NASA has published the first maps from its new space-based pollution instrument, TEMPO (Tropospheric Emissions: Monitoring of Pollution). Although you won’t be shocked to learn it reveals higher pollution rates in metropolitan areas, the tool can help scientists better study North American air quality on an hourly basis. “Neighborhoods and communities across the country will benefit from TEMPO’s game-changing data for decades to come,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson wrote in a press release today.

The instrument, which launched in April and orbits at 22,000 miles above the equator, can help scientists better study the health impacts of pollutants “at the neighborhood scale.” It can take hourly measurements, providing insights into the effects of rush-hour traffic, smoke and ash from forest fires and how fertilizer affects farm country. The tool measures sunlight bounced off the Earth’s surface, atmosphere and clouds. “Gases in the atmosphere absorb the sunlight, and the resulting spectra are then used to determine the concentrations of several gases in the air, including nitrogen dioxide,” NASA explained.

NASA says it will share its data with partner agencies, including the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Since taking the first measurements earlier this month, teams have been busy checking and calibrating the satellite’s systems ahead of regular hourly operations kicking off in October. NASA views the data as a boon in its quest to reach the Biden administration’s climate goals.

NASA

The instrument beamed back its first images on August 2nd, showing the I-95 corridor in the Northeast (New York, Philadelphia and Washington, DC areas), a slice of the South (central and eastern Texas stretching to New Orleans) and a section of the Southwest (Los Angeles to Las Vegas). As expected, the maps reveal heavy nitrogen dioxide density over cities and their suburban sprawl.

“Detailed views of three regions show high levels of nitrogen dioxide over cities in the morning, and enhanced levels of nitrogen dioxide over major highways,” NASA wrote today. “As the day progresses, the morning pollution often dissipates. Later in the afternoon, it will rise again as the cities enter their second rush hour of the day.”

“This summer, millions of Americans felt firsthand the effect of smoke from forest fires on our health,” said Nelson. “NASA and the Biden-Harris Administration are committed to making it easier for everyday Americans and decisionmakers to access and use TEMPO data to monitor and improve the quality of the air we breathe, benefitting life here on Earth.”

Imagine a game that might be described as the opposite of Half-Life 2, Left 4 Dead or Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. These are first-person shooters set in wartorn, post-apocalyptic cities, so their inverse might be a third-person game with no weapons at all, set in a warm, buzzing metropolis of friendly characters, maybe starring an adorable cat. Weirdly, the result could look a lot like Little Kitty, Big City, the first project from former Valve designer Matt T. Wood.

In nearly 17 years at Valve, Wood helped build and ship the company’s most notable titles, including Left 4 Dead, Left 4 Dead 2, Portal 2,CS:GO and both episodes of Half-Life 2. He was a founding member of the CS:GO project and worked on that series for six years; he was pivotal in crafting Portal 2’s co-op mode, and he created choreography and combat scenes in Half-Life and Left 4 Dead. Level design was one of his specialties.

Wood left Valve in mid-2019, and today he’s the head of his own game development company in Seattle, Washington, Double Dagger Studio. He didn’t plan on starting his own studio post-Valve, and he certainly didn’t think he’d be building and self-publishing a game about an adorable cat. But, he is, and it's called Little Kitty, Big City.

“It really is more about cozy exploration,” Wood told Engadget. “The game has aspects of platforming, but it's very light platforming. It's more about exploring vertically, and exploring nooks and crannies. I've done a lot of things throughout my career, but one of the things I spent a lot of time doing was level design in video games, so I have a lot of personal interest in creating spaces that feel fun to explore, to sort of poke around in.”

Little Kitty, Big City has Saturday-morning-cartoon vibes, with hand-animated scenes and a clean, friendly art style. The main character, Kitty, has wide green eyes, inky fur and batlike ears, and they’re on a mission to find their way home to an apartment complex in the center of a bustling downtown. However, procrastination is highly encouraged. Little Kitty, Big City is an open-world game filled with adorable animals to befriend, people to pester, quests to complete and hats to wear.

The hats are embellished bonnets that come in various forms, including a fish head, a half-shucked corn cob, little devil ears, a cowboy situation, a hedgehog and even some root vegetables. Kitty’s face endearingly pokes through the center of each hat, and they can be equipped at will throughout the game. Aside from a few unique cases, there are no stats attached to the hats — wearing the ladybug head doesn’t grant Kitty movement speed, and the construction hat doesn’t add bonus armor. Mostly, they exist to be cute.

“As a game designer, you kind of sit down and go, what is the purpose of this thing that you're doing?” Wood said. “You always need a function, a purpose, a reason for doing the thing. I think 10 years ago, I would have said, OK, hats are gonna give you this ability, or, like, there's going to be all of this gameplay tied to all this stuff. And while that is true for some things regarding the hats, largely, they're cosmetic. It was refreshing to come to that conclusion to say, no, these are just for fun.”

Double Dagger Studio

Wood’s long history at Valve contextualizes his current role as the founder of an independent studio, and his years inside the insular company have helped shape his approach to game design.

Valve is a unique behemoth, even in the AAA space. It owns Steam, which functions as a bottomless bank; it’s a private company, so it doesn’t have shareholders to appease; and it’s the steward of iconic franchises including Portal, Half-Life, Counter-Strike, Left 4 Dead, Team Fortress and Dota 2 (many of which are on Wood’s résumé).

“Valve is not a typical large game studio,” Wood said. “You have a lot of autonomy and freedom to do things there. But, you still sort of live within that direction that Valve goes in.”

Valve’s internal structure has long been the subject of myth and legend among video game fans, with the company’s founder Gabe Newell in the role of messiah and the Valve Handbook for New Employees as its sacred text. The handbook made its way online in 2012 and went viral for its Libertarian-inspired corporate ideals — it outlined a flat hierarchy at Valve, suggesting employees had the ability to manage themselves and work on their dream projects at any given time. This cemented Valve’s reputation as an ultra-rad, super-cool video game company in the public eye, and this perception persists today.

In practice, this structure has resulted in an incredibly rich company that doesn’t produce much. It’s a running joke that Valve can’t count to three: Half-Life 2: Episode Two and Team Fortress 2 came out in 2007, Left 4 Dead 2 came out in 2009, and Portal 2 came out in 2011. In 2020, Valve debuted Half-Life: Alyx, a VR game exclusive to the studio’s Index hardware, and after ignoring an extremely disruptive bot invasion, the company rolled out an update to TF2 this summer, largely comprising community-made maps and assets. Meanwhile, Steam has been printing money while maintaining Valve’s deathgrip on the PC marketplace.

Double Dagger Studio

When Wood talks about the fun and freedom he feels building Little Kitty, Big City, he compares it with a top-down rigidity and complacent bureaucracy he experienced in Valve’s production line. Here’s how he described it:

“Valve talks a lot about, like, you can do anything you want. And it's like, well — that's never true. You know, Valve has a direction and they have a trajectory. And so, for me, it was realizing that the direction that Valve was going in was not a place that I wanted to be long-term. Because I’d been there for a long time and they were sitting on their laurels a little bit, and it's like they weren't really challenging themselves, taking risks or doing anything. Steam’s making a lot of money so they don't really have to, but I was not OK with that. And after many years of trying to figure out how to manage that, I decided, you know, it's important for me to go and make my own decisions for a while.”

Wood made it clear that he appreciated the opportunities and stability that Valve provided him, and overall he called it a “great company.” It’s easy to see why so many talented game developers are drawn to Valve, a studio with unlimited resources, a laissez-faire management style and a library of prestigious IP. Working at an established studio also means there are plenty of experts around to check your progress and offer advice, and these are fail-safes that Wood doesn’t have any longer as an independent developer.

“That can be a bit scary,” Wood said. “But it's been great. I love working with a small team focused on a game where, to us, it's different. To me, it's a challenge.”

Double Dagger Studio

Wood said that even though he likely works more now, he also has more energy and passion for his projects than he did in his final five years at Valve. Little Kitty, Big City represents a litany of game-design firsts for Wood, including the fact that it’s a mini open world and it has zero combat. There are now seven full-time team members at Double Dagger Studio, plus a few contributors, and they all found each other naturally, by Digital Age standards — Wood shared early ideas of Little Kitty, Big City on Twitter, and interested developers got in touch.

“At first I did reach out to some of my co-workers who had left Valve already and they were interested, but like — this was a common theme about reaching out to people who used to work at Valve, is that most people when they leave Valve, they're kind of done,” Wood said.

Despite the current surge of indie-focused publishers like Annapurna Interactive, Devolver Digital, Private Division, Humble, Netflix and Raw Fury, Wood is self-publishing Little Kitty, Big City under Double Dagger Studio. That’s not to say he didn’t explore a potential partnership — he actually made it all the way to final contract meetings with one publisher in particular, but in the end, he turned the deal down.

“It didn't make any sense,” Wood said. “Because what they were able to do, for me, absolutely did not justify the money that they were gonna take. And so it was really hard to find a publisher that made sense. I think that the difference between where I was in my career, and where someone maybe right out of school would be, is that I walked away from Valve with a chunk of money that I said, ‘I'm gonna invest that into a company.’ And so I didn't have to rely on a publisher to spend $100,000 on a year of development or whatever. I did have that freedom and space to say no.”

Double Dagger Studio

This year alone, Little Kitty, Big City was announced for Switch, it had a successful showing at Summer Game Fest, and it’s getting some fresh swag in the form of a Makeship campaign offering an exceedingly cute Kitty plush and a salmon-shaped, zip-up catnip toy. The Double Dagger team is finishing the game while Wood oversees it all, no safety net in sight.

When we first started talking, Wood described Little Kitty, Big City as something like Alice in Wonderland or The Wizard of Oz, a game about a lost soul trying to find their way home and meeting a colorful cast of characters along the journey. This may be Kitty’s story, but at this stage in his career, it feels a lot like Wood’s, too.

Little Kitty, Big City is on track to come out in 2024 for Switch and PC — via Steam, of course.

On August 4th, Northrop Grumman's 19th resupply mission for the ISS arrived on the orbiting lab, carrying not just necessities for its inhabitants, but also an experiment that could greatly benefit future human colonies outside our planet. Specifically, the mission was carrying a module with hardware that could help us understand how heating and air conditioning systems can operate in reduced gravity and in the extreme temperatures observed on the moon and Mars. Daytime temperatures near the lunar equator, for instance, reach 250 degrees Fahrenheit, which is higher than the boiling point of water. At night, temperatures reach -208 degrees Fahrenheit. The lowest recorded temperature on Earth was -128.6 degrees Fahrenheit back in 1983.

The hardware was designed and built by scientists and engineers from Purdue University and NASA's Glenn Research Center in Cleveland. It will allow Purdue scientists to conduct the second part of their Flow Boiling and Condensation Experiment (FBCE), which has been collecting data aboard the ISS since 2021. They've already finished gathering data for the first part of their study that focuses on measuring the effects of reduced gravity on boiling. This part will now focus on investigating how condensation works in a reduced-gravity environment.

Issam Mudawar, the Purdue professor in charge of experiment, explained: "We have developed over a hundred years' worth of understanding of how heat and cooling systems work in Earth’s gravity, but we haven’t known how they work in weightlessness."

His team has published over 60 research papers on reduced gravity and fluid flow from the data they've collected so far, and they're in the midst of preparing more. They believe that in addition to providing the information needed to enable human colonies to live on the moon and on the red planet, their experiment could also provide the scientific understanding to enable spacecraft to travel longer distances and to refuel in orbit.

Boeing has rediscovered just how hard space can be in recent months, as its ambitious Starliner program has been repeatedly sidelined by lingering technical issues. However, the company announced at a press conference Monday that it is confident that it will have those issues ironed out by next March and will be ready to test its reusable crew capsule with live NASA astronauts aboard.

“Based on the current plans, we’re anticipating that we’re going to be ready with the spacecraft in early March. That does not mean we have a launch date in early March,” Boeing VP and Starliner manager Mark Nappi stressed during the event, per CNBC. “We’re now working with NASA – Commercial Crew program and [International Space Station] – and ULA on potential launch dates based on our readiness ... we’ll work throughout the next several weeks and see where we can get fit in and then then we’ll set a launch date.”

The Starliner has been in development for nearly fifteen years now, first being unveiled in 2010. It's Boeing's entry into the reusable crew capsule race, which is currently being dominated by SpaceX with its Dragon 2. 

The two companies were actually awarded grants at the same time in 2014 to develop systems capable of transporting astronauts to the ISS with a contract deadline of 2017. By 2016, Boeing's first scheduled launch had already been pushed from 2017 to late 2018. By April 2018, NASA was tempering its launch expectations to between 2019 and 2020.

The first uncrewed orbital test flight in late 2019 failed to reach orbit, which further delayed the project. NASA, however, did agree to pay for a second uncrewed test in August of 2021. That test never made it off the launch pad due to a "valve issue." Fixing that problem took until the following May when the follow-up test flight completed successfully.

The two subsequent preparatory attempts for a crewed flight, did not. The scheduled July 21 flight was scrubbed after faults were discovered in both the parachute system and wiring harnesses. Which brings us to March, which is when Boeing is confident its Starliner will successfully shuttle a pair of NASA astronauts to the ISS for a weeklong stay. To date, Boeing is estimated to have incurred around $1.5 billion in project cost overruns.   

Let’s end the week with a bit of good news for our future as a species on this floating ball of dirt. Brimstone, a major player in the industrial decarbonization field, just announced that its decarbonized cement has passed a crucial third-party strength test, bringing the dream of net-zero construction one step closer to reality.

The company’s proprietary portland cement met the American Society for Testing and Materials' (ASTM) C150 standards for building products, indicating that it can do everything traditionally-made portland cement can do with regard to construction projects. This is a big deal, as portland cement is not some niche product, as it comprises 95 percent of all cement produced in the United States. Chances are, if you are in a building made from cement, you’re surrounded by ordinary portland cement (OPC).

Brimstone says the carbon-negative cement is identical in “all respects” to OPC, including performance, safety, and overall chemical composition. The only difference is that it wasn't manufactured using the conventional, carbon-intensive methods. The company also notes that its “strength, workability, durability, and compatibility with steel and other materials” make it an ideal choice to “build structures safely and efficiently.”

There are plenty of other alternative building materials out there, but this is actual portland cement, so adopting Brimstone’s product won’t force “millions of construction workers to get retrained to use a new material,” according to CEO Cody Finke. He also touts that the product will be “equal or lower cost to other options” and will “slash carbon emissions.”

Being as this is the same industry-standard portland cement used for over 150 years, the company won’t have to jump the usual regulatory hurdles when developing a new building material, with the company boasting “the same buildings, bridges and roads being built today can be built tomorrow without carbon.”

How did it manage such a feat? Conventional cement production involves heating limestone to ultra-high temperatures, which releases large quantities of CO2 embedded in the rock. Brimstone went with carbon-free calcium silicate rock, so there’s no CO2 to release. As a matter of fact, the process generates trace magnesium compounds that absorb pre-existing CO2 from the air, making this concrete carbon-negative.

It’s no secret that traditional cement is a major contributor to the world’s climate problem, as cement production accounts for 7.5 percent of global CO2 emissions and 5.5 percent of total greenhouse gas emissions. All told, the construction and real estate industries account for 40 percent of global carbon emissions, so this step toward net-zero construction could drastically reduce that number.

Of course, this is a brand-new manufacturing process and Brimstone’s cement has yet to be widely adopted by the industry. The company hopes to scale up production so they can sell its portland cement for the same price as conventionally-made materials. Brimstone’s constructing a manufacturing plant in Reno, Nevada and has already started negotiating with construction companies, real estate companies and various corporate partners. 

In 2022, NASA chose Axiom Space and Collins Aerospace to develop next-gen spacesuits meant to finally replace the decades-old gear astronauts are using to this day. Now, the space agency has expanded their existing contracts and is giving them $5 million apiece to design and develop new spacesuits not included in the original orders they received. 

NASA has ordered a spacesuit from Axiom Space meant for use in Low Earth Orbit, specifically for spacewalks outside the International Space Station. The original contract for Axiom was for a spacewalking system that the Artemis III astronauts will wear on the lunar surface when they land on the moon. Axiom unveiled a prototype for its original order in March, showcasing a suit with joints that allow wearers to move around with ease and a helmet equipped with a light and an HD camera. 

Meanwhile, Collins Aerospace has received an order for a spacesuit meant for use on the lunar surface. The company was previously contracted to develop a spacewalking suit for use outside the ISS. In other words, each company has received a new order that mirrors the other's previous one. Lara Kearney, manager of the Extravehicular Activity and Human Surface Mobility Program at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, said:

"These task orders position NASA for success should additional capabilities become necessary or advantageous to NASA’s missions as the agency paves the way for deep space exploration and commercialization of low Earth orbit. Using this competitive approach we will enhance redundancy, expand future capabilities, and further invest in the space economy."

Redundancy is an important part of space tech development. In this case, spacesuits meant for the same purpose developed by two different companies could ensure that astronauts will have something to use if the other one fails for any reason. That said, the new task orders are for the companies' initial "design modification work" — they're essentially modifying their original suits for a new purpose — and NASA wants to see them first before committing to their continued development. Axiom told SpaceNews that if NASA decides to push through with the new spacesuits' development, the full order will cost the agency $142 million over four years.

The last remnants of Virgin Orbit have been offloaded. Firefly Aerospace has agreed to buy the defunct satellite-launch company’s remaining assets for $3.8 million. Firefly’s purchase included the leftovers from a May auction that cleaned out most of the company’s possessions, netting $36 million in Virgin Orbit’s bankruptcy proceedings. Firefly’s purchase was reported in June 15th filings in a Delaware bankruptcy court (viaSpaceNews).

Firefly Aerospace’s purchased assets include inventory at two of Virgin Orbit’s former Long Beach, CA, production facilities. Among them are engines and other components for Virgin’s LauncherOne vehicles and two additional engines stored at a Mojave, CA, test site. At last month’s auction, Virgin Orbit said it “deemed it in the best interests of the Debtors’ estates” to hang onto the remaining assets for the time being. Negotiations reportedly continued afterward, leading to this week’s sale to Firefly.

Once-promising Virgin Orbit, a spinoff of Virgin Galactic specializing in the air-launching of satellite rockets from a modified Boeing 747, saw its stock nosedive in the months leading up to its downfall. Only four of the company’s six flights between 2020 and 2023 were successful, and its most recent attempt earlier this year reportedly failed because of a dislodged $100 fuel filter. The company began an “operational pause” in March as a last-gasp attempt to find new investors before filing for bankruptcy protection and finally throwing in the towel a couple of weeks later.

Meanwhile, Firefly Aerospace, based in Cedar Park, TX, is developing a launch vehicle called Firefly Alpha. The two-stage, liquid-fueled rocket is designed to be launched from various sites. Its first attempt failed in 2021, but the rocket had a partially successful orbital launch the following year. The company expects to launch a third time for the US Space Force.

Saturn’s moon Enceladus has phosphorous. The finding came from recently analyzed icy particles emitted from the natural satellite’s ocean plumes, detected by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft. The discovery means Enceladus has all the chemical building blocks for life as we know it on Earth. “This is the final one saying, ‘Yes, Enceladus does have all of the ingredients that typical Earth life would need to live and that the ocean there is habitable for life as we know it,” Morgan Cable, astrobiology chemist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, toldThe Wall Street Journal.

Cassini, which plunged to its demise in Saturn’s atmosphere in 2017, collected data by passing through Enceladus’ continually erupting geysers at its south pole and Saturn’s E ring, also containing escaped particles from the moon. Beneath its icy crust, Enceladus has a warm subsurface ocean, over 30 miles deep, enveloping the entire moon. The eruptions at its south pole spit icy particles into space, allowing research crafts like Cassini to study the ocean’s chemical makeup without taking a dip or even touching the moon’s surface.

NASA

Data from previous missions indicated the moon had all of life’s essential building blocks — carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen and sulfur — except for phosphorous. A team of planetary scientists found nine grains containing phosphate (phosphorous bound to oxygen atoms) among around 1,000 samples initially overlooked by researchers. The tiny amount detected reflects phosphorous’ scarcity. “Of the six bioessential elements, phosphorus is by far the rarest in the cosmos,” said Frank Postberg, the study’s lead author.

Of course, Enceladus containing the requirements for life doesn’t necessarily mean life exists on the moon. “The next step is to figure out if indeed it is inhabited, and it is going to take a future mission to answer that question,” Cable said. “But this is exciting, because it makes Enceladus an even more compelling destination to go and do that kind of search.” NASA will get a chance to learn more when the Dragonfly mission heads for Saturn’s moon Titan in 2027; another proposed mission could arrive at Enceladus around 2050. In addition, the James Webb Space Telescope may help further to illuminate the chemical breakdown of Enceladus’ warm subterranean ocean.

Boeing's Starliner was supposed to fly its first crewed mission to the International Space Station (ISS) on July 21st, but a couple of technical issues has kept the company from pushing through with its plan. Together with NASA, the aerospace corporation has announced that it's delaying the CST-100 Starliner spacecraft's Crew Flight Test date yet again to address the risks presented by two new problems Boeing engineers have detected. 

The first issue lies with the spacecraft's parachute system. Boeing designed the Starliner capsule to float back down to Earth with the help of three parachutes. According to The New York Times, the company discovered that parts of the lines connecting the system to the capsule don't have the ability to tolerate the spacecraft's load in case only two of the three parachutes are deployed correctly. Since the capsule will be carrying human passengers back to our planet, the company has to look at every aspect of its spacecraft to ensure their safety as much as possible. Boeing expects to do another parachute testing before it schedules another launch attempt.

In addition to its parachute problem, Boeing is also reassessing the use of a certain tape adhesive to wrap hundreds of feet of wiring. Apparently, the tape could be flammable, so engineers are looking to use another kind of wrapping for areas of the spacecraft with the greatest fire risk. 

The Crew Flight Test is the last hurdle the company has to overcome to regularly start ferrying astronauts to the ISS. NASA chose Boeing as one of its commercial crew partners along with SpaceX, but it has fallen behind its peer over the years. The Starliner has completed uncrewed flights in the past as part of the tests it has to go through for crewed missions. But SpaceX already has 10 crewed flights under its belt, with the first one taking place way back in 2020. In addition to taking astronauts to the ISS and bringing human spaceflight back to American soil since the last space shuttle launch in 2011, SpaceX has also flown civilians to space.

That said, NASA and Boeing remain optimistic about Starliner's future. In a statement, NASA Commercial Crew Program manager Steve Stich said:

"Crew safety remains the highest priority for NASA and its industry providers, and emerging issues are not uncommon in human spaceflight especially during development. If you look back two months ago at the work we had ahead of us, it’s almost all complete. The combined team is resilient and resolute in their goal of flying crew on Starliner as soon as it is safe to do so. If a schedule adjustment needs to be made in the future, then we will certainly do that as we have done before. We will only fly when we are ready."

The best kitchen gadgets make certain cooking tasks easier without taking over your drawers. What’s more, some of the most useful ones won’t break the bank. All the recommendations on this list are either products I use currently, or more affordable versions of something I decided to splurge on after years of cooking. Not every item is essential, but they’re all things I’ve come to appreciate when I need to get dinner on the table quickly.

Victorinox Honing Steel

There are few things worse than cooking with a dull chef’s knife. It’s unsafe and a waste of time. You need a way to maintain your blades, and a good place to start is with a honing steel. Contrary to popular belief, a honing steel won’t sharpen your knives; what it will do is realign the blade. With consistent use of one, you can get away with actually sharpening your blades once every six months to a year. Almost any model will do the job, but for an affordable option, consider the 10-inch Swiss Classic Honing Steel from Victorinox. It comes with a comfortable handle that makes mastering the motion of honing a knife easy. Best of all, it costs less than $30.

Lavatools Javelin

If you cook meat, you need to get yourself an instant-read thermometer. It will take all the guesswork out of braising, searing and roasting animal protein, making those dishes safer to eat and more delicious.

There are plenty of affordable instant-read thermometers out there, but I like the $27 Lavatools Javelin. It’s not the fastest thermometer on the market – taking about four to five seconds to deliver a temperature reading – but it’s accurate to within a single degree Fahrenheit. The Javelin is also magnetic, so you can stick it on your fridge or knife holder for easy storage. Best of all, the casing is IP65-certified against water and features an antimicrobial coating Lavatools claims will inhibit 99.9 percent of pathogen growth. Oh, and you can buy the Javelin in nine different colors, including a cheerful “Wasabi” green hue.

OXO Good Grips Food Scale

After an instant-read thermometer, one of the few items I think everyone should have in their kitchen is a food scale. I know what you’re thinking: aren’t food scales only useful for baking? The answer is no. They will streamline every aspect of your cooking by allowing you to do away with measuring cups, while also giving you more accurate measurements overall. A scale is also essential if you’re calorie counting or tracking your macros.

After trying a few different scales, I like this OXO Good Grips stainless steel model. At under $60, the OXO model is a bit pricier than other food scales but it comes with a few features that set it apart. The first is a handy pull-out display that makes it easy to read the scale even when you have a large bowl on top. Plus, it also comes with an imperial/metric toggle. It’s handsome, too, with a design that’s easy to clean.

Prepworks by Progressive Magnetic Measuring Spoons

I’ll admit, sometimes it’s not practical to use a food scale to sort out ingredients, and you need to turn to a measuring spoon. After owning a few different models over the years, I’ve come to swear by magnetic ones. They’re easier to separate and subsequently easier to clean. Prepworks by Progressive makes a thoughtfully designed set where each spoon features both a round and narrow end. The latter is perfect for measuring spices since it can fit in most jars.

Microplane Professional Series Grater

If you’re like me, you probably bought a box grater at the start of your cooking journey only to find out it’s terrible. I’m here to tell you there’s a better way to grate cheese and zest limes, and it’s called a Microplane. There are a few different variants, but they all offer the same advantages over a box grater. Being smaller, a Microplane is easier to maneuver over bowls and other dishes. As for what model to buy, I like the Professional Series line for its wide blade and clean design. For zesting, you want to go for the “Fine” model. The “Ribbon” variant is also great if you want to shave chocolate and cheese.

Zwilling Handheld Vacuum Sealer Machine

In the last few years, vacuum sealers have become affordable enough that most home cooks can add one to their kitchen. They’re a great way to reduce waste since meat and produce stored in airless bags will last longer. The right one can also help you reduce plastic waste. Zwilling makes an affordable handheld model that supports an ecosystem of reusable bags and containers that are also on the budget-friendly end of the spectrum. The bags are freezer- and dishwasher-safe, so you can easily sanitize them after storing meat in them. The only thing to complain about the Zwilling vacuum sealer is that it charges over micro-USB(!).

Zulay Silicone Utensil Rest

Before moving to Portugal, my neighbor gifted my partner and I a silicone utensil rest. Since then, this simple tool has been an indispensable part of my kitchen arsenal. Once you start cooking at the stove, it helps to have all your tools right in front of you. A utensil rest helps with that while reducing the amount of cleanup you have to do afterward. Once you’re done, you can just toss it into the dishwasher. Best of all, you can buy one for about $10.

Cuisinart Electric Kettle

While an electric kettle is nether essential for cooking or preparing tea and coffee, it can make both those tasks faster, safer and easier. You can spend a lot to buy a kettle with multiple temperature settings, but unless you’re a tea connoisseur, I don’t think that’s a feature most people need. Cuisinart’s JK-17P1 boils water faster, looks nice on a countertop, and best of all, won’t break the bank.

Crate and Barrel Salt Cellar

Shortly after reading Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat, and learning the importance of salting dishes from within, I bought my first box of kosher salt. I didn’t have a good way to store it at the time, so I used a small bowl whenever I went to cook. The problem with that approach was that the salt would dry out if I left the bowl out. A salt cellar solves that by adding a lid to the bowl. Crate and Barrel makes a nifty (and attractive) acacia wood model that comes with an attached lid so that the two parts never get lost or separated.