Passionate recommendations from an informed duffer…
**AllCladb] rocks; like you, I’ve added pieces over time. Combined w/ my beloved cast iron, it covers the bases. That said, check out restaurant supply stores for roasters, pans, etc. They sell to the pros, and the prices are much less than brand-names familiar to retail consumers.
Global knives: I have some Chicago Cutlery that I misuse as expendable. The Globals are cherished: much lighter in hand than Henckel’s etc., streamlined, easy to clean and they feel/use so smooth.
Gadgets:
whisks of all sizes; use them all
any wooden spoon, spatula, etc. I find; they’re precious.
food processor: a mid-sized, reconditioned KitchenAid; I can use knives, etc. but it’s an amazing time-saving tool.
cheesecloth: sounds stupid, but it drains yogurt, bundles herbs, etc. Don’t know how I ever cooked w/o it.
lotsa itsy, cheapie glass bowls: tiny suckers, bought for pennies in bulk–but they make mise un place somuch easier. Not snobby: sensible. Measure, set aside, have at hand and then wash. Saves hassle, confusion and needless motion. (“Did I already add?..where the HELL is the…?”
zester/grater: freeze lemons after squeezing–pull one out for instant lemon taste; store leftover ginger in a bottle of Sherry in the fridge–zest, grind, it’s all wonderful taste.
Back in my restaurant days we used to grate wheels of Parm in no time using a grating disk on a giant Hobart (think Kitchen Aid on steroids…the one on your counter at home is also a Hobart). Most food processors come with a similar disk, which I would think would work as well.
Anybody ever try grating mozzarella through a meat grinder? As I think about this, I bet it would work pretty well for grating large quantities.
I’m very pleased with my Calphalon cookware. (I got a set for Christmas a couple years ago and promptly got rid of the RevereWare I’d been using since college.) It cleans up very easily and cooks very evenly.
I mourn the loss of my Le Crueset dutch oven. It somehow got a big chunk chipped out of the enamel when we moved. I loved that thing! I will replace it some day.
I recently discovered Oxo Good Grips utensils. They have fat, comfortable handles. I particularly like the potato peeler.
The KitchenAid mixer is great. I think the heavy duty version is definitely worth the extra $.
Guilty pleasure-a Zojirushi bread machine. Worth the counter space.
Damn! My grandfather…and then my mother…had those production grater things! Wonder what the hell happened to them? I’ll have to subject my older sisters to slow torture to make them give 'em up.
He used them to grate enormous amounts of peeled raw potatoes for Czech-style potato dumplings. He would combine a big bowl of finely-grated taters with enough flour to bind them into a doughy mass, season with salt, then poach them in a big pot of water for 20 minutes. Served with a roasted loin of pork and sauerkraut (or braised red cabbage).
I’ve added grated onion to the mix, as well as coarse-ground black pepper. Lacking a cool grater, though, I’ve processed my spuds through the shredding blade of the Cuisinart, then given them a couple of whirls with the steel blade. NOT as good as Grampa.
[ul][li]Le Crueset pans.[/li][li]Those mortar/ pestle combos you get from asian groceries that weigh a ton and look like they’re from the set of Monkey.[/li][li]A pasta machine. Dry pasta is good but pasta you’ve made that afternoon is a whole different deal.[/li]As an indulgence: Bread-makers are good, but ice-cream makers are fatter. I have new-season’s cherries in the fridge for this evil purpose.[/ul]
necros I could look up the BOCA code that requires the new flex connections, but instead just believe us when we say if it was installed in the last month, it should have either the Teflon(greyish) or stainless steel composite (silvery) connectors. These are the two commonly accepted flexible connections in the U.S. If the connector came with the stove,you should be alright but you could call the installer just to make sure.
Disclaimer: YMMV as individual municipalities are free to make their codes more stringent than BOCA/applicable state codes.
As little as I’m actually able to cook these days, I’ve not yet convinced the lady of the house that the expense for a set of AllClad is justified. I have a few Calphalon items that I’ve received as gifts, and I’ve managed to acquire a small but serviceable set of Henckel knives one piece at a time. The biggest win so far in kitchen indulgences was to use a big chunk of store credit from returned wedding gifts to snag a KitchenAid mixer when they went on sale – only cost us about $30 out of pocket for the mixer, though I’ve since spent about $100 more on attachments and accessories. We did use the strainer a lot with our first kid, making our own baby food and freezing it into serving-sized chunks in ice-cube trays (I had to do something to convince my wife the mixer had been a good investment). We’ve also had two neighborhood Hanukkah parties at our place since then, and I couldn’t have made that many latkes without the shredder.
Of course, my cast iron skillets get a fair amount of use as well, but they didn’t represent much of an investment. I’m with Ike on wooden spoons – you can never have too many of them, and a variety of mixing bowls, both steel and glass, are incredibly useful. I’ve also made good use of a couple of sets of small white porcelain ramekins I bought a while back. I don’t use them for deserts all that often, but they’re great for temporary storage of pre-measured ingredients.
In terms of cookware broadly considered, my range might even reprsent a bigger success. When we bought our house, the previous owners (a Japanese family who owned a restaurant) had taken their gas range with them and replaced it with a cheap electric range. The first thing I did, even before we moved in, was to go find an acceptable gas range and convince my wife that we needed to replace the electric. I was aided in this by the fact that we had to buy a refrigerator in any case, and we could get a deal by buying them together, plus the appliance store was willing to take the electric range and resell it on consignment. I simply couldn’t imagine buying a house with a gas line already run to the range and having to cook on electric burners, and I knew that the time to deal with it was before we moved in and my wife conviced herself that we could make do for a while longer with electric.
And here’s a question I’ve asked before in a similar thread but never received any reply to: has anyone used the Cuisinart brand 18/10 stainless clad cookware? It seems to be nearly the quality of AllClad, and while it’s not cheap it’s not as pricey as AllClad.
I don’t remember if it was Cuisinart or Revere Proware but here is a tip:
Don’t buy pans with thin sides.
They scorch and burn food easier. You want thick even heating bottoms and sides.
Ramekins! I’m nuts over ramekins. Last night we did a Champagne/Pate/Cheese night (y’know, no dinner, just finger foods. You can do that when you don’t have kids). We have the good fortune to live a couple miles from the major cheese distributor of this area, and they operate a retail store as well. Mr. Athena stopped and bought a variety of cheeses, and one of them was a French brie style cream cheese that came in a little ramekin. That went over big with me - I love the things, can’t get enough of them.
On the other side of the spectrum, I love really big ceramic bowls, too. So I like very small tiny bowls, and very large bowls. The medium size ones do nothing for me.
Stoves - very important. I wasn’t ready to make the investment of a commercial stove when I moved into my current house, partly because of the expense of the stove itself, and partly because it would require a kitchen remodel. The kitchen was set up to use a 30" stove, and had a JennAire piece o’ electric crap installed. I ended up going with a Dacor dual-fuel. Four burner gas on top, and electric convection oven. The gas burners are high-btu, but also can be turned verrrrry verrrry low for simmering. I love it, and would recommend Dacor for anyone who wants a high quality stove but doesn’t want to remodel their kitchen to do it.
Oh, you can do it if you have kids. Though the menu may be slightly different. I served a finger-foods-only meal recently. I wanted to try some new things on them, and this was a way for them to try them without having something new and scary served as the main dish. They could pick and choose as they pleased, which made them more open to trying something new. Of course, the one dish they all really liked was this twice-baked potato thing that took forever to prepare, but it was fun.
One of the easiest, walk-in-the-door-at-5:30-with-nothing-planned meals I serve is all finger foods. I give them peanut butter crackers, cheese on crackers, sliced fruits and veggies, pickles, and anything else that is quick. They actually ask for this once in a while.
I thought of another good kitchen item, too. My pizza stone makes it possible for me to evenly bake pizzas in my 50 year old, tempermental, came-with-the-house electric stove.
rack, my 10-quart stockpot is Cuisinart. I think the difference is that Cuisinart cookware has a disc of copper attached to the bottom, with another layer of stainless steel protecting it: the bottom of the pot heats evenly.
All-Clad is pricier because the WHOLE pot is “sandwiched.” It heats evenly throughout.
Cuisinart seems like a reasonable compromise to me. I have no complaints about the stockpot, in any case…and I’m not jumping to spend five hundred bucks (or whatever ridiculous price All-Clad is asking for one of their big stockpots).
Thanks, MikeG. Based on your description, I think I’m OK. I have some sort of stainless-steel hose thing back there. But I’ll confirm this weekend. I would prefer not to be blown up.
Athena, if you really want to go hard-core, forget about the Viking. Check out some Vulcan ranges. More configurations, more power, and about one-half to one-third of the price. And your friends will be mega-impressed. The only bad thing was that they suggested “floor reinforcement” when I went to look at them. I wasn’t ready to replace my nice hardwood with brick, so I took a pass.
My own private Santa got me not only the big Kitchen-Aide mixer for Christmas last year after witnessing me whipping mashed potatoes by hand with a whisk but also got me a nice hand mixer as well just to make sure that I NEVER have to do that by hand again!! What a guy! (Good for kneading bread, too!) (The mixer, not the guy!! )
A great place to get wonderful, old kitchenware is estate auctions. I got most of my really good wooden spoons and mixing cups at one several years ago. Lotsa of junk, too, but the few pearls were worth it!!
Love my Henckel 8" chef’s knife. Maybe Santa will bring me more this year.
The problem I have with most of the really pricey cookware is their glass lids. What numbnut thought up this?? Drop it once, have to sweep up the pieces, no more lid! Dumb!! I have a really good set of stainless I bought in college and assorted Silverstone aluminum pans I’ve picked up over the years. Works quite well for most everyday cooking.
Good for you! Class, repeat after me; “There is only one stove and that stove is a gas stove and there shall be no other stove.” Electric stoves were obviously invented by men. Only someone who does not cook could possibly imagine that such a device would have a place in the kitchen. The only way to get satisfactory performance out of an electric stove is to have burners left on continuously at different settings and switch the pan around to different locations to get the level of heat you need at that moment. Anyone else out there do that too? Necros;
If your install is brand new, don’t get your knickers in a knot. It takes years for the metallic hoses to embrittle. However, it is the entire length of the hose that is in question here and not just the connectors. Just wanted to clear that up. Email me if there’s any doubts.
And just to piss the rest of you off to the max. Let me tell you about the perfectly functional counter top model Kitchen Aid mixer I found out by the edge of the sidewalk a couple of months ago. Now I just need to buy the bowl and paddles, then on to the grinding head and then the juicer and then, and then…
How odd that I read this thread when a copy of the Williams-Sonoma is open on top of my desk…
Lodge Reversible Iron Grill
(or alternately the All-Clad Nonstick Grill Pan)
Nonstick Rolled Omlette Pan
Kitchen Torch (a small blowtorch for all the things us Chef types know can be done in the kitchen with a blowtorch)
Earthenware Roasting Pot
Chinois (that cone shaped strainer thing) although I’ve found a wire screen grease splatter guard works just as well and takes up WAY less space
Fat separating pourer (fat float to top and juices are poured off bottom)
Warming Tray (gotta get ME one of these!)
Mini Pastry cutters in Fall shapes (Turkey, Acorn, Leaves, etc…)
I have to get a Mandolin as well – I’m going to start out with a cheap one and if I like it invest some $$$ in a real one. That and I have to get a pasta machine. I’ve watched Masahiko Kobe on Iron Chef so much that I must own one soon!
I grew up in the kitchen with my grandmothers, mother, and housekeepers and my family owns a restaurant and kitchen equipment business so I’m a bit of a kitchen gadget / cookware snob. Most of the outlet mall stuff is garbage but the Williams-Sonoma stuff is all top notch, over priced - but still good stuff. A lot of the Pampered chef stuff is OK – my wife is a sucker for that stuff but a lot of the things can be done better with simpler tools.
To see the oven that was in my family’s kitchen when I was growing up go to http://www.vulcanhart.com/ then select PRODUCT FINDER, RANGES, MODULAR 90 SERIES, and it’s the 3rd picture down – model 260L. I’m partial to the Vulcan Ranges but only because dad sells them – the Vikings are sweet too.
A rice cooker is very handy to have. I have a Zojirushi one, and I use it regularly for brown and white rice. I also have a Zojirushi bread machine. Very nice, but I don’t use it as often as I used to.
I finally bought a KitchenAid mixer last weekend (and I’ve used it three times already). I love it. I got the 6-quart professional model so I could have the capacity for larger volume recipes.
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