The recipe thread got me thinking about cooking, and seeing as Christmas is coming up, I need to figure out what nifty new cooking stuff I need. I’d like to hear what kitchen equipment all you dopers have, and what your favorite tools are. I also just wanna yak about cool cooking stuff. We have more than a few cooks out there if I judge by the cooking thread, so let’s go!
I’ll start. I long ago settled on All Clad as my choice of cookware, and have slowly built up a pretty good set. It’s expensive, so it took me a few years. About the only thing I really want now is something between my 2 quart saucepan and my 3.5 quart saucepan. Seems like one is always too big, and the other too small.
I like Henckel’s knives, and could use a few more of those. I have about half and half Henckel’s and Chicago Cutlery (from my college days.) I make my SO use the Chicago Cutlery Chef’s knife when I’m mad at him. This way, I can punish him, and he doesn’t even realize it.
What else? I’ve considered buying a Mandoline. Anyone have one of these? Do you use it often? I’m looking for something convenient for small jobs. Any large job would be done with the food processor.
Other things I thought I’d never need but now I can’t live without:
Kitchen Scale : WAY easier to measure stuff out with a scale than with measuring cups. I wish all recipes listed ingredients by weight rather than by volume.
Insta read thermometer: Essential for knowing when meat and bread is perfectly cooked.
Instead of the 3-quart All-Clad saucepan, I opted for the one that’s the same size but has the little handle on each side (not the one long handle).
It’s become my Default Pot. I use it every day. I bought the steamer attachment for it. I bought the same pot in a 4-quart size, but it doesn’t get nearly the same use that 3-quarter gets.
Favorite tools…well, I’m kind of Spartan when it comes to kitchenware. My wife had to talk me into getting a Cuisinart; I used to say that all I needed was a good knife and I could do everything a consarn machine could do. I do have lots of wooden spoons; they’re cheap. And I pick up odd bits of kitchenware in Chinatown. “Long-handled soup strainer for $1.39? Gotta get TWO!”
You’re right about both the insta-read thermometer and the scale. I no longer have to run back out to the grill mid-meal to try to continue cooking blood-dripping cuts of meat.
I am the kitchen gadget queen. I have almost everything in the Pampered Chef catalog. I have a food chopper, slicer, knives, cutting boards, cookie cutters, baking racks, baking pans, bread pans, muffin pans, casserole dishes, baking dishes, jell-o molds, cake molds, a thing to cut the top off of tomatoes, a tool that looks like a hair pick that is used to slice tomatoes evenly, potato peelers, fruit peelers, blenders, mixers, a bread machine… I could go on forever.
I am a sucker for info-mercials but I bought this thing off an info-mercial that I absolutely love. It’s the “Food Saver.” You put your food in these special bags and the machine sucks all the air out of it and keeps the food fresh(er). It’s wonderful. We have all kinds of stuff vacu-sucked in the freezer. It cost about $150 but it was well worth it. I can buy the family size food and divide it up into these bags and I don’t waste as much food.
The only thing I can think of that I need is a couple more sauce pans. I, like you Athena, have a 2 quart and 3.5 quart saucepan and would like something else. And I agree that a thermometer is a must in the kitchen. I always cook my meat to 160 degrees (pork to 180 degrees).
OK, Ike, my next new All-Clad will be a 3 quart short handled All Clad. Have you seen the new All Clads that have a copper core? At least, they’re new to me. Might have to get one o’ them…
Personally, I’d be lost with out my Kitchen Aid mixer. I got it as a gift out of college 15 years ago when I had my own catering business and it’s never led me wrong. I have the larger of the two sizes (5 qt.?). My only complaint is that the lever that lifts and lowers the bowl is a little screwy these days.
Besides a great job of mixing and plenty of power for the heaviest doughs, I also use it to grind meat, extrude pasta, juicing, and sausage stuffing.
I advise anyone who likes to cook and has half a brain to hie themselves over to Professional Cutlery Direct (I think they’re at http://www.cutlery.com ) and pick up a ceramic peeler from Kyocera. It’s fifteen bucks or so, and worth every single penny.
I lost custody of the Henckel knife set in the separation from my wife (she doesn’t even know how to use the steel - I hope she doesn’t cut her fingers off). Bad knives are an abomination and will cut you faster than anything. Good knives are a joy to work with.
I’m starting to reassemble the other cooking utensils I lost in the separation, but I’ll be back up to speed soon (I hope).
Amen to that! We got one for our wedding 10 years ago (from the people I worked with, no less. It must have taken about 20 people chipping in). It is hands down the best thing in our kitchen.
And I can’t say enough about good, sharp knives (and a good sharpening stone set to go with 'em). I can work around cheap pots and pans, but take my Henckel chef’s knife away and I am lost.
I just got my first Wusthof-trident knife 8 months ago, and now I have 5. They are the best knives I’ve ever used. Calphalon cookware is pretty nice, I don’t have any complaints with it.
As far as a mandolin, a good one is expensive, but they are fast and slice neatly, I don’t use mine very often, but it is nice to have.
Pah! I also had a nice selection of AllClad/Wusthof when I was married. I let her have it because A) I’m a much better cook and she needsall the help she can get, B) I don’t have as much room as she does, and C) I don’t really need them.
I have:
an 8" Chicago cutlery chefs knife (30+ yrs old and very
nice, not like the crap today:))
A 10" Wusthof chefs knife(doubles as cleaver)
no name paring/vegetable/detail knife
three commercial grade saute pans 8", 10", 12"
a wok
sauce pans 1.5qt, 3 qt, 5 qt
stock pot 10 qt
a couple 9x13 pans -one with a tight fitting lid
two half sheet pans
That’s it. I bought most of the stuff at the local commercial knife/kitchen supply house in Chicago.
I haven’t found anything I can’t cook yet.
My only power tool in the kitchen is a stick blender- can’t live w/o it!
Four words: Cast Iron Dutch Oven. Nothing makes better stews, soup, pot-roast, or most anything else. Use it on the stove top, in the bake oven, or over a buffalo chip fire if that’s all you have. Keep the heat just right and it’ll make a road-kill lizard taste good.
My donation to the big, family, Thanksgiving pig-out this year will be baked beans (NOT canned) with onions, sliced fat-back, and hot peppers.
ALL my All-Clads have a copper core, and I started buying All-Clad, oh, about five years ago?
Isn’t that the big allure of All-Clad, the “sandwiched” construction? You cook on stainless steel, but the copper interior ensures even heat.
I remember going to Bridge Kitchenware, the famous store for professionals over on the East Side of Manhattan, several years ago. I asked if they carried All-Clad, and they almost threw me into the street. Called it “overpriced,” and tried to convince me to buy all-stainless pots and pans. I suppose if you have a small army of underpaid scullions laboring beneath you, you don’t give a shit if you scorch your pans or not.
Actually, Uke, they have an aluminum core, not copper. Check out http://www.allclad.com.
For some reason, I thought they had come out with a new line with a bit of copper in the core. But the web page says nothing about it. It may be that I visited a store with some off-brand displayed next to the All Clad, and I mistook the off brand for All Clad.
Now THERE’S a Christmas idea. “Honey, I’d like a small army of underpaid scullions. Please? Pretty please?” Think he’d go for it?
Besides my knives, the one item that really carrys its own weight in the kitchen is my variable speed Braun hand blender. It can’t be beat for making salsas. I’m with Ike in the old school belief that there is very little that can’t be done with a fine knife and a cutting board. I was lucky enough to stumble across a chap at the local flea market that carries these inexpensive Spanish Wusthof/Henkles knockoffs. I bought several six piece sets for about $30.00 each and gave them away for Christmas a few years back. The wonderful thing about them is that if I damage one of these knives, I can go back and replacement any one of them for less than $15.00. They hold an edge well and I always have my 12" Wusthof Chef’s blade for the big jobs. At the same flea market I also found the $70.00 Wusthof meat cleaver for $8.00, in perfect condition mind you. Oh yes, and the twin blade Wusthof Lunette (rocking chopper) for $6.00 too. Wusthof is my cutlery of choice, it really puts all others in its class to shame.
As mentioned earlier, a Susi brand metal garlic press is essential. A good set of strainers in all sizes and mesh is also mandatory. As to cookware, it is French Le Cruset and Belgian Descoware enamel pans for me. I find them in the thrift shops for pennies on the dollar. All these kids throw out their parents’ heirloom pans and buy Caphalon. Screw aluminum and give me enamel or cast iron any day!
Let’s see, what else? A good Martini shaker, my Chemex style glass coffee filter system, and my Pyrex bowls and dishes do the trick nicely. Someday I’ll get a good mandolin, but until then one of the few things I can’t live without are my sets of production graters. To Hell with box graters, they are useless or worse. The graters I use have all the same size teeth on a flat metal plate about 4x8 inches. These things rock! You can make the long strokes on them that give you the finest hash browns. These things are impossible to find and were made by Rapid and Super about fifty years ago. They come three to a set and I have an extra set for backup.
Some of the few other gadgets are an egg slicer (the little harp like doo-dad), a cherry/olive pitter and a lemon squeezer. A pair of beat up old scissors rounds out the bill nicely. As far as utensils go, does anyone remember the old phonelic black handled Flint ware? I have ten or twenty of their slotted spoons, spatulas, seives and what have you. Thems you’ll have to pry out of my cold dead hands. They are indestructible! Oh well, back to work…
Verrrry intriguing, Zenster. So tell me more about these “production grater” thingies. Grating is always a hassle. I have a choice of KitchenAide, the Food Processor, the Box Grater, and, if I’m grating cheese, the Zyliss rotary grater or one o’ those new Microplane thingies. None of them are ideal IMO. The mechanical ones work well, but a major hassle to set up & clean, so that’s out unless I’m doing a very large quantity of grating (think cheese for 10 pizzas). All the rest end up grating my fingers up, with the exception of the Zyliss rotary grater for parmesan. That works pretty well.
I didn’t even mention the garlic press, since it’s as necessary for me as, say, toilet paper in the bathroom. I’d just never dream someone wouldn’t have a Susi!
I like Le Cruset. I have a big dutch oven from them, and use it quite a bit. I was never a fan of the enamel fry pans, though. They just seem… odd, I guess. I like my All Clad fry pans.
I’m with Zen and Ike on the knife & cutting board thing, too. I have all the fancy appliances, but use them very rarely. I suppose if I was cooking for an army every night, I’d use them more, but as it is I’m quicker and better with a knife.
Anyone else out there hate wooden cutting boards? People are always trying to give me fancy wooden cutting boards as gifts. No way. I hate 'em. Unless you oil 'em they warp, they’re hard to clean, and you can’t put 'em in the dishwasher. Give me those nice plastic ones that are dishwasher safe and also wipe clean with a wet rag. They never warp, either.
Athena, feel free to send any of those wooden cutting boards you hate my way. I love 'em. I can’t stand plastic cutting boards. If I get some as gifts, I’ll mail them to you.
wooden cutting board warp? Not mine! I made a bunch out of endgrain rock maple 1-1/2" x 15" x 24" . They are indestructible. I oil them with mineral oil, wipe them clean and away I go. I notice that people are listing all their utensils too, but I have too many to list now!
I use Cutco cutlery that I bought about 26 years ago - very very happy with it. I’ve been lusting after a Kitchen Aid mixer for years - I might drop a hint to Santa this year. My cookware is nothing fancy - mainly stainless, plus a few odd non-stick pans.
Same with my bakeware - nothing fancy but more than adequate for my middling skills. And there are assorted miscellaneous Corning pieces - gifts, yard sale finds, clearance sale bonanzas.
I NEED a good griddle - suggestions, anyone?? Seems every one I get warps something awful and I wind up making mutant pancakes.
I also have a favorite wooden spoon, and several lesser wooden implements. I’ve also got an eclectic mix of serving pieces - I can set an interesting table. I should entertain more often…
When a knife blade nicks the surface of a plastic cutting board it drives bacteria down underneath the surface. The flexible plastic then closes back over the incision. Once the food material is trapped in the incision, it can begin to decay. Wooden cutting boards have the benifit of lignins. These are natural antibacterial compounds that trees use to fight infections from lacerations of their bark. Even cleaning with bacteriacidal soaps (whose use I frown upon) will not penetrate the closed incisions in a plastic cutting board.
Wooden cutting boards are therefore better equipped to resist the build up of bacterial matter in the top surface. I also find that plastic boards are too slippery and therefore dangerous to work on. If they are texturized, then they tend to trap food particles. Give me a good wooden board any day. On another important note.
For all of you that have gas stoves or other appliances, please check them for the type of flexible accordian pleated (known as annular corrugated) hook-up line that they have.
If your hook-up hose looks bronze or metallic in appearance please investigate further. Current saftey codes require that the corrugated metal tubing be covered with a plastic sheath. The tubing should typically look like a length of flexible grey plastic tubing. If yours is metal, check into having it replaced immediately.
The ductile bronze that the older models were made with tends to become brittle over the years and can crack without much provocation. Common vibration can eventually cause work hardening of the metal which leads to breakage. This is the same mechanism that allows you to break a piece of wire by kinking it back and forth several times. The mechanical stress crystallizes the metal and allows it to break much more easily. The result is a difficult to detect pinhole leak that can cause dangerous gas build-ups.
Hopefully all of us will have a safe and uneventful holiday season.
Athena, the production graters that I talk about are literally antiques and are no longer made. Look in antique stores and second hand shops for them. I pay a dollar or two each for them and they are prize implements worth considerably more than that.
