If anyone dared create a survey detailing the top reasons for sham weddings, getting a full kitchen setup would be number one. Every year more gadgets and gizmos hit the market to streamline and revolutionize the kitchen experience.
It’s enough to make you wonder how anyone got any cooking done in the past. The secret, of course, is to boil down all the hyperbole to find the kitchen must-haves.
It’s fine to want a fully equipped kitchen capable of making even the most complicated and delicate dish with simplicity, but you can fix a lot of food with a few rudimentary tools and know-how.
The following list sets out these crucial corner-stones for any kitchen.
Kitchen Must-Haves
Everything in the kitchen should be multi-use. That’s because dedicated single-task devices take up more space than they are worth.
Unless you really love that one thing. Even so, for every hot dog and bun warming toaster device, there is a pan that lets you do that and cook anything else you can apply heat to.
A chef’s kitchen should provide you with the tools to be creative and build and express through food.
1. Quality Knives
It’s arguable how many knives you really need to make a kitchen functional.
A full knife set offers more angles, but often they offer things that aren’t essential. If you had to choose between a full set of knives in an attractive wooden block or just a few higher quality knives, the quality wins.
You only need four objects out of a full block set to do everything you want to do in a kitchen.
First up is the classic chef’s knife. This marvel of the utensil world gets its name from its near omni-purpose status. It offers heavy chopping power, delicate filleting potential, the ability to mince, and edge to trim all in one go.
Paying more on your single chef’s knife than everything else in your kitchen is both reasonable and not unheard of.
Next, you need a paring knife. This offers an easier hand-held experience for manipulating fruits and vegetables while lowering the risk of cutting into yourself.
A serrated bread knife rounds out the knife trifecta. This offers an edge for sawing through things that can’t take too much pressure.
The fourth object isn’t a knife but a knife sharpener. The smaller zip-style sharpeners are easier to use than the old sharpening steel but either one gets the job done.
2. Cutting Boards
Without a great cutting board, a fine set of knives will make scratch up your countertop and leave your kitchen a disease trap.
You don’t need the heaviest duty or highest costing cutting board to get the job done, but you do need to know what to look for. You also need two cutting boards, minimum. It’s possible to get everything out of a single board, but it’s really not worth it in the long run.
The surface of the cutting board matters for preventing cross-contamination. A hard, non-porous surface provides a better cutting surface that gets less marred by knife cuts.
Solid hardwoods and bamboo are also dishwasher safe, making them easier to fully clean.
Your fresh vegetables and non-cooked ingredients should be prepped first or on a separate board from meats.
If you go the route of a veggie board and a meat board, look for something nylon or plastic for the meat board. These lightweight boards make it easy to transport to your cooking surface and clean up quickly. They also tend to get the most knife marks on them.
Replace a cutting board when the surface looks ragged. Bacteria love to hide in the nooks and valleys of a chopped up board.
3. Fine Pans
Now that you’ve sliced up all of your ingredients with precision and an eye towards food-safety, you need something to cook in.
There are a lot of different options in pans. Cast iron is a popular, time-honored, choice that provides a lot of strength and versatility. They can be put on the stove or in the oven.
However, cleaning cast iron is rough and the heavy nature doesn’t work for everyone.
Copper coating, Teflon, and a lot of other innovations have shaped the competition between pans for years.
Currently, the best value for your kitchen set is the ceramic non-stick. Check out this guide to see why these newer innovations (based on ancient processes) offer the best of all worlds.
4. Power Cooker
The power cooker is a bit of a cheat in the multi-tasking kitchen. It’s more of a gadget than anything else on this list, but its a gadget with legs.
A power cooker is a discrete unit providing rice-cooking, pressure cooking, and slow cooking options. As they are electric, this gives you extra range-top real estate when dealing with big holiday meals.
5. Thermometers
Finally, no kitchen should be without a set of thermometers for checking food temps. One thermometer doesn’t really do, as you want to tell both internal and external temps on foods to be safe and delicious.
An infrared thermometer helps you control the temperature of sauces, water, and pans.
Use an internal probe thermometer to check the temperatures of meats. Always remember to check three different locations on large items like roasts and turkeys to get an accurate average.
Fit for Every Cook
After acquiring everything on this list of kitchen must-haves, you can branch out. It’s your kitchen, make it everything you want it to be.
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