Kitchen work triangle

If installing a new kitchen is part of your renovation plan, think hard about how the kitchen is going to be used. Do you need a full traditional kitchen if you mostly eat out or do take-away?

Tip: Do keep in consideration the kitchen work triangle when designing your dream kitchen as this will help to facilitate a smooth flow.

The idea of a kitchen work triangle is to to place the three most used work areas mentioned below with a good distance apart so as to minimize traffic through the work zone: 

• Refrigerator - storage area
• Sink - cleaning/preparation area
• Stove - cooking area

If the work areas are far away from each other you will lose time while preparing a meal. If they are too close together you will have a cramped kitchen and it will be difficult for another person to pass through or work in the same kitchen.

My challenge in designing my new home kitchen is to work with whatever tiny space that I have and make my small kitchen fully functional. Below is my kitchen work triangle:

Due to space constraint, I designed the kitchen layout such that the oven will be below the induction hob. The dishwasher will be next to the oven and then there is the sink. We settled for a small stainless steel Reginox sink as we wanted to purchase a dishwasher. Both of us hates to wash the dishes and our Bosch dishwasher has been a lifesaver!

For those who thinks dishwasher is not practical and does not clean so well, this is totally untrue! As long as you rinse leftover food from the plates right after a meal and before you put it in the dishwasher, they will come out looking sparkling clean :) Cooking and cleaning up has never been easier. 

Song Cho stainless steel dish rack - 430mm x 260mm which we purchased. We got a small rack as washing and drying of utensils, pots, pans will be done by the dishwasher, so there is really no need for us to have a big dish rack.

We went to many stores looking for our kitchen appliances such as Best Denki, Courts, Hoe Kee however we found the best bundled deal at.....Harvey Norman Millenia Walk.

Harvey Norman has such huge collection and variety of the appliances. We got a good discount plus Brandt was having a $400 cash back promotion. In the end we got Bosch oven, dishwasher, hood and Brandt induction from Harvey Norman.
  
I have always preferred induction stove over traditional gas stove, reasons being:

• It is extremely quick and easy to clean after use as it is just a flat surface, you just need to give it a good wipe and you are all done!
• Water also boils much faster, food cooks perfectly on all sides, aesthetically it looks nicer....did i mention there is a child-lock safety as well?

There are just so many reasons for me to choose induction :) We spent a lot of time looking for a good induction within our budget as we did not realize that induction could cost so much!

Our Brandt induction hob

For those out there who are interested in induction hob but unsure if you should settle for ceramic hob as it looks the same as induction but cost much less,you may wish to read on.

Both induction and ceramic hobs are made of hard wearing glass. That is where the similarity ends.

• Ceramic hob has an element under toughened glass which starts heating up the zone as soon as you switch it on. The zone will glow red according to the heat level chosen.

• An induction hob heats up only when a ferrous pan is placed on it. As soon as the pan is removed (or when the zone is switched off) the heat generation will stop.

• Induction cooking is a lot more energy saving than ceramic cooking as heat is generated only through the area that is actually touching the pan. The induction zone will automatically switches off when the pan is removed.

• An induction zone will immediately adjust power output when you change the setting to a higher or lower level. Ceramic zone however takes much longer to heat up or cool down. As a result, induction is much quicker than ceramic or even gas.