A kitchen witch harnesses the energies of the ingredients they use, imbuing their creations with magic that will strengthen those who eat them. This is a path full of learning, experimentation, and intuition.
What Is a Kitchen Witch?
A kitchen witch is someone who focuses their magic on the act of cooking and preparing herbal concoctions such as teas, elixirs, bitters, and other remedies. The kitchen is a sacred place for this type of witch, and they pay close attention to the ingredients (and the quality of those ingredients) that they use in their cooking, often researching the energetic or alchemical qualities of the ingredients as well.
Very often, kitchen witch's focus will extend beyond the kitchen, into caring for the rest of their home in an equally intentional way, though that practice veers somewhat into hedge witchery or hearth witchery.
Who Practices Kitchen Witchery?
Kitchen witchery can be practiced by anyone, regardless of faith, location, financial resources, age, or any combination of the above. Usually, kitchen witches are enthusiastic cooks, finding a measure of peace and tranquility when they're working in the kitchen.
Kitchen witches also tend to obsess a tiny bit over the ingredients they use. Many are your typical "foodies," experimenting with herbs and spices and different cuisines, visiting the farmers' market, and generally eating in season, since fresher foods have more of the energy kitchen witches are trying to harness in their cooking.
Kitchen witches can be secular or religious, as kitchen witchery works beautifully either integrated into your faith or completely separate from faith, depending on what feels right to you.
If you have a large recipe or cookbook collection and feel like cooking time is magical, and that the love that goes into preparing food makes it taste better... you just might be a kitchen witch.
How to Get Started With Kitchen Witchery
If you feel pulled to the path of a kitchen witch, it's easy to get started. The important thing about this path is to pay attention to the ingredients you're using in your cooking. Research both their nutritional properties and their alchemical/magical properties. Once you start learning these things, you'll start to get ideas about dishes to prepare either for yourself or your loved ones, based on things they might be going through, either health-wise or emotionally. In this way, kitchen witchery overlaps somewhat with green witchery.
More than anything, this path is about paying attention, and about empathy. It's about seeing yourself and the people in your life fully, and then working to support them through the foods, beverages, and remedies you prepare. So one of the very first steps will be taking time, in peace and silence, to figure out how you can help.
Intention is a major part of most witchcraft paths, and the same is true of kitchen witchery. Focus on the feeling you want someone to have when they consume the food you made for them. Do you want them to feel loved? To feel a sense of peace or safety? To feel powerful?
There are herbs and other ingredients that have these qualities. Adding them to the food you make can provide this energy, but focusing your intention, concentrating, putting your full thought into what you're trying to accomplish as you add each ingredient adds an extra burst of energy.
Keep learning. Keep experimenting and keep cooking. Cook with intention, focus, and empathy. You can begin down this path whenever you decide the time is right.
Kitchen Witch Tools
A kitchen witch's tools are the very same ones used in cooking and preparing food. There are generally two schools of thought on this. On one hand, there are some kitchen witches who keep a separate set of special spoons, pans, or bowls that they only use when performing kitchen magic. On the other side are witches who believe all cooking is magic, so their everyday utensils and pans are their tools. There is no wrong way, and each kitchen witch decides what works best for them.
Many witches also keep a grimoire; for kitchen witches, this is usually a recipe book they've put together over time of their favorite recipes and the intention and purpose behind it. They may also use this to compile their research about food correspondences and the results they've had in using certain ingredients.
Of primary importance to any kitchen witch is the stove, which calls back to the hearth of old, which is the center of the home and the center of the kitchen witch's practice.
That's really all you need, but if you feel called to add things like crystals, or bells, or statues of deities, then add those things. Listen to your intuition and allow yourself to experiment.
Kitchen Altars
Altars are often part of a kitchen witch's practice, but not always. An area on a counter or shelf set up with your favorite spoons, your grimoire, a candle, and other meaningful objects can be an altar. If you participate in ancestor or deity worship, you might want to include a small bowl or other vessel to leave offerings, as well as a bell or besom to cleanse the energy of your kitchen before you start cooking.
You might also want to add your favorite herbs or oils to your kitchen altar, saying a soft blessing over them or just focusing on the feeling of peace or love you want the people you cook for to feel when you add these ingredients.
And... if you're not the altar type? Then don't worry about having one. There is no right or wrong here.
What's the Deal With Kitchen Witch Dolls?
Kitchen witch dolls likely originated in either Scandinavia or Germany, and they're considered to be good luck charms for the home. According to various legends, they can ward off evil spirits and keep kitchen mishaps from happening; from one producer of kitchen witch dolls:
Pots won't boil over
Breads will rise
Jellies will jell
Eggs won't stick to the pan
Cakes won't fall
Coffee won't taste bitter
Gravies won't lump
Milk won't curdle.
While that seems to be a lot to expect from a doll, every bit of help is appreciated.
One additional thing to note about kitchen witch dolls is that it's generally considered bad luck to buy one for yourself; you should be gifted one. So if you want a witch doll for your kitchen, it might pay to start hinting around to friends and family.
Magic, From the Sanctity of Your Kitchen
Kitchen witchery is a satisfying, constantly evolving path that allows witches to learn more about themselves, their loved ones, and the innate magic of everything around them. Try a recipe or two, do some research, and see what feels right, and you'll soon be travelling this rewarding path in a way that's uniquely yours.
