Kitchen Basics

So, you have no idea what to put in your kitchen. Or maybe your kitchen is full of stuff that you have no idea what to do with. Either way, you need some help getting it all together. After all, if you're like me, you spend most of your free time in your kitchen. It's not just a kitchen. It's also a dining room, a social hall and bar, a mail room, a science lab, and sometimes a coat closet.

Using the kitchen for its main function, however, can be daunting when you have no idea what the heck is going on, or how anything is supposed to be used. Hopefully by the end of this, you’ll have a good idea of where to start, what all those gadgets do, and if they just look cool, or if you really do need them.

Let’s get started.

A Fire Extinguisher

First on the list is a fire extinguisher. Go down to your local hardware store and find a small, kitchen sized one that is rated for grease fires. It might seem silly, and you might never use it, but safety first, always. When you get home, find a place that is easy to reach. No shoving it to the back of the cupboard under the sink. Put it next to the trash bin, or some come with mounting hardware to put it on the side of a cabinet. Wherever it goes, you need to be able to get to it fast and easy. As soon as it has a home, pull out your phone, and find the expiration date for the extinguisher in your calendar app, and set an alarm a week early to replace it.

When you do get the new one, take the old one down to an empty parking lot or out back behind the dumpster, and try it. Use it. Figure out how it works. It’s expired, or about to be, and you already have your new one. Learning how an extinguisher works with the old one makes it less intimidating. I don’t recommend doing this every time, but a refresher every now and then can’t hurt either. Just remember the chemicals inside are meant to put out fires, and while being not on fire is good, only use on a person in case of an actual emergency.

One Good Pot and One Good Pan

I have more on this coming, but one good pot, with a lid and one good pan will definitely get you started. They don’t have to be fancy. You can go down to your second hand store, and start there. Take dry spaghetti with you. Put that uncooked spaghetti in the pot, and only about one quarter of the spaghetti stick should be poking out. For the pan, make sure you can fit both your hands in the bottom. They don’t have to spread out, but if you can fit both your palms in at least, that’s a decent sized pan to get started.

For both of these, make sure the handles are on tight and don’t wobble or wiggle. If there’s non-stick coating, make sure there’s no scratches in it, and that it’s not peeling. Teflon is not very delicious. Check for chips or cracks in the sides and bottoms. If it feels good, then you’re all set.

That being said, if you want to go to the store to get one brand new, by all means. I still use the same guides as above, and once you get more familiar with your kitchen, and what you want out of your cookware, you can start to be more specific about what you're looking for.

To keep the life of your pots and pans the longest they can be, hand wash them. Yeah, it sucks, especially if something is stuck on, but the high heat and relative dish on dish violence of the dishwasher can dramatically shorten the life of any no-stick coating your pots or pans may have.

A Chef’s Knife

When you’re starting out, a twenty five dollar chef knife is just as good as the super fancy five hundred dollar chef knives. Don’t think you have to get something ridiculously expensive right away. Those color coded knife sets with the slip covers at Target work just as well. That also means they’re going to be just as sharp, and that’s a good thing. A dull knife is a dangerous knife. Dull knives can slip and cut your fingers or your hand much easier than sharp knives. Most sets nowadays come with a honing steel, or you can get a sharpener separately. The more you use your knife, the better you’ll be able to tell when it needs a quick pick-me-up, but if you haven’t given your blade a little TLC in the last month, pull that sharpener out the next time you pull that knife out.

Keeping your knife clean will also help it stay sharper longer. Handwashing it as soon as you’re done cutting, so the oils and acids from the food don’t stay on the metal, and putting it away will help preserve the life of your cutlery. Don’t put your chef knife in the dishwasher. While technically it is dishwasher safe, all the banging around from the spraying water will shorten its lifespan dramatically.

A Cutting Board

There are two approaches to cutting boards: wood and plastic. I have, and use, both. I have a nice wood block cutting board that I use for the majority of my chopping and cutting and preparing in the kitchen. Wood tends to be more forgiving to your knives, and while it isn’t self healing, will generally not show the tiny cuts and scrapes too much. My plastic cutting boards I pull out for two things, raw meat and red beets. Wood is porous, and I don’t want my wood cutting board absorbing anything bad from the raw meat, so I use plastic instead, which can go straight into the sink. Red beets just stain everything under the sun, including my cutting board, and so I put a plastic board down for that as well.

For the same reason that I don’t put raw meat on my wood board, I don’t put it in the sink either. If I need to wash it, I either scrub it quickly without soap, or I pour a small pile of kosher salt in the middle of my board, and then cut a lemon in half, and use the cut side of the lemon to turn the salt into a scrub and then rinse it very well. Once it’s dry, I have a food-safe oil to rehydrate the wood, and we’re good to go. If that sounds like too much work, there’s nothing wrong with sticking to plastic cutting boards. They’re easy to clean, and won’t be bothered by sitting in the sink, or coming into contact with soap.

I do not recommend glass cutting boards. If that glass chips, whatever you’re cutting is now contaminated with glass shards and has to be tossed. It could also chip your knife in a bad way, and that’s no good either, though knives are fixable. Just stick with plastic or wood.

A Wooden Spoon

No-stick pots and pans are temperamental. They don’t like metal utensils. The metal scratches the no-stick coating and then it gets in your food and that’s not good eats. A good wooden spoon will make you the finest pasta sauce and the best scrambled eggs and some delicious other goodies along the way. Like the cutting board, they don’t do well with prolonged exposure to the sink, but unlike the cutting board, they are significantly cheaper and easier to replace. Also like a cutting board, if you don’t want to hassle with the care of wood, plastic will work just as well. A spoon rest of some kind, while not necessary, is recommended to catch all those drips from spreading all over the counter.

A Spatula

There’s two kinds of utensils I’ve seen called spatulas. There’s the wide flat ones used to flip stuff like pancakes and burgers, or to get the corner piece of lasagna out of the pan, and there’s the smaller, slightly curved ones used to scrape down the sides of a bowl when baking or making frosting. For the flat, flippy kind, see the wooden spoon suggestions above. For the baking one, go with silicone. I also use my silicone one when scraping out Tupperware that’s been in the fridge for too long and has turned into a science experiment. Unlike some other materials, silicone is not porous, so I don’t have to worry about any spores transferring to my silicone scraper, and it can go straight into the dishwasher.

Measuring Spoons

There are so many styles of measuring spoons and measuring cups out there. I have a set of ceramic octopi from an eighth of a teaspoon to a tablespoon. While they are truly adorable, and I would absolutely buy them again, they are highly impractical for actually measuring. As far as what is good, this is where you probably have the most choice in your basic tools. There are metal spoons, silicone, ceramic, or plastic. There are glass ones, all-in-one styles with sliding measures in one spoon, or cylinders where you pull and push to the right measurement. There are stacking ones, and sets on rings, sets that are loose and sets that are color coded. All of these are perfectly acceptable, as long as you remember that you have to wash it. If it looks like it’s going to be a pain in the butt to wash, it probably is.

This is also one place where more is possibly better. If you’re not good with fractions, get the set that has the extra in between measurements. Normally, I’m not going to say to get the larger set when the smaller one will do, but when it comes to measuring, it’s worth it. That three quarters measuring cup has saved me a lot of headaches trying to figure out portioning and math. This is assuming US measurements, of course. I actually can’t say I know what a set of metric measuring spoons looks like. Still get the weird in between sizes if they’re available. Why do math if you don’t have to.

A Mixing Bowl

Just like measuring spoons, mixing bowls come in all shapes and sizes. They also come in sets. If you’re only getting one, get one that is big enough to hold double your usual cooking portions. For me, it’s just me and my partner, so my mixing bowl holds approximately four portions, two for now and two for leftovers, or seconds, depending on how hungry we are. That also happens to be approximately a batch of pasta, with add-ins like vegetables or proteins, or a large entree salad. I have glass mixing bowls so I can see what’s happening at the bottom of the bowl.

Glass will also cool down a lot quicker than plastic. Glass and metal are conductors. They will move energy, in this case heat. Plastic and ceramic are insulators. They will store that energy, hold onto it. So if you want to have a mixing or serving bowl that will keep your food warmer, get plastic or ceramic. If you want to keep whatever is inside cooler, or have it cool down quicker, get metal or glass. Also, just like the measuring spoons, whatever it is that you buy, you have to wash.

Soap and Sponge

All that talk of washing, and what to use to actually do it? Soap is soap is soap. Get whatever brand of dish soap you like best. Everyone has their own preferences, and some brands claim to have magical powers and some don’t. I’m not going to take the time to figure it out. I just get the one that smells good to me. When cleaning, what’s most important is the soap itself and hot water. I have a pad shaped sponge and I have a brush. I use them both for different things, but their purpose is the same: to agitate the food particles so the soap can get in there and do its job. When hand washing dishes, there’s not much to it. It’s really just patience and elbow grease. I do mean hot water though. Turn the water as hot as you can stand it. It should be hotter than a bath, almost hotter than a hot tub on your hands. Don’t burn yourself, because that’s not fun, but when I’m done doing the hand dishes, my hands are definitely pink and warm to the touch.

If you have to stop part way through because it’s too hot on your hands, that’s okay. Take a break and come back later. And don’t forget, your sponge and your sink are tools too. When you’re done with your dishes, make sure you clean them out as well.

With this, you should be able to get started. There are definitely more complex things to have, and that list is coming. But for the absolute basics to get you started, especially on a budget, this should serve you well.

If you have questions, or if there’s something you want to see, leave a comment and let me know. Until next time.