Five Things Every Good Kitchen Needs

A Good Sharp Knife

You don’t need a full set of expensive knives to slice food properly. Even professional chefs tend to find one knife they like and use it for everything from carving meat to julienning vegetables (Assuming you’ve given it a good wash first). Experiment with different knives, find a size and shape that suits you. Some cooks like heavy solid knives. Some prefer thin light flexible knives.

What’s important is to find something you find comfortable, and is easy to sharpen. The best knife I have ever used is the Kitchen Devil French Cook’s Knife. It’s wide and flat, the blade is very stiff, and it sits nicely in the palm of your hand. Best of all it only cost me ten pounds. I use this knife for EVERYTHING, and I’ve re edged it a little so it’s razor sharp. Even my head chef likes to use this thing (Over his £50 knife set).

A Steel and Stone

Also, invest in a good steel and stone. Stones are just that; wide, flat coarse stones usually mounted on a handle. Very coarse stones are used to shift a lot of metal and re edge your knife, less rough ones are used to “fine tune” your edge to a razor finish. Steels are long rods of steel with rough groves. You see chefs on TV using them, moving their knives back and forth over them making that swishing sounds. You can use them to maintain the edge, but every so often they’ll need a stone to re shape the edge. Most professional chefs find that they need to stone their knives every month or so. Personally, I always prefer to use a medium coarse stone over a steel. A steel can set you back about £5, and a stone can be as cheap as a few pennies if you know where to look. Try car boot sales and hardware shops. Don’t bother buying one of the sharpeners that sharpen a set angle, you may well find that you don’t like the sharpness they create.

Look online for advice on how to sharpen your knife. The only problem is that everyone thinks a different way is best! I find that a 40 degree angle on both sides works well, but you will need to practise to find your comfort zone.

A Gas Cooker

Gas cookers provide constant, instant heat making cooking much easier. If you’ve used an electric hob before, then gas does take some getting used to. You can’t set it to a specific number, but you’ll quickly get used to that. Once you’ve fried a few things, you’ll instantly realise that you can control the rate at which the food cooks much more easily as the amount of heat generated by the hob is constant. I’ve heard very good things about ceramic and induction cookers, but for most cooks, gas cookers remain the king.

When selecting a cooker, make sure that you think carefully about what you’re going to be paying for. If you fry or grill a lot of your food, then you don’t need to fork out for a large oven. Likewise, if you cook English style Sunday roasts; you’re going to need a large oven. As a rule of thumb, if you’re looking to buy a new cooker, you don’t need to shell out more than £400 for a brand new one. Obviously, spending this kind of money warrants a lot of time and thought. Magazines like Which? can help you out, and talk to other people about their experiences with different cookers. If you’re moving home and enjoy cooking, this will be one of the things you want to consider.

Space, Storage, and Surface

There’s not much you can do about this unless you’re moving house, but it is possible to maximize space by rearranging existing items and throwing out things you don’t use. For example, if you have an oversized cooker and a large fridge, getting rid of these for smaller models will yield more space.

Space is important as you need to be able to move around your kitchen as you cook. There are few things more annoying than a small kitchen where you need to contort yourself into the most bizarre shapes to get a baking tray into your oven! If preparing a long or complicated meal, having to do this over and over again will eventually just irritate you to no end. If you are elderly, then this moves from irritation to an actual problem. So consider space when looking at a kitchen!

Storage is important as it helps you organise your kitchen. Ideally you want a cupboard for every kind of item. Basically, one for pots and pans, one for cutlery and knives, one for food and so on. There are other things you can do as well which will maximise your storage space and efficiency. For example, if you use a lot of spices, consider buying a spice rack and mounting it on the wall over your preparation area. A magnetic knife rack mounted on the wall can be used to keep your knife, gas lighter, steel and other metallic utensils at arms reach, and also help to prevent accidents- I’m sure we’ve all cut ourselves or come close at some point when fishing around in a draw for a knife. Install some shelves to save yourself bending down to open cupboards all the time. These little things will join together to make cooking far easier and more enjoyable.

Surface refers to your work surface. Ideally, you want as much as possible. It should be easy to clean, made of a tough material and lightly coloured so you can easily spot dirt on it. Never cut food on your surface, always use a chopping board. Keep a disinfectant spray around nearby so you don’t have to go hunting for it when you need to cook. If you are blessed with a large kitchen, you can set up different surface areas for different things. For example, the area by the bin is reserved for peeling (With the peeler in the draw next to it), so the skins can go right into the bin (Or compost bin). The area by the fridge always has a strong chopping board and is near the sink so it’s easy to clean- an ideal place for carving meat. Just take your time and imagine yourself working. Think how to minimise the time you spend travelling.

Good Pots and Pans

Some chefs seem to accumulate a collection of pots and pans over the years that falls out of their cupboards every time someone sneezes. Others will buy one pan and one pan alone, and then use it for everything. The best thing to do is consider your situation and then go from there.

If you are cooking for yourself and yourself alone, then you will only need small pans. If you don’t like stir fries or fried vegetables, then there’s no point in buying a wok. If you don’t like fried food at all, then about the only pan you need is a grill pan. And if you have a grill you might not even need that. Pretty much everyone needs a saucepan at some point, so make sure you get at least one good sized one. IF you want to make roasts, you’ll need a baking tray.

From there, you want to decide materials. Not many places do iron cookware anymore, but if you can get hold of them, then they make for an interesting cooking experience. Iron tends to “take on” the flavours of what you cook in it, so for example if you cook a lot beef, the beef gains more and more flavour from the pan. Because of this though, you may need to buy a number of pans, one for meat, one for veg and one in case of anything else. However, iron is fairly cheap and so you can buy it in bulk. The other thing to remember about iron is that it takes a lot longer to transfer heat, to heat up and to cool down. So you need to heat up the pan for a lot longer than any other material. On the other hand, the heat retention makes Iron saucepans with lids perfect for slow cooking. One final point; Iron is HEAVY, make sure that your storage space can handle it.

Stainless steel is the most common form of cookware, and could be considered “Vanilla” in terms of use; Average heat transfer, minimal flavour retention, easy to clean and quite light. Don’t think that vanilla means bad though, all the above qualities mean that stainless steel is used by everyone from Joe Everyman, to Gordon Ramsey. Buy stainless steel if you want something that you know you can rely on, and won’t need special treatment.

Aluminium is a bit of a contentious issue as it has been linked to Alzheimer’s. However, the amount of f aluminium passing into food is tiny compared to other sources such as deodorants. Very salty or acidic foods though can cause chemical reactions that will cause more aluminium than normal to break off, leading to a higher content in the food, and damaged cookware. Personally, I avoid it as I find it has a limited life span. But some people have had very good results, especially with anodised aluminium. Aluminium is also very light, and transfers heat very well. So I would at least consider it as a possibility.

Pottery is mainly used in baking trays, but you can get big pots made out of it too. They are slow to heat up, slow to cool down and so work very well for slow cooking. They don’t tend to retain flavour though unless the food is left in them for a long time (For example, in slow cooking, see where I’m going with this?). Pottery is unfortunately quite heavy and very fragile, and don’t ever run cold water over hot pottery, as it will crack due to thermal contraction. This means you have to leave it out for an hour or two to cool down by itself when you’re done with it. I do use pottery, but I would advise that anyone new to cooking should avoid it for a while.

Well, now that you have the basics of pot and pans, you need to go out and buy the things. Shop around and take your time. Remember, it’s better to buy too few pots and pans than too many. You can always (and probably will) buy more later if you find that you need them. But be picky, it’s hard earned money you’re spending, so make sure you buy quality. Other things to look out for are thickness (Too thick and heat won’t transfer, too thin and it will burn through), Strength of coating (Try and scratch the non stick layer with your nail. If you can then you’ve got a real dud) and finally feel. Sometimes you just know something’s right. Go with that instinct.

In Closing

A big part of kitchen equipment is experimentation. You will buy duds, you will buy things you don’t like and you will break stuff. You will need to rearrange your kitchen several times to get it right. You just need to accept these things and move on, learning as you go. If you are very interested in cooking, then look into getting some work experience or training, as that will help you more than any amount of article reading.

May the forks be with you…