by Jeff Potter
Standard Kitchen Equipment
There is a balance between having the right tool for the right job and having too much stuff on hand. When looking at a potential kitchen tool, consider if you can do the task it’s intended for with a tool you already have, and whether the new gizmo is a multitasker capable of solving more than one problem.
Storage containers
While you can use consumer-grade plastic containers, the commercial-grade polycarbonate containers used in the restaurant industry are great: they’re rugged enough to last a lifetime, can handle hot liquids, and are designed for holding the larger quantities you’ll be handling for group cooking. Search online for Cambro’s CamSquare containers.
Ubiquitous in commercial kitchens, CamSquare containers are affordable, practically indestructible, and add a certain geek flair. You can flip the lid over and use it as an impromptu cutting board as well.
Strainers
Look for a strainer that has a metal mesh and a handle long enough to span your sink. Avoid strainers that have plastic parts; plastic isn’t as strong or heat resistant and will eventually break. In addition to the normal application of straining cooked foods like pasta or washing berries, a metal strainer can double as a splatter guard when inverted above a frying pan. Depending on the types of food you are cooking, you might find a spider—a specialized spoon with a wide shallow mesh bowl and a long handle—helpful for scooping out items from pots of boiling water.
Note
When straining out pasta from boiling water, pour away from yourself to avoid steam burns.
You can use a strainer as a splatter guard while pan-frying items such as salmon. Make sure your strainer is wire mesh and has no plastic parts.
Mixers & co.
For baking, a handheld mixer or stand mixer is pretty much indispensable. Sure, you can use a whisk or a spoon, but when it comes to creaming together butter and sugar, you’ll get better results with an electric mixer that can whip microscopic air bubbles into the mix. Besides a mixer, there are a few other electric devices that are worth their counter space.
Immersion blender. Skip the normal blender and go for an immersion blender. Sometimes called a stick blender, the blade part of the blender is mounted on a handle and immersed into a container that holds whatever it is you want to blend. When making soup, for example, instead of transferring the soup from pot to blender for puréeing, you take the immersion blender and run it directly in the pot. Quicker to use, easier to wash.
Food processor. While not an essential, there are times when a food processor makes quick work of otherwise laborious tasks—for example, making pesto or slicing 10 pounds of onions or pulsing pie dough to incorporate flour and butter. They’re expensive, though, and take up space. You might opt for a mandolin, instead, which can also be used to quickly make large piles of julienned (matchstick-cut) veggies.
Note
Sad but true: the julienned strips you see in restaurants aren’t lovingly cut by hand.
Rice cooker with slow-cook mode. I’m in love with my rice cooker. Actually, that’s not true; I’m in love with the slow-cook mode of my rice cooker, and you should be, too. As we’ll discuss in Chapter 4, some chemical processes in cooking require a long period of time at a relatively specific temperatures. This is why you should make room for a rice cooker with a slow-cook mode: you can safely leave it on overnight, or even for a few days, without worrying about either the utility bill or the house burning down (something that you shouldn’t do with almost any other source of heat in the kitchen). This handy appliance makes an entire class of dishes (braised short ribs, duck confit, beef stew) trivially easy. You could just get a slow cooker, but a rice cooker with slow-cook mode will also come in handy for those occasions when you actually want to make rice.
Unitaskers
I know, I know...unitaskers. Some unitaskers are worth making space for, though, because of how well they perform their particular tasks.
Box grater. A simple box grater for grating vegetables, cheese, and butter (for cutting into pastry dough) can save a lot of time. Sure, you can use a food processor with a grating disk (fast but lots of cleanup) or a paring knife to cube (tedious), but there are times when it’s just easiest to plop a box grater on a plate or cutting board and grate away.
Simple Beef Stew
In a pan, sear 1–2 lbs / 0.5–1 kg cubed stewing beef (it should be a cheap cut for stewing; more expensive cuts won’t have as much collagen, which will affect the texture, as we’ll discuss in Chapter 4). After browning the outsides of the beef, transfer the meat to the bowl of the rice cooker. Using the same pan, sauté one or two diced onions (red, yellow, white—doesn’t matter). After the onions have started to caramelize, transfer them to the rice cooker. Toss in a can or two of diced tomatoes (enough to cover the beef). Add seasonings—such as oregano, thyme, or rosemary—and salt and pepper. You can add diced potatoes, canned beans, or other starches as well. I sometimes throw in a tablespoon of ketchup and port to add more flavors. Leave to slow cook for at least six hours. You can start the cooking in the morning before work and arrive home to a quick and easy dinner of beef stew.
Pepper grinder. You want a 9″ Unicorn Magnum Plus. Really, that’s the best pepper mill out there; never mind what it sounds like.
Garlic press. If you like a good strong kick of garlic in your food and don’t mind taking a shortcut, a garlic press makes it easy to get a quick fix. By all means, if you’re the type who strongly believes in always doing things the right way—a sharp knife, dicing it with precision, and reveling in the texture and nuance—then skip the garlic press. But if you’re a garlic lover who, after a long day at work, just wants to cook a quick five-minute meal, a garlic press will make it easier to use your favorite ingredient. The trick is to get a garlic press with a good handle and good "teeth," so that you can pop in a clove unpeeled and squirt out fresh garlicky goodness. Then, make sure you pull out the just-pressed skin and wash the garlic press right away. With these two tricks, you can add garlic to a dish with about five seconds of work. Be advised that garlic squirted out of a garlic press will quickly oxidize, so save pressing the garlic until the moment you’re ready to cook it.
Note
Try this: cook a serving of pasta. Then, in a small sauté pan over medium heat, add a tablespoon or so of olive oil. Once the oil is hot, use a garlic press to add two or three cloves of garlic and cook until the garlic gives off a pleasant aroma. (You can "squirt" the garlic from the garlic press straight into the pan.) Toss in the cooked pasta to coat and serve. Top with Parmesan cheese and a few red pepper flakes if desired.
The Best Tool in the Kitchen?
Don’t be shy about using your hands! After a good scrubbing with soap, they’re just as clean as a pair of tongs and infinitely more dexterous. Tossing a salad? Putting veggies on a plate? Dropping cookie dough onto a baking sheet? Use your hands. It’s faster, easier, and means one less utensil to wash.
I was making crepes at a friend’s dinner party several years ago and one of the other guests was an executive chef for a prominent Boston restaurant. We were in the kitchen together chatting about our respective fields of software and cooking. He stopped me as I went to flip the crepe with a spatula, showing me how to pull it back and flip it using my hands instead. Flipping this way allows you to feel how much the crepe is sticking to the pan and avoids the awkward angling-in of a spatula against the sidewall of the frying pan. While I still usually use a spatula (my fingers aren’t made of asbestos like a full-time cook’s!), the idea of getting in there with my fingers has definitely made me more comfortable grabbing foods and moving them where they need to be. Just don’t burn yourself, and remember to wash your hands, especially when working with raw meats.
1-2-3 Crepes
Whisk or purée until entirely mixed, about 30 seconds:
1 cup (250g) milk (preferably whole milk)
2 large (120g) eggs
⅓ cup (40g) flour (all-purpose)
Let rest for at least 30 minutes, preferably longer, so that the gluten in the flour has a chance to thicken the batter. (Stash the batter in the fridge if you’re going to leave it for more than half an hour.)
Making crepes is like riding a bicycle: it takes practice before it’s easy. Expect to completely screw up the first few you make (training wheels!), and keep in mind that while the batter is easy and the technique simple, the error tolerances are actually pretty tight, so don’t get discouraged! Like riding a bicycle, it’s far easier to go fast; going slow is hard.
Start with a nonstick frying pan over medium-high heat, heating up the pan for about 30 seconds, or until a drop of water sizzles when dropped into it. Once your pan is at temperature, plan to work quickly: butter, wipe down, pour batter in while swirling, flip, flip again, add fillings, plate, and repeat. Because they’re fast and cheap, crepes are great for dinner parties or brunches, but you should definitely practice beforehand.
Butter: Grab a cold stick of butter with the wrapper partially pulled back, and using the wrapped part as a handle, spread a small amount of butter around the pan.
Wipe down: Use a paper towel to thin out the butter over the surface of the pan, wiping up almost all of it (and on repeats, any crumbs left behind from the previous crepe). The pan should look almost dry; you want a super-thin coating of butter, not noticeable streaks.
Pour: Pour in the batter while swirling the pan: pour about ¼ cup / 60 ml of batter into a 10″ / 25 cm pan, adjusting as necessary (you want enough batter just to coat the bottom evenly). While pouring in the batter with one hand, use your other hand to hold the pan in the air and swirl it so that the batter runs and spreads over the surface of the pan. If you can pour batter out of the pan after swirling, you’re using too much.
If you’re short on batter, you can "spot pour" a bit in to fill in the gap. This is also the point at which you should check the heat of the pan: it should be hot enough that the batter develops a lace-like quality: little holes all over the crepe as the steam tunnels up through the batter. If your crepes come out whitish, turn up the heat.
Flip: Wait until the crepe begins to brown. Don’t poke, don’t prod; just let it cook. Once the crepe has begun to brown around the edges, use a silicone spatula (one of those folding spatulas works well) to push down the edge all around the circumference. This will release the edge of the crepe so that it lifts off the pan. Carefully grab that little edge to flip the crepe with both hands.
Flip again: Let the crepe cook on the second side for half a minute or so, until it’s cooked. The first side should come out a uniformly brown tone, so flip the crepe again before adding the fillings. This will leave the better-looking side on the outside of the finished crepe.
Add fillings: Add whatever fillings you like. You can heat and even cook the fillings by leaving the pan on the heat during this step. Or, you can move the crepe to a plate and fill it off the heat if you’re using something cold (e.g., lox, cream cheese, dill). Crepes are a great vehicle for almost any filling, either savory or sweet. If a combination of ingredients works on pizza or in a pie, it’ll probably work in a crepe. Try some of the following combinations:
Powdered sugar
Lemon juice
Jam
Granulated sugar
Grand Marnier (orange liqueur)
Cheese
Eggs
Ham
Dill
Sausage
Cheese
Lox
Onions
Bananas
Cream cheese
Chocolate ganache or Nutella
Notes
It might not look pretty, but a rolled-up crepe with a light sweet filling is fantastic.
If you have a substantial amount of filling, it’s easier to fold the crepe into quarters or into a square. I put a small amount of the filling on top as well, as a reminder of what’s lurking inside.
When making a crepe with an egg, you can crack the raw egg directly onto the crepe after it’s done cooking but while it’s still in the pan. Use the back of a fork to break the yolk and scramble the egg, smoothing it over the entire surface of the crepe. Drop some cheese on top wherever the egg is setting too fast.
Kitchen Organization
A kitchen that has been thoughtfully organized greatly helps in the process of preparing a meal. You will have a more relaxed time cooking if you are able to quickly find what you are looking for and have confidence that you have the right tool for the task at hand.
0(1) Retrieval
Julia Child’s kitchen took the adage "a place for everything and everything in its place" to its logical conclusion: pots and pans were hung on pegboards that had outlines drawn around each item to ensure that they were always returned to the same location, knives were stored above countertops on magnetic bars where she could easily reach out to take one, and common cooking ingredients—oil, vermouth—were placed next to her stovetop. Her kitchen was organized around the French method near to hand, in which tools and common ingredients are kept out in the open and located near the cooking station where they would normally be used.
Julia Child’s kitchen is part of the Smithsonian’s permanent collection, including her pots and pans, which she hung on pegboards for easy access.
PHOTO BY NICOLE LINDROOS (FLICKR.COM USER NIKCHICK, CC-BY-SA 2.0)
Ideally, every item in your kitchen should have a "home" location, to the point where you could hypothetically grab a particular spice jar or pan while blindfolded and without second thought. (This isn’t hypothetical for everyone—how else would the blind cook?) This avoids the frustration of digging through a dozen jars to find the one you’re looking for. In practice, this isn’t always worth the work, but try to keep your kitchen organized enough to be able to select what you’re looking for with a minimum of shuffling.
Store spices in a drawer to speed up the search for any given jar. For extra geek cred, sort them alphabetically (e.g., allspice on the left, wasabi on the right), so that you can use a tree-traversal search algorithm (see http://www.cookingforgeeks.com/book/spicelabels/ for labels). If you don’t have a drawer available, at least make sure to store them in a dark cupboard and not above the stove, where they would get hot.
Instead of keeping spice containers in a cupboard, where they get stacked N deep (invariably resulting in endless digging for a container that turns out to be right in front), see if you have a drawer where you can see them from the top down. If they’re too tall for you to close the drawer, check to see if there is a way to modify the drawer to give you more clearance. In my kitchen, the cabinet had a nonstructural 1.5″ wooden slat at the front that, once removed, allowed for storing the bottles upright. I slapped labels on the tops of all my jars to make it easier to find things. (Why is it that a solid third of all spices seem to start with the letter C? Cinnamon, Cardamom, Cumin, Caraway, Cloves...)
For pull-out drawers or fridge doors with a top-down view, labeling the top gives a quick way to find an item.
Hanging up pots, pans, and strainers not only ensures you have a convenient "home" location for each item, but also frees up the cabinet space that they would otherwise occupy. In my kitchen, I created a hanging system using supplies from the hardware store: S hooks and a steel L beam with holes every few inches (an outside corner support for drywall, made in steel, not aluminum!).
Functional Grouping
Consider storing your everyday kitchen tools near the food items with which they are most commonly used. This approach cuts down on the number of trips between cupboards and counters. That is, instead of having a drawer for storing measuring spoons, measuring cups, small mixing bowls, garlic presses, etc., store those items next to the foods with which they are commonly used:
Measuring spoons and mortar and pestle with spices
Garlic press with garlic
Measuring cups with bulk foods
Small mixing bowls (8 oz) with oils, vinegars, smal
l bulk goods
Teapots with tea; coffee beans with the French press / coffee pot
Uniform Storage Containers
There are several benefits to using food-grade storage containers for bulk items such as flours, sugars, salts, beans, rices, cereals, grains, pastas, lentils, chocolate chips, cocoa powder, etc. Using standard-sized containers makes optimal use of space, and using plastic containers for storage keeps pantry moths in check. Pantry moths (weevils) can enter your kitchen as free riders in packaged dry goods such as grains or flours. If you’re concerned, freeze newly purchased bags of rice, beans, flour, etc. for a week before transferring their contents to storage containers.
Note
Yes, there are bugs in dry goods like flour and cereal. Bugs happen. Take their presence as a sign that the food you are buying is nutritious.
Storing dry bulk goods in standardized containers is a more efficient use of space and prevents spills from torn paper bags. If you have the cupboard space, consider getting wide-mouthed containers for flour and sugar that are big enough for you to scoop directly from.
I store my bulk items in food-grade PVC containers, roughly 3″ × 3″ × 12″ / 7 cm × 7 cm × 30 cm, that I purchased online from U.S. Plastic Corp. (http://www.usplastic.com, search for "PVC clear canister with lid"). Look for a product that has a screw-on lid and meets FDA standards, that has clear sides so that you can clearly see the food inside, and that has a narrow enough opening that you can easily pour from the container into dry measuring cups without spillage. (For flour, you might want to use one of the larger Cambro storage containers.)
