Top tools for your first kitchen, Part 4: Cleanup

Finally, you have all the equipment to cook practically any meal you might want! Ah, that was delicious. But wait--what's that looming behind you? Oh no--sandwich crumbs, spatters of sauce, DISHES! What can we do?

Let's attack them.

Top tools for your first kitchen
PART FOUR: CLEANUP

Dishtowels

Definitely get your hands on some good dishtowels. They are far more important for general kitchen happiness than you might think. Without a decent dishtowel, your counters will be wet, your dish rack always full, your stovetop crusted with filth, your hands more than likely burned, and your wallet out a recurring fee for new rolls of paper towels.

There is a huge range of dishtowels out there; you can spend as much as you want at Williams Sonoma, or go to the thrift store and find a package of five dishtowels for fifty cents. The most important criteria for me are absorbency, durability, and insulation. Absorbency is obvious: you need your dishtowels to dry dishes and wipe up spills. Durability means you can buy dishtowels once and keep them in the rotation for twenty years--obviously a good plan. And insulation means you can double them up and use them as potholders, which is key, especially if you are the sort of person who misplaces or burns through potholders. If you get great dishtowels that fulfill all these categories, you'll be able to use them for hundreds of different jobs. And when they get dirty, just chuck them in the wash. The end!

How many dishtowels should you have? Ten is a good round number. With a good stock of dishtowels, you have at least a week's worth of leeway between washes; you can just use the towels without worrying about whether you have another dry, clean one hanging out in the drawer. I think we actually have about twelve or fourteen, including both a stack of 15-year-old Meijer specials and eight nearly brand-new crisp blue and white striped towels.

Don't throw out old dishtowels. Reduce them to rag status if they're really awful, but you know there will always be some point at which you need a bunch of towels to throw over a massive spill. As long as they have some hope of absorbing that spill, keep them around.

Dish brush

You're going to have to wash your dishes, and you'll need tools to do it. My tool of choice is the long-handled scrub brush. Plastic bristles are easily washable, don't provide a very hospitable home for bacteria, and are safe for whatever kind of pan you happen to have; the long handle means your hands aren't being scalded in hot water all the time. Sounds like a win to me.

If you like other styles of dish brush, go for it. Plastic or metal scrubbies, steel wool, and delicate towels all have their dishwashing uses.

Personally, I dislike sponge-based dishwashing. Sponges get completely disgusting nearly overnight. However, if that's what you want to use to wash your dishes, go ahead and get a variety pack. Just remember to sterilize them regularly (either with a bleach solution or in the microwave) and switch them out when they need it.

Dish drainer

Once you have your dishes sparkling clean, you're going to have to put them somewhere. No, not on the countertop! Get yourself a dish drainer and you'll be able to avoid an interminably wet counter.

Plastic-coated wire dish drainers are cheap and easy to find. Look for one with a drainer tray underneath--or, better yet, find one that fits either over or directly in your sink. Thrift stores frequently have a stash of older dish drainers piled haphazardly in their kitchen departments. As long as you can find one that isn't riddled with rust, you should be good to go. Take it home, clean it well, and start stacking up those newly shiny pots and pans.

Honorable mention: mop, bucket, massive jug of white vinegar, economy pack of baking soda, dish soap of your choice.

And if you have trouble actually buckling down and cleaning your kitchen, may I suggest a look at Unf%*k your Habitat?

Your basic kitchen toolset is complete. Hooray! Now get in there and start cooking all the deliciousnesses you desire.

The whole top tools for your first kitchen series:
- Part 1: Prep
- Part 2: Stovetop
- Part 3: Oven
- Part 4: Cleanup

Top tools for your first kitchen, Part 3: Oven

We talked about the tools you'll need most for cooking prep and actually using your stove. Once you've gotten your hands on a decent knife, a cutting board, a big bowl, a couple nice pans, and a spoon or two, you're set to make the vast majority of different foods. But what if you want to go slightly more complex? What if you want to roast, or bake?

Top tools for your first kitchen
PART THREE: THE OVEN

Rimmed cookie sheet

While a cookie sheet is obviously most important if you like eating lots of cookies, it can be useful in a variety of other ways. Making bread? Shape it into a rustic loaf and bake it on the cookie sheet. Want some pizza? Cookie sheet. Do you like biscuits? Cookie sheet. How about oven fries? Cookie sheet. Roasted cauliflower? Cookie sheet. Want to make a ridiculous cake roll filled with jelly? That's why rimmed cookie sheets are also called jelly roll pans.

Make sure the cookie sheet you get will fit in your oven. Ask me how I know to check this!

Ovenproof casserole dish

The casserole dish is next on my list. It's my favorite because you can use it to bake or roast practically anything. Sheet cake, scalloped potatoes, lasagna, roast chicken, or, of course, a tuna noodle casserole--you name it.

I prefer glass casserole dishes because they're difficult to break, easy to clean, and frequently findable at the thrift store. You can scrub them with metal scrubbies and serve from them with metal utensils. They're also both durable and affordable.

If you can’t find a good candidate at your thrift store, you can usually get a set of two different sized Pyrex or Anchor Hocking casserole dishes for a very good price. I’ve seen some reports of breakage with newer Pyrex, though, so I would go for the thrift store first every time.

If you only get one casserole dish, make it a 9x13 inch. That way you can roast nearly anything up to the size of a small turkey. You can always pick up a couple of different sized casserole dishes after you spend a couple of months cooking and figure out what else you need.

Spatulas

Once you've cooked something, you're going to need to get it either out of your casserole dish or off your cookie sheet (or actually out of either of your stovetop pans or your mixing bowl for that matter). Enter the spatula.

You want two different spatulas: a flat serving spatula and a silicone scraper spatula. The flat spatula will let you serve up a couple of enchiladas, a piece of baked tempeh, or a sticking scone with dignity and aplomb. The silicone scraper will help you wrest food from tiny corners, or from around the edges of round pans and bowls. Do you want to get every last bit of whipped cream out of the bowl? You need a silicone scraper.

I prefer a metal server for its stability and sturdy prying ability. The scraper should be silicone because it's safer to use with food than plastic or rubber. Both metal and silicone can handle high heat, so there's no danger of melting any plastic bits into your food. Both types of spatula should also be molded in one piece if possible, so their heads can never fall off the handle. Ask me how I know that one too!

Potholders

Don't get burned. Buy some decent potholders and use them. They're available at practically any price point, in every color, and at all kinds of different stores. Square potholders can double as trivets; glove potholders can go over hot pan handles to keep you from knocking into them. Get good thick ones, and get at least three or four of them. Do it.

Honorable mention: parchment paper or silicone baking mats, bread knife (if you bake lots of bread), meat thermometer (if you roast lots of roasts).

Next, on to part four: the dreaded CLEANUP.

The whole top tools for your first kitchen series:
- Part 1: Prep
- Part 2: Stovetop
- Part 3: Oven
- Part 4: Cleanup

Top tools for your first kitchen, Part 2: Stovetop

Last time we took a look at the key tools for food prep. Great! Now all we have to do is actually cook.

Top tools for your first kitchen
PART 2: STOVETOP

Wide sauté pan

The next thing you need is a shallow pan 10 inches in diameter, preferably with a lid. Personally, I prefer a sauté pan to a frying pan. Sauté pans have straight sides at least 2 inches high instead of sloped sides, so they can hold more and are therefore more versatile. They also usually have an additional grip opposite the main handle, which is especially useful for moving a full, hot pan around.

Sauté pans are good for cooking damn near anything. You can make pasta sauces, refried beans, stir-fries, simple sautéed vegetables, or seared meats. You can fry up a frittata. You can boil an inch of water and blanch a bunch of cut vegetables. You can add some liquid to your veg or what have you and produce a soup. You can even heat an inch of oil and deep-fry some tempura or fritters. And if you get a pan with high heat resistance and a metal handle, you can finish dishes under the broiler, no problem.

Things to look for in a sauté pan include a thick heavy bottom that will resist warping over high heat, and a long handle that will lose heat conduction the further you get from the main body of the pan. The thick bottom will give you more even heat distribution and therefore more evenly cooked food; the long handle means you're less likely to burn your hands while cooking.

I recommend a stainless steel finish for your basic, everyday pans. Nonstick pans can be problematic--teflon requires specific equipment for both cooking and cleaning, and shouldn't be used over very high heat. The coating also flakes off over time, which means you'll have to buy a new pan sooner rather than later. Cast iron, on the other hand, is great if you like it--but you do need to take good care of it.

We have a really nice stainless steel sauté pan with a copper core, but it's not necessary to go for the super high end to get a good piece of equipment. Mid-range brands like Cuisinart or Calphalon are a good place to start.

3-quart saucepan

Next comes the 3-quart saucepan with lid. I use this pot mostly to cook liquids. Boil pasta; steam grains; make a big pot of soup; boil potatoes; make oatmeal; whisk bechamel; simmer a big vat of sauce. I usually have this pan on the back burner while I'm making a sauce or a sauté in my other pan. Sauce in one pan; pasta in the other. Vegetables and tofu in one pan; rice in the other. The wide sauté pan and the 3-quart saucepan make a perfect team for cooking almost any stovetop-based meal.

Since a pan like this will mostly end up filled with liquid, you could easily start out with a lower-end model like T-Fal or Farberware. However, if you have a few extra dollars to spare, it's worth investing in a mid-range piece that heats more evenly and is less likely to scorch.

Before you buy, go through the department store pots and pans section and actually touch and hold all the different candidates to see what you like best. After that, I'd go to the thrift store for an initial pass, just in case someone has decided they don't like using the very pans you want. You can always scrub and soak all the history off stainless steel or cast iron pans; they're metal. However, since good pans aren't exactly common thrift store treasure, you still may want to buy new. In that case, it's a good idea to take advantage of discounters like TJ Maxx or Marshalls.

If you end up buying both your sauté pan and your saucepan new, consider getting a set of pans--preferably a smaller set of mid-quality pans, such as Cuisinart Chef's Classic line of stainless steel. They're usually pretty reasonably priced, considering the amount of equipment you get.

Wooden spoons

Of course, if you're making things in pots and pans on the stove, you need to use something to move the food around in them. This is where the wooden spoon comes in.

I love wooden spoons above all other stirring, manipulating, or shifting equipage. They don't conduct heat, so they don't require any silicone or meltable plastic handles. You can use them with any pan at all, since nonstick coating and stainless steel alike are undisturbed by contact with wood. They're easy to find at any kitchen store in the land, not to mention ordinary groceries, drugstores, and bargain bins. You can find a wooden spoon to suit you, because they come in every conceivable shape and size. Best of all, they improve as they age. A wooden spoon used for fifteen or twenty years is a beautiful thing.

My three favorite wooden spoons came in a set from Pier 1. I got them as a gift from similarly fund-lacking friends at age sixteen, and I have used them ever since. So my spoons are eighteen years old, and yet they are still not only fulfilling their roles but doing so with grace and aplomb. One spoon has developed a crack across the bowl, it's true, but that's ok, especially after eighteen years of use. Even slightly higher quality spoons just won't have this problem.

Honorable mention: steamer insert (doubles as a pasta strainer!), 6-inch frying pan for your morning eggs, spoon rest, teapot, whisk, ladle.

Next up: taming the wild oven.

The whole top tools for your first kitchen series:
- Part 1: Prep
- Part 2: Stovetop
- Part 3: Oven
- Part 4: Cleanup

Top tools for your first kitchen, Part 1: Prep

It's the end of August, and you know what that means: school. Moving. New apartments. Fun yet busy and potentially stressful times.

If you've never lived in your own place before, you may find yourself standing in the middle of a crowded department store, staring at the hundreds of different odds and ends spread out under the "Kitchen" sign. What should you buy? What do you actually need?

Before you throw down an extra $50 on a selection of assorted whisks, soap dispensers, egg separators, paper towel racks, potato mashers, or coffee grinders, step back. Take a breath. Instead of buying indiscriminately, target the tools you'll use to make your food every single day. Here's what I recommend.

Top cooking tools for your first kitchen
PART 1: PREP

8-inch chef's knife

My chef's knife is by far the most important tool in my kitchen. I use it every day to prepare practically everything I eat. Anything that needs to be actually cut (as opposed to peanut butter, for instance) falls under this blade.

It's worth spending some decent money to get a good knife you really like. Then you not only can but will use it all the time, and you can avoid buying an entire knife block set, from which you'll use maybe two knives ever. Thrift stores usually have knife blocks on hand anyway--why not get the cheap block and gradually fill it with two or three carefully chosen high-quality knives?

Before you buy, go to a department store and try out the knives. Higher end stores should have some equipment on hand for this exact purpose. At the very least, you can hold the knives and figure out which one feels best in your hand. You may find that you prefer a heavier knife, like my Henckels, or a lighter one, like John's Global; it's up to you.

Any chef's knife you buy should have a two-inch-wide blade. This means you'll be able to curl your fingers under the handle and chop without whacking your hand into the cutting board. That means your blade won't bounce around and you'll be less likely to cut yourself. You're welcome.

Be careful with your knife. Don't leave it in the dish drainer to get dull, and definitely don't put it in the dishwasher, no matter what the manufacturer says! Instead, wash it by hand, dry it by hand, and put it in a knife block or on a magnetic wall rack. If you must store it in a drawer, keep it in its own dedicated slot, so nothing can jostle against the blade and dull it. Keep a sharpening steel on hand so you can sharpen your knife at will. Steels are usually pretty easy to find at your local thrift store. I almost never take my knife to be professionally sharpened, but it's a good idea to do so if your knife gets really dull & won't hold an edge anymore. We have a knife sharpener at our farmer's market; you can also usually find knife sharpening services through higher-end grocery stores.

Cutting board

In conjunction with the knife, get a good cutting board. I like wood and bamboo (technically a grass, not a wood--the more you know!). Plastic cutting boards are good for specific purposes, such as cutting up raw meat, but they dull your knife blade faster than wood or bamboo. Don't ever use a glass cutting board, as this will at least dull and possibly seriously damage your knife--and after you've been so careful and taken care of it so well!

The cutting board is my main prep surface, my organization board, and my means of transporting chopped ingredients to cooking pans. Of course, if you are awesome, you can always use the chef's knife for this. Chefs definitely do. I tend not to, however. Fortunately, my preferred cutting boards are small enough to pick up and move around easily.

You can find good cutting boards for decent prices pretty much anywhere. TJ Maxx and Marshalls usually have a good selection, for instance. A thicker wooden board is a better idea than a thin one--it's heavier & less likely to shift around on the counter as you chop, and will also be less likely to warp when drying. I like boards with a lot of crosscut segments for this same reason. The size of the board is up to you, but I find that about 12x15 inches gives me enough space to work.

Mixing bowl

Next: the classic mixing bowl. This is obviously a necessity if you want to mix up any dough, batter, or glaze, but it also can serve as a dish soaker, a salad bowl, or a serving dish. You can wash vegetables in it without taking up your entire sink. You can soak several cups of dried beans. You can let bread dough rise until doubled. You can whip a massive amount of cream. If nothing else, you can put it on your counter and fill it with the lemons and tomatoes you don't want to hide in the refrigerator.

The most important mixing bowl you buy should have one key quality: it should be large. If you're going to use it for all these different purposes, you need to have plenty of space. If you buy a set of bowls, you'll end up with a range of sizes, and that's fine. But if you just buy one, make sure it's big enough to hold a full batch of bread dough. Three or four quarts is a good size. I tend to prefer taller, narrower bowls to wider, shallower ones; this lets me avoid slopping ingredients over the sides.

The choice of material is up to you. My main mixing bowl is heavy pyrex, but lots of people go for thin, light stainless steel bowls. Metal is also a good choice if you tend to make pastries that need to be kept cold, as it conducts heat well. But it really depends more on your preferences than anything else.

Honorable mention: vegetable peeler, can opener, waiter-style corkscrew with bottle opener, measuring spoons & cups.

Next: on to the stovetop!

The whole top tools for your first kitchen series:
- Part 1: Prep
- Part 2: Stovetop
- Part 3: Oven
- Part 4: Cleanup