews do not exist singly, they form colonies.
You open a drawer and discover a waiter’s friend, a winged contraption, a lever-arm model, something novelty-shaped from a vineyard visit, and at least one whose origin no one can explain.
Wine is opened casually, without ceremony, and therefore tools must always be at hand. Someone will produce a corkscrew within seconds, usually while continuing a conversation.
The idea of being unable to open a bottle because you don’t own one is faintly scandalous and twist-tops are really not a thing here.
A Timeless French Kitchen
What I love about these objects is that none of them are flashy nor faddy.
They are not about showing off, they are timeless and above all practical. Used in every kitchen to produce homemade wholesome food and enable conviviality.
They are about daily life: salad every evening, friends around a table in winter, stews bubbling away, wine opened without fuss, meals that take time and involve people lingering.
Do you have any of these items in your kitchen?
Related Reading
A Visit to The Escofier Museum of Culinary Art
School Christmas Dinner in France
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We have all of those in our kitchen except the oyster knife as we don’t eat them and I have currently lost my Opinel knife … I suspect it is on the compost heap! I must admit though, that I prefer the slow cooker to the pressure cooker.
We often lose things in the compost heap too! Usually the vegetable peeler unsurprisingly. We also have a slow cooker but as I’m very much a last minute person and rarely plan meals ahead the pressure cooker is used a lot more than the slow cooker!
I am quite good at meal planning … and losing Opinel knives!
I’m forever trying to get better at meal planning but it somehow never happens!