The (Slightly Less) Minimalist Guide to Kitchen Equipment

It doesn’t take much gear to prepare anything in the kitchen.

In last week’s article, I showed you the eight pieces of equipment that will give you the most bang for your buck.

And although these few items can be used to make 90% of what you’d ever like to cook, you’ll still likely want a few more extras to make the remaining 10%.

Here I’ve listed a few more items you can add to your arsenal to make you a true kitchen ninja.

And it’ll still all fit in a tiny kitchen with plenty of room to spare.

1–2 Quart Saucepan

While a Dutch oven will cover you for most anything that you need to boil, sometimes it’s just too big for what you want.

A smaller saucepan with a cover will help you to make any sauces you’d like (obviously), but can also come in handy for making small batches of rice or boiled veggies.

The best saucepans are made of stainless steel, but these are crazy expensive. I don’t think that the material is as important as your skillet and dutch oven, so this is one place where you can go cheap if you need to.

Big Ass Stock Pot

On the other end of the spectrum, sometimes a Dutch oven isn’t big enough for what you want.

Whether you’re boiling pasta, making mashed potatoes for your entire family, or even making stock (hence the name), a big ass stock pot probably won’t be collecting dust.

Aim for something in the 16 quart or larger size. Again, stainless steel is probably the best material, but aluminum is cheaper and gets the same job done.

Mixing Bowls

If you are making sauces and spice mixtures, you can probably find a bowl lying around the house that will suffice.

But eventually you’ll wish you had something bigger.

Get yourself a set of mixing bowls made of metal or plastic with covers. When you aren’t using them to mix up curries and salsas, you can use them to store your leftovers!

Ladle, Slotted Spoon, and Tongs

 

In the previous article, I said that a metal spatula and wooden spoon are the only real utensil essentials.

But adding a few more implements into the mix will make things easier still.

• A big ladle will help you to transfer soups and stews from the cooking pot to your bowl.
• A slotted spoon will help you remove a food from cooking liquid (useful for when you want to reduce it down to a gravy).
• A pair of tongs will help you to turn large pieces of meat that a metal spatula is too small to handle.

Measuring Spoons and Cups

Now we’re getting into dangerous territory.

I don’t think that anyone who’s learning how to cook should practice with recipes that use a lot of measurements.

They’re fussy and they’re inaccurate. You’ll waste a lot of time measuring things that don’t need to be so precisely measured. And besides, weighing is a much more accurate way of measuring your ingredients than volume.

More than anything, beginners should stay away from baking, which requires a lot of equipment (and patience).

But ultimately, you’re going to need to measure out ingredients at one point or another. Whether you are measuring out spices or making a sauce, you’re going to at least want a ballpark idea of what you’re adding.

Over time you’ll get a better feel for how much a tablespoon or a cup is, so you can wing it as time goes on.

But in the meantime, you’ll probably be happier with the results of your cooking if you pick up a set of measuring spoons, a set of dry measuring cups, and a liquid measuring cup.

Colander

All right, so you have a pot of boiled potatoes. Now you just need to get the water out.

Sure, you can just hold the cover slightly ajar and pour off the liquid, but this can be a pain. Especially if you are trying to drain pasta.

Get yourself a metal colander with small openings and the process will be a whole lot easier.

This is one place where you don’t want to get the cheaper plastic model, which almost always has larger openings, where you can lose rice, beans, and other food that you use a colander to wash or drain.

Grater

If a steamer basket was the controversial addition to last week’s minimalist gear, the grater serves the same purpose in this list.

Most people would say that everything else here is far more important, but a grater will come in handier than you might realize.

Grated cheese is probably the most obvious use, but they are useful for shredding veggies for coleslaw and zesting citrus fruits (which you’ll do more than you might realize).

I’d actually suggest getting a bigger model than the one I have here, with four sides of different grating sizes.

More Stuff, But Still Minimalist

It takes very little to stock a kitchen capable of preparing nearly anything.

Once you have taken care of the basics, you can move on to a few more extra items.

They won’t fill your kitchen to bursting with gadgets, but they will certainly make cooking easier and more enjoyable.