Stumbled across this year-old article from the New York Times on equipping a kitchen for under $200. It does start with two assumptions that won’t hold for all readers: Relatively basic cooking plans (including little to no baking) and access to a restaurant-supply store. But it’s a useful reminder that what Bed Bath & Beyond wants to charge you isn’t necessarily a fair price.
On the plus side, he nabs a chef’s knife for about $10, a sheet pan for under $6 (then he says it’s not ideal for cookies – I only use “half-sheet pans,” lined with Silpats, for cookies), various useful and inexpensive gadgets, and a 14-inch stainless steel pan with steep sides for $25. He gets a decent-sized Hamilton Beach food processor for $60, which is insanely cheap, since Cuisinarts (they did invent the device) run $150-200 for similar sizes. He recommends a Microplane grater, although he then claims that box graters aren’t used much any more. (Bzzt! But thanks for playing!) His knife collection is simple: chef’s, paring, bread.
On the minus side, his pots are mostly aluminum, which I find is less effective than cast-iron or stainless steel at heat retention or diffusion. (Copper is best, of course, but it’s ragingly expensive.) There is also the potential health concern about cooking acidic foods in aluminum, although that may be much ado about nothing. He buys a “coffee and spice grinder” for $10, which I’m sure is good for spices and lousy for coffee, and he doesn’t mention that you can’t use it for both. He claims that a standard blender is more useful than an immersion blender, which isn’t the case in my kitchen. He also recommends the purchase of a whetstone to keep your knives sharp, which is a terribly bad idea unless you want to buy a new knife every year or so.
Where he really got my dander up was his list of ten things you really don’t need. The problem is that he’s assuming that you, the reader, are a moron. He disses the microwave – great for reheating, but also for quick melting or for warming up liquids to go into risotto or other grain dishes. He says of the stand mixer:
Unless you’re a baking fanatic, it takes up too much room to justify it. A good whisk or a crummy handheld mixer will do fine.
I use my stand mixer for cookies, bread doughs, cake batters, meringues and egg foams, whipped cream, and brownies, at the least. You try to knead a bread or pizza dough with a handheld mixer. So does making bread or cookies make a person a “baking fanatic?” I doubt it.
On the boning knife:
BONING/FILLETING KNIVES Really? You’re a butcher now? Or a fishmonger?
Everyone should at least buy poultry on the bone, and knowing how to butcher a chicken or duck is both a useful skill and a way to save money and get more out of what you buy. (Poultry bones make a great and highly versatile stock.) Whole Foods sells 3-4 pound chickens, formerly known as broiler-fryers, for about $2 a pound; the cheapest boneless, skinless chicken breast they sell goes for $5 a pound, and you don’t get the bones or the delicious dark meat. If the author is telling people how to cook on the cheap, at least to some degree, then dissuading people from doing any of their own butchering is counterproductive.
Last up, the stockpot:
The pot you use for boiling pasta will suffice, until you start making gallons of stock at a time.
Here’s a tip: Use your stockpot to boil pasta. That’s what I do – it’s lightweight, so it’s easy to carry when it’s full of water. True, it doesn’t have the matching strainer, but it was under $20, and the point here is to save some money, right?
I like his advice to seek out restaurant supply stores, ignore brand names, use what the pros use in their restaurants and not what they use on their cooking shows, and stop worrying about looks when utility is what matters. But some of his specific choices … well, they wouldn’t go very far given the way I cook.