You'll be hollering "Yes, chef!" across your kitchen after taking these tips from the pros
In between teaching us how to deglaze the pan, season at the right moment, and fix the gravy that just split, celeb chefs have a thing or two to say about their favorite kitchen layouts. The cost to build a kitchen is a key investment for home chefs, so what better way to start the brainstorming process than to look at the home kitchens of pro chefs themselves?
We've rounded up nine tips from chefs on kitchen design so you can julienne like Julia and grill like Guy.
Let's start off with the goddess of cooking home comforts and creating a space ideal for hosting. Ina Garten—aka Food Network’s Barefoot Contessa—told the “Today Show” that she prefers to use the triangle method when designing a kitchen. If you speak with a local kitchen renovation team, they'll know exactly what she means. The triangle kitchen layout places the refrigerator, sink, and range in, well, a triangle. The shape promotes easy flow as you move quickly from one to the next, even if you're working in a small space.
We can dream to aspire to do half as much as Alice Waters both inside the kitchen and out. If we hope to start by emulating her chef kitchen design, take a look at her North Berkeley home design that she spoke with The Guardian about a few years back. She took inspiration from the existing design in her early 20th-century home by enhancing its original character. She even added a fireplace right in the kitchen, which she notes has allowed her to cook everything from grilled fish to the Thanksgiving turkey on an open flame.
Hiring a contractor to renovate a historic home can seem tricky, but it all comes down to finding a professional who—just as Alice suggests—knows how to work with your existing kitchen and elevate what's already there.
We'd expect nothing less than over-the-top kitchen vibes from the Mayor of Flavortown. Guy Fieri and his family took a massive fixer-upper in Sonoma County and made it their own. He told Closer Weekly that the kitchen is more than just a place to prepare meals—the design leaves space for his family and friends to gather for everything from eating to finishing homework.
Kitchen islands, for example, are a key way to blend food prep space and set up seating for anyone passing through to spend time with the chef.
The internet swooned when Giada De Laurentiis casually revealed her newly renovated home kitchen. It features an eye-catching marble countertop and professional-level range. In showing off the details of the new design, Giada celebrates the small but impactful details that streamline the cooking process. A built-in pot filler attached right before the stove means that there's no need to carry a heavy pot of water back and forth to the sink.
Installing a pot filler is just one of the hottest options for kitchen faucets, so speak with your local plumber during renovations about how to utilize your setup.
Samin Nosrat, of Netflix’s Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat and her cookbook of the same name, fulfilled her dream of designing a studio kitchen with some of the top professional kitchen organization tricks today. She shows off vibrant green backsplash tile, open shelving, and all clever ways to keep your pots, pans, and important tools within arm's reach.
And while she includes plenty of flexible storage below the counter, most of the tools stay out in the open to help with the flow of food prep. Hanging pots-and-pan racks, for example, is just one of the clever storage tricks for small kitchens. Samin's kitchen is an excellent example that these spaces can be both practical and breathtakingly stylish.
World-renowned chef and restaurateur Liam Tomlin is bound to have an awe-inspiring spot to create his famous dishes. Renovated just last year, his chef kitchen design incorporates the look of a classic sunroom by adding a conservatory window above the workspace. Not only does this create a spacious and open energy in the room for cooking, but it also transforms the kitchen into a welcoming haven for hosting friends around the expansive kitchen island.
Keep in mind that you don't need to renovate an entire wall of your home to get the look, there are many types of windows to welcome more natural light into your kitchen.
While it's easy to assume that all celebrity chef kitchens are massive, even the pros have to be innovative with small spaces from time to time. Rachael Ray and her husband transformed a Tuscan villa from head to toe, including of course, by installing her dream kitchen—albeit in a smaller space than usual. To make accommodations, they added a pull-out pantry that slips seamlessly in and out of the wall. The thin pantry shelving holds all her most important dry ingredients without taking up space with additional furniture.
Building a kitchen pantry naturally takes up space, but as she shows us, there are many ways to do it to avoid taking up precious countertops.
Even if you haven't had the opportunity to dine at one of Chef Samuelsson's award-winning restaurants, you can at least take a page out of his book for kitchen design. He recently told House Beautiful that the design borrowed inspiration from his time growing up in Sweden as well as by looking at the natural surroundings of his home to find the right aesthetic.
Rich gray, brown, and golden hues flow from the wooden cabinetry to the marble countertops. And as we're seeing more and more—he also included the iconic deep green backsplash behind the range.
As we all spend countless nights trying to perfect Julia's coq au vin, let's remember the brilliance of her chef kitchen design. Julia Child’s iconic kitchen wouldn't be complete without the floor-to-ceiling pegboard where she hung all her saucepans, pots, and essential cooking tools. Sure, you'll often spot pegboards over the workbench in the garage, but what's a kitchen is not a workstation for building the best meals? Just be sure to call in an experienced contractor to hang it so it's sturdy enough to hold your tools.
And remember, as Julia said, "The more you know, the more you can create. There’s no end to imagination in the kitchen.”
