The Great Big Soup Pot
The name says it all. Look for a large 6- to 8-quart pot that’s preferably stainless steel with a good stout bottom. Accessories (like a steamer basket) are nice. The Great Big Pot and a skillet are the bare essentials, but if you’ve got the scratch (and space) you’ll find that it’s great to have a . . .
Cast-Iron Grill Pan
For grilling! Nothing can beat it. Unless you have a Weber in your kitchen, which is a really bad idea. So go get a grill pan, they’re cheap! Since you’re on a shopping spree, you might as well get a . . .
Crepe Pan
But only if you’re going to make crepes. And you will make crepes (you just don’t know it yet). See page 77 about our recommendations, but in general stick to steel or cast-iron varieties. Run away from any goofy, infomercial-style gadgets that expect you to dip an electrical object into runny crepe batter.
Casserole Dish
Is it for cooking? Is it for serving? You can have it both ways! You can use a cast-iron skillet instead if it’s all you got, but you’ll love having a deep, enameled, cast-iron casserole dish that you can sauté your ingredients in first, top with some dough, and then shove into the oven to finish. Yeah, you can casserole your heart out with a glass or (gasp!) metal one, but the cast-iron ones are really fun to use and look pretty, too. Also good for lasagne!
The Spray Bottle
Our good friend the spray bottle of oil can help you use less oil when cooking, so he makes a few cameo appearances throughout recipes in the book. We’re not talking about that aerosol stuff that you buy in the supermarket, but an actual bottle that you fill with the oil of your choice. You can buy the pump kind, such as a Misto, where you have to pump the top with air (kind of like how a Super Soaker works), but you can also just buy a plastic spray bottle, usually available in housewares stores in the gardening section.
More Pots and Pans!
Okay, we lied in our introductory paragraph. You can never have enough of these. If you’re getting a food processor on the wedding registry plan, go ahead and throw a set of pots and pans on the list. Or just buy ’em when they go on sale. More is more! Lots of discount stores carry good-quality pots and dishes that will last you the rest of your life with little care. Make sure you get the heavy-bottomed variety—give’em a knock on the bottom to make sure they’re thick and solid. If they sound like a gong and feel thin, skip them. Light-bottomed pans will burn your onions and cook unevenly. We’re big fans of pots that come with a few steamer baskets of assorted sizes.
BAKING TOOLS
You can resist that castle shaped Bundt pan for as long as you like, but if you want cookies and cupcakes, you’ll need a few essentials. Not that castle shaped Bundt cakes aren’t essential for all you Renaissance Fair enthusiasts.
Baking Sheets
The classic, 11 × 17-inch, slightly rimmed jelly-roll pan will serve you well roasting just about any vegetable—just line the bottom with baking parchment or aluminum foil first, or you’ll never get them clean again. You can also use it for baking jelly rolls! Nonrimmed cookie sheets work for roasting, too, but you risk having the juices run off and burn to the bottom of your oven.
Baking Tins
This is where you can go all freestyle with your bakeware collection. Large muffin tins, medium muffin tins, little bitty cutie little muffin tins . . . go crazy! Hate muffins (and don’t have a soul)? Then don’t get muffin tins. But maybe you fancy Bundt cakes, so go get the best Bundt cake pan you can afford. And don’t forget a standard loaf pan, unless you want to live a monklike existence free of banana bread. In general, we don’t care for silicone bakeware, but we understand if all those pretty colors lure you in.
We had to go and bring up baking, didn’t we? Well, then you’ll also need this stuff:
Mixing Bowls
These are for more than just baking—you’ll use them for everything. You might as well buy a set, since it’s nigh-impossible to buy them separately, but you’ll be happy you did. The stainless-steel ones are tops in our book, although plastic will do. Glass or ceramic ones are great as well but your cat will knock them onto the floor and cause disaster, so only get them if you’re allergic to cats.
Measuring Cups and Spoons
Psychic chefs can use the power of their minds to determine ⅓ cup of nutritional yeast or ¾ teaspoon of vanilla. For the rest of us, a sturdy metal or high-quality plastic set of measuring cups and spoons will do. Bonus: a stainless-steel tablespoon makes a cool MacGyver-style melon baller.
Kitchen Timer
In our carefree youth, we would put some cookies to bake in the oven, then go call a friend, play with the cat, take a nap and watch the last fifteen minutes of the
McNeil-Lehrer News Hour
. Okay, maybe we’re exaggerating about the nap but the resulting charcoal cookies would make us take note that maybe getting a kitchen timer would be a good idea. Older and wiser, we’ve learned to relax a little and let the timer do all the work of reminding us to do something. Nothing fancy required, as long as you keep a plastic one away from the stove so it doesn’t melt. If you happen to be a cheapskate with a cell phone, most cell phones have a timer feature.
Oven Thermometer
How much do you trust your oven? Unless you have one of those fancy top-of-the-line super expensive ovens (and even if you do), trust us, your oven is lying to you. Buy an oven thermometer, they’re cheap and will save you burnt cookie heartache.
STANDARD UTENSILS
Spatulas:
Shop around for a thin, flexible, metal spatula that suits you, You’ll use it for frying and sautéing in cast iron and aluminum, as well as for flipping pancakes and transferring cookies to cooling racks. A wooden (bamboo, preferably) spatula with an angled edge is great for stirring sauces and soups, and for sautéing in enamel or nonstick cookware.
Tongs:
Tongs are great for flipping tofu on the grill, sautéing greens, mixing salads, and retrieving the olive oil cap that you dropped into the soup.
Slotted Spoon:
It’s the spoon that’s not a spoon, because it doesn’t hold anything! Maybe it sounds like the ultimate rip-off, but a slotted spoon is damn handy when fishing out ravioli from a boiling pot o’ water.
Pasta Spoon:
That really creepy looking spoon-thing with teeth is a superhero when it comes to grabbing lumps of linguine or spools of spaghetti.
Ladles:
Sometimes ladles make you feel like your pouring out the finest French soup, sometimes they make you feel like you’re in a soup kitchen. Either way, you need a ladle because that tablespoon isn’t going to get that soup into the bowl anytime soon.
Fork and Spoon:
You may laugh, but this humble dynamic duo from the cutlery drawer will come to the rescue in your darkest hours. Forks make great mini whisks in a pinch (just don’t use them for stirring anything in a nonstick pan), and spoons are experts at seeding squash and portioning out flours.
OTHER STUFF
Barely a day goes by where the salad spinner doesn’t see some action. And that’s not because we’re eating salads every day; salad spinners are geniuses at washing leafy greens, mushrooms, berries, green beans, and any smallish, numerous fruit or vegetable. Not to mention it doubles as an extra colander and additional large bowl to hold annoyingly large vegetables and greens. Speaking of colanders, you need one. You should get a fine-mesh strainer, too, for straining stuff and sifting flour. A citrus reamer can squeeze the juice out of a lime much, much better than your hands ever will. A whisk is nice to have, also. But the bottom line is that you will cook best with the equipment you are most comfortable with. Spend as much time as you need in the housewares aisle, handling your future equipment and seeing what feels best to you. If you prefer one handle to another, don’t discount this as something trivial. And if you have a hand-me-down skillet from your best friend’s mother, and love cooking with it, well, then keep it and cook on.
COOKING AND PREPPING TERMINOLOGY
W
hen we’re asking you to “sweat” some mushrooms, we’re not implying that you should apply extreme emotional pressure to get the fungus to admit to some dark secret. It’s just one of a few cooking terms we like to throw around here, because they’re a lot easier than writing out things like “partially cover and allow to steam until tender” all the time, and also because they’re fun to say. Here are a few terms to know that will have you cooking like a master chef (almost):
Bias:
Often we say to slice something on a bias—say, carrots, for example. This mean to cut diagonally instead of straight down or across. This is usually specified when the cut makes a big difference to the texture of the food, or in situations where it will be more aesthetically pleasing. This way, instead of people barely noticing that you sliced a carrot, they will gasp in admiration of your damn fine-looking carrots.
Blanching:
A quick boil, when you don’t want to cook your veggies all the way but just get them a bit softened up, usually because they will be cooked further somewhere down the line.
Blend:
Stirring the contents of a bowl, pot, or pan to combine all of the ingredients. Usually done at a vigorous pace and sometimes done in a blender (obviously).
Braise:
Briefly sautéing a piece, or pieces, of food to lightly sear or brown the outside. Then a small amount of liquid is poured over the hot food; often it’s a seasoned vegetable broth or alcohol but water works, also. The food is then covered and allowed to steam just enough to make the food tender. An easy way to think about braising is a cross between sautéing and steaming.
Caramelize:
To cook, usually over moderate heat for an extended period of time, until the sugars begin to brown.
Chop:
Cutting things up any which way. Although most recipes will give you a general size to shoot for, when we say simply to chop something rather than
dice
or
julienne
or another more specific term, it usually means that it doesn’t much matter what the shape is.
Deglaze:
After your vegetables (usually garlic and onions) are cooked, adding liquid to the hot pan to lift up anything stuck to the bottom. This is a great way to make sure that all the food and flavors are incorporated into the entire dish, rather than turning into burnt bits and getting sacrificed to the bottom of your pan. Deglazing also makes a great sizzling noise that makes you feel like a real chef.
Dice:
Chopping vegetables or other items into uniform cubes. When we say uniform we don’t mean that you should whip out a tape measure, just aim to get them as alike as you can. Typically, dicing is done in rather small pieces, about ½ inch or less.
Fold:
Gently stirring in a single ingredient into a larger mixture or batter, usually done by stirring the bottom batter over the added ingredient with a large spoon or spatula. The idea is not to overmix the main batter or mixture, rather to evenly incorporate the new ingredient without disturbing the overall texture.
Grate:
Scraping food along the surface of a shredder or microplane grater to yield fine shreds or particles of food.
Grill:
Cooking marinated vegetables or proteins over a heated metal outdoor or indoor grill. The food is often turned several times to ensure it’s completely cooked and the exterior lightly caramelized.
Julienne:
We will take our carrots in matchstick form, thank you. We rarely julienne anything else, except for a cucumber here or there.
Mince:
Using a knife, chopping vegetables or herbs into very small particles, around ⅛ inch across or even smaller.
Process:
Basically our lazy way of saying use a food processor or blender to puree something.
Puree:
Blending the heck of out something in a food processor or blender.
Reduce:
Simmering a sauce or soup on a stove top until some of the water has evaporated. Usually done with the pot uncovered or partially covered. Reducing will eliminate some of the total volume of the sauce and help intensify the flavors.
Roast:
Baking food in an oven until the exterior has browned or caramelized and the interior is fully cooked. When roasting vegetables and protein foods, it’s often necessary to rub the exterior with an oil to prevent its drying out entirely.
Roux:
A cooked paste of flour and oil. When a roux is carefully cooked and stirred it begins to brown, forming a tantalizing, full-flavored base for soups and stews. In addition to providing flavor to these dishes, it also is an effective thickening agent.
Sauté:
Frying, while stirring occasionally, food in a skillet or pot with the addition of a fat.
Sear:
To cook at high heat for a short period of time so that the outside of a food gets browned but the inside doesn’t cook as much.