Setting Up a Kitchen
Food journalist and cookbook author Mark Bittman offers some advice for the beginning cook who is just starting to select the equipment and utensils needed for a fully functioning kitchen. Even a seasoned chef, however, may find some of his tips about knives, pots and pans, baking equipment, and a variety of other cooking implements to be useful.
Setting Up a Kitchen
By Mark Bittman
You can spend thousands of dollars on kitchen equipment, or you can spend a couple of hundred bucks and be done with it. If you’ve been lucky enough to inherit hand-me-downs from friends or relatives, you may already have most of what you need.
In any case, it’s worth cooking for a while with minimal equipment so that you can determine your priorities. If you bake bread, you will need different equipment than you do for baking cookies; if you make stews, you’ll need different equipment than you will for grilling.
If you cook a lot, ultimately you’ll want a lot of equipment, but when you begin there’s no way to know that. Think of a beginning artist, who doesn’t rush out and buy oils, an easel, brushes, watercolors, pastels, pencils, and so on, but takes it a few things at a time.
With that in mind, here’s what I think it’s best to start with.
Knives
Knives are the most important cooking expenditure, although not the largest. Buy knives with blades of a high carbon-stainless steel alloy for hardness and durability. A plastic handle is probably preferable to wood, because it isn’t damaged by soaking. If you’re careful not to let the knife bang around, you can put it in the dishwasher. And if you keep your knives sharp (you’ll need a sharpening steel), they’ll keep you happy for the rest of your life.
An 8-in (20-cm) chef’s knife is the all-purpose blade for chopping and slicing. You can use it even for carving, until you buy a carving knife. It needn’t cost more than $30, although you can spend more if you like. Buy one that feels good in your hand, and move to a six-inch or ten-inch knife if your hands are small or large.
A couple of paring knives are necessary for peeling and trimming. Again, buy those that feel good in your hand, but don’t spend more than a few dollars on each. And unless you only eat presliced bread, buy a long, sturdy bread knife with a serrated (notched) edge.
That should hold you for a while. When you get a chance, buy a sharpening steel, a boning knife (to remove bones from chicken), and a carving knife (for roasts). You’ll never need more than that.
Be aware that dull knives are dangerous. They slip off the food you’re cutting and right onto the closest surface, which may be your finger. Although you must be extremely careful with sharp knives—casual contact with the blade cuts—at least they go where you want them to. Respect your knives: Start with good ones, keep them sharp, and they will become your friends.
Pots and pans
Many people are overwhelmed by the choices in pots and pans: cast-iron, nonstick, aluminum, stainless steel, enameled, and copper. But even when money is no object, the most expensive pans are not the best. Many kinds of pans work well, and many of these don’t cost much.
Cast iron or heavy-duty steel (a more contemporary equivalent of cast iron) are the best you can do, if you’re strong of wrist and don’t mind a little heavy lifting. Both are excellent at heat distribution and retention. Clean them correctly—with very little soap—and these pans become virtually nonstick in a short while.
Enamel-coated cast-iron cookware has many of the qualities of heavy-duty steel or plain cast iron. Many people find the coated cookware more attractive, however, although the enamel eventually discolors, wears, and even chips. Even so, these pots have a classic look and are highly functional.
Nonstick pans are a marvel, and inexpensive cast-aluminum pans with nonstick surfaces are the best bargain in cookware. All restaurants use them simply because they work. They are not especially attractive, but they enable you to cook with no fat if you choose to do so, they clean up in a second, and they’re extremely light in weight. Their disadvantage: Nonstick surfaces don’t last long. Cooks wind up replacing these pans every few years.
Stainless steel is highly functional and good looking, although its name is misleading. Stainless steel does in fact stain and it isn’t especially easy to retain its high-gloss, chromelike look through the life of the pan. But stainless steel is a good compromise: It’s generally not super-expensive, it distributes and retains heat well, and it isn’t as heavy as cast iron. And stainless steel with a nonstick surface is, for many people, the best pan of all: Though more expensive than cast aluminum, it’s far better looking.