Starting

ebrian wrote:
Is there some sort of a list I could get of

Quoted message said:

the "basic/essential" cooking equipment/pots/cups that I need to get me
started?

Thanks

As far as equipment, realize that often people don't have the right pan
but they make do.

Personally, my standards would include: saucepans in 2 and 3 quart
size, a stockpot, a small 8" skillet and a larger 11" skillet (one
cast-iron, ideally), a square 8x8 or 9x9 pan, a 9x13 pan, a loaf pan,
a casserole dish (maybe 2 quart or so), a souffle dish (optional but
good to have), a few ramekins, a set of nesting mixing bowls. Add to
that some meausring cups and a good knife or 2, maybe a food processor
or stick blender if you're feeling ambitious, Oh yeah, and a cookie
sheet or baking pan, plus one for roasting.

That should give you enough you can make do with. I find that I often
don'thave the exact size of casserlo dish specified, but I can
substitute a pyrex baking dish or individualize into ramekins if need
be. My casserole dishes never seem to be the right size!

Go to yard sales to get your basics until you figure out what you like
to use. Or try ebay or the thrift store to stock up. Eventually you'll
know if you prefer heavy bottomed or nonstick, glass or silicone, etc.

"ebrian" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

I have just turned my back on my video gaming life. Yes, it was a
great 25 years of gaming and I don't regret it for a second.

There's two things I wanted to do with my time -- cooking and playing
guitar. The thing I've noticed is every time I open up a recipe is
that I am missing half the things that they require, and I'm not even
talking about ingredients. Is there some sort of a list I could get of
the "basic/essential" cooking equipment/pots/cups that I need to get me
started?

Thanks

I was about to say that video games won't make you fat, but that's not true
if you always have snacks & beer nearby. At least cooking will keep you on
your feet.

Do you have a Bed, Bath & Beyond store nearby? There's a reason I'm
asking.....

"Jude" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

ebrian wrote:
Is there some sort of a list I could get of

Quoted message said:

the "basic/essential" cooking equipment/pots/cups that I need to get me
started?

Thanks

As far as equipment, realize that often people don't have the right pan
but they make do.

Personally, my standards would include: saucepans in 2 and 3 quart
size, a stockpot, a small 8" skillet and a larger 11" skillet (one
cast-iron, ideally), a square 8x8 or 9x9 pan, a 9x13 pan, a loaf pan,
a casserole dish (maybe 2 quart or so), a souffle dish (optional but
good to have), a few ramekins, a set of nesting mixing bowls. Add to
that some meausring cups and a good knife or 2, maybe a food processor
or stick blender if you're feeling ambitious, Oh yeah, and a cookie
sheet or baking pan, plus one for roasting.

That should give you enough you can make do with. I find that I often
don'thave the exact size of casserlo dish specified, but I can
substitute a pyrex baking dish or individualize into ramekins if need
be. My casserole dishes never seem to be the right size!

Go to yard sales to get your basics until you figure out what you like
to use. Or try ebay or the thrift store to stock up. Eventually you'll
know if you prefer heavy bottomed or nonstick, glass or silicone, etc.

Yard sales? Be careful with that. Much of the time, the pots & pans sold
there are junk, which is why they're being sold. If a new cook doesn't know
the difference between [censored] and decent utensils, it could be a very
discouraging experience.

ebrian said:

The thing I've noticed is every time I open up a recipe is
that I am missing half the things that they require, and I'm not even
talking about ingredients. Is there some sort of a list I could get of
the "basic/essential" cooking equipment/pots/cups that I need to get me
started?

Frying pan.
Sauce pan with lid.
Spatula.
Spoon.
Cutting board.
Knife.
Vegetable peeler.

I'm assuming you live in a place with some sort of kitchen so I don't
need to put stove and refrigerator on the list.

I compiled that list by thinking about the simple meals I've made in the
past few days and thinking about what equipment was needed to make them.

Could you give an example of a basic recipe for which you lack the
equipment? I ask because the answer to your question depends a lot on
what sort of recipes you wish to make.

--Lia

"Julia Altshuler" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

ebrian said:

The thing I've noticed is every time I open up a recipe is
that I am missing half the things that they require, and I'm not even
talking about ingredients. Is there some sort of a list I could get of
the "basic/essential" cooking equipment/pots/cups that I need to get me
started?

Frying pan.
Sauce pan with lid.
Spatula.
Spoon.
Cutting board.
Knife.
Vegetable peeler.

I'm assuming you live in a place with some sort of kitchen so I don't need
to put stove and refrigerator on the list.

I compiled that list by thinking about the simple meals I've made in the
past few days and thinking about what equipment was needed to make them.

Could you give an example of a basic recipe for which you lack the
equipment? I ask because the answer to your question depends a lot on
what sort of recipes you wish to make.

--Lia

Uh oh. Maybe he's making fettucine from scratch, and wants to grind his own
wheat.

Thanks.

Whatever is in my kitchen is comprised of whatever my mom no longer
wanted before my parents moved away. She took all the good stuff
including those nifty sets. Some of the pots and pans that I have are
20 years old and have awful looking burn marks at the bottom.

Of the items you guys have generously listed, i believe I have:
Frying pan
Spoon
Cutting board
Cleaver

I have a bunch of pots. I'm pretty sure I have a stockpot. And a
smaller one which I use to make rammen noodles. And there's one in
between those sizes but it's all black at the bottom.

I have a food processor, blender, imitation Foreman grill. I even have
one of those fruit preserver things, that dries them out? I used to
make banana chips with it.

One chef's knife.
One serrated bread knife (and it doesn't have to be a fancy one).
One small paring knife.

These would be the basics. Don't run out and buy a whole set of knives. Get
just the ones you need, and get good ones, not [censored] (except the bread knife,
as mentioned earlier)*. Buy a steel, also, for touching up the blades.

*Bread knives are not something you can sharpen easily yourself. Unless you
know of a place to get them sharpened, you're better off going cheap, and
just replacing the knife when it's too far gone. If you use it just for
bread, it'll be a long time before you need to replace it.

ebrian said:

Whatever is in my kitchen is comprised of whatever my mom no longer
wanted before my parents moved away.

Usually its' the kids that move out, not the parents.

Sell those video games, if you're serious, and buy your kitchen
equipment.

-sw

ebrian said:

I have just turned my back on my video gaming life. Yes, it was a
great 25 years of gaming and I don't regret it for a second.

There's two things I wanted to do with my time -- cooking and playing
guitar. The thing I've noticed is every time I open up a recipe is
that I am missing half the things that they require, and I'm not even
talking about ingredients. Is there some sort of a list I could get of
the "basic/essential" cooking equipment/pots/cups that I need to get me
started?

Thanks

I haven't had a bare bones basic kitchen in over a decade, but my list
of basic essentials to make near any dish would be:

A good quality chefs knife and paring knife
1 cup liquid measure
set of measuring spoons
set of measuring cups
rubber spatula
wooden spoons
ladel
metal spatula (pancake flipper)
wire whisk
three mixing bowls in different sizes
cutting board
stockpot
2 & 3 quart saucepans with lids
8" frying pan
10-12" frying pan
2 qt covered casserole dish
8" square pan
9 x 13" pan
half sheet pan
roasting pan
grater
broiler pan
cooling racks
dutch oven
muffin pans
9 & 10" pie plates
rolling pin

Jessica

"Jessica V." <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

ebrian said:

I have just turned my back on my video gaming life. Yes, it was a
great 25 years of gaming and I don't regret it for a second.

There's two things I wanted to do with my time -- cooking and playing
guitar. The thing I've noticed is every time I open up a recipe is
that I am missing half the things that they require, and I'm not even
talking about ingredients. Is there some sort of a list I could get of
the "basic/essential" cooking equipment/pots/cups that I need to get me
started?

Thanks

I haven't had a bare bones basic kitchen in over a decade, but my list
of basic essentials to make near any dish would be:

A good quality chefs knife and paring knife
1 cup liquid measure
set of measuring spoons
set of measuring cups
rubber spatula
wooden spoons
ladel
metal spatula (pancake flipper)
wire whisk
three mixing bowls in different sizes
cutting board
stockpot
2 & 3 quart saucepans with lids
8" frying pan
10-12" frying pan
2 qt covered casserole dish
8" square pan
9 x 13" pan
half sheet pan
roasting pan
grater
broiler pan
cooling racks
dutch oven
muffin pans
9 & 10" pie plates
rolling pin

Jessica

Don't forget some good kitchen towels. If they have flowers on them, they
are probably not good towels. If they have the same texture as bath towels,
they are not good kitchen towels.

It's true, my friends always joke about how I ended up with the
opposite of what usually happens.

I'm going to uninstall the game. That's about all I can do. And
cancel the monthly subscription. You can't exactly re-sell computer
games.

I'm not talking about becoming serious chef, right now I'm just looking
to become an adequate cook.

"ebrian" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

It's true, my friends always joke about how I ended up with the
opposite of what usually happens.

I'm going to uninstall the game. That's about all I can do. And
cancel the monthly subscription. You can't exactly re-sell computer
games.

I'm not talking about becoming serious chef, right now I'm just looking
to become an adequate cook.

Certain snobs here will scoff at this idea, but get yourself the book "The
Joy of Cooking".

The book's not trendy. It's not cool. It might not have the latest slick
recipes you see on TV cooking shows, like mahi mahi with grape-mango-anchovy
salsa. What it does have is a wealth of reference information that'll help
you learn general rules which apply to entire categories of cooking. If
you're about to buy some odd vegetable you're not familiar with, it'll tell
you how to choose and store that vegetable. And, of course, there are
recipes, and most of them really are pretty good. If you find a food
category you want to obsess about, like Mexican, then run out and find a
Mexican cookbook. In the beginning though, this book will give you some
reasonable samples of various cuisines. You'll find yourself referring to
the book with a fair amount of regularity.

Thus I ask again. Would you give an example of a recipe you'd like to
make but don't have the equipment for? It sounds to me like you have
everything you need.

One way to go about equipping a kitchen is the way it sounds like you're
hoping to do it. You start with a shopping list of equipment, go out
and get everything at once, THEN start at the beginning of a cookbook
that tells you how to boil an egg. I suppose you could do that, and I
suppose the people who work in the housewares department of a department
store get $ signs in their eyes when they see customers like you coming,
but that's not the way I recommend you go about it.

I recommend opening a cookbook and finding a recipe for something that
looks like you'd like to eat and think you could make, something that's
not too complicated. Then think about the equipment you have on hand
and if there's something missing that's vital to making the recipe. Go
out and buy what you need. It might turn out that you need a mixing
bowl and can't use the sauce pot that I put on my original list. So you
buy a mixing bowl. Perhaps, in time, you discover that some recipes
aren't turning out well because a plastic or cheap item that you have is
hard to work with so you buy something of better quality. But you buy
what you need when you need it; you don't start with a list.

Having said that, I'm going to go out on a limb and make some guesses as
to what's really happening. I think you've been making excuses for not
cooking for many years. You've just given up one huge set of excuses,
and now you need more. You think that you can't get started because you
don't have the right equipment so you ask for a beginner's set of
equipment. Somewhere in the back of your mind, you're telling yourself
that you'd be a great cook straight away if you only had the right
stuff. It doesn't work that way. Then you'd need the right beginner's
cookbook, and if you had that, there'd still be a reason why you were
dragging your feet about getting started.

The truth is that the best chefs in the best kitchens still have to
start somewhere, and some recipes won't turn out well until you've
tried, practiced, failed, asked some questions about what went wrong and
tried again. For example, I just bought a cool kitchen torch yesterday.
I'd managed all this time without one but thought I'd like to make
creme brulee. I needed help filling it with the butane sold separately.
I couldn't have done that by myself. Then we made creme brulee, but
the torched sugar didn't come out the way it does in restaurants. So
I'll eat the not-quite-perfect creme brulee (somebody has to do it) and
try again (having asked on this list what went wrong). If I'd thought
20 years ago that I couldn't make a hamburger, baked potato and buttered
broccoli without a torch (because everyone knows that a torch is part of
a well-equipped kitchen), I'd be very hungry today.

--Lia

ebrian said:

Thanks.

Whatever is in my kitchen is comprised of whatever my mom no longer
wanted before my parents moved away. She took all the good stuff
including those nifty sets. Some of the pots and pans that I have are
20 years old and have awful looking burn marks at the bottom.

Of the items you guys have generously listed, I believe I have:
Frying pan
Spoon
Cutting board
Cleaver

I have a bunch of pots. I'm pretty sure I have a stockpot. And a
smaller one which I use to make rammen noodles. And there's one in
between those sizes but it's all black at the bottom.

I have a food processor, blender, imitation Foreman grill. I even have
one of those fruit preserver things, that dries them out? I used to
make banana chips with it.

ebrian said:

..... Some of the pots and pans that I have are
20 years old and have awful looking burn marks at the bottom.

"at the bottom"? Do you mean inside or outside? Not a problem if it's
the outside. Maybe a problem if it's inside, depending on the
material. I'd suggest examining all the old pots and pans and tossing
certain things: if it's a non-stick pan or pot and the coating has a
lot of scratches or flaking; if it's old aluminum and there is a lot of
pitting.

If you live in a sizable city, there will be a restaurant supply house
of some kind. That will be a much better place to go to begin to build
up your inventory of kitchen equipment than any of the "gourmet"
kitchen stores. Much of their stuff is unnecessary, over-hyped, and
way overpriced. A good sized city may also have Asian markets. Find
the largest one and look for a steel wok (not non-stick), wok spatula
and ladle, and a cleaver. And maybe a rice cooker. Buying such things
at an Asian market will cost you a lot less than their equivalents at a
place like Bed, Bath and Beyond, let alone a Williams-Sonoma or Sur le
Table. -aem

"Julia Altshuler" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

One way to go about equipping a kitchen is the way it sounds like you're
hoping to do it. You start with a shopping list of equipment, go out and
get everything at once, THEN start at the beginning of a cookbook that
tells you how to boil an egg. I suppose you could do that, and I suppose
the people who work in the housewares department of a department store get
$ signs in their eyes when they see customers like you coming, but that's
not the way I recommend you go about it.

You're right. There's too much danger of buying complete sets, some pieces
of which you'll never use. This is why I asked him if he had a Bed Bath &
Beyond nearby. They *generally* don't have the open stock items I want
sometimes, or so it seems. But, I discovered that they often have those
single items hanging from pegs a few feet away from the boxed sets. Recently
I wanted just a 12" stainless steel Cuisinart sautee pan. They didn't have
them. I turned around, and there on another display was this "Introductory
Emeril 12" Sautee Pan". It appears to be identical to the Cuisinart. $29.99.
Out the door it went.

ebrian said:

You can't exactly re-sell computer games.

Huh? You certainly can. Sounds like you're still procrastinating
:-)

-sw

-sw

"ebrian" <[email hidden]> wrote

Quoted message said:

Whatever is in my kitchen is comprised of whatever my mom no longer
wanted before my parents moved away.

Hey, a lot of people started that way, a lot of people here,
I bet. You sound like you're in pretty good shape, pots-wise.

Quoted message said:

She took all the good stuff
including those nifty sets. Some of the pots and pans that I have are
20 years old and have awful looking burn marks at the bottom.

The bottom where you cook or the bottom where it sits
on the burner? Just curious.

If you have a few bucks to spare, you can get a decent set
of pots for a reasonable price. You might want to do that.
Start new for $100, 150.

Quoted message said:

Of the items you guys have generously listed, i believe I have:
Frying pan
Spoon
Cutting board
Cleaver

Spatula, tongs? I use those a lot.

Quoted message said:

I have a bunch of pots. I'm pretty sure I have a stockpot. And a
smaller one which I use to make rammen noodles. And there's one in
between those sizes but it's all black at the bottom.

I have a food processor, blender, imitation Foreman grill. I even have
one of those fruit preserver things, that dries them out? I used to
make banana chips with it.

As someone said, you'll probably want a couple of sizes
of pyrex type baking dishes (square and rectangular), they are
handy for a ton of things.

And, as still someone else said, check out places like
Bed Bath & Beyond/Linen's and Things ... you'll find a
good selection of stuff there. There are often coupons
for 15% off/whatever, especially if you buy a set of pots
or a good knife, that'll be valuable.

Figure out a few dishes you'd normally make, I don't know
what you like, buy what you'd need to make them and
you'll be in really good shape. You can always add later,
maybe find out you want to upgrade something.

nancy

Doug Kanter said:

One chef's knife.
One serrated bread knife (and it doesn't have to be a fancy one).
One small paring knife.

*Bread knives are not something you can sharpen easily yourself. Unless you
know of a place to get them sharpened, you're better off going cheap, and
just replacing the knife when it's too far gone. If you use it just for
bread, it'll be a long time before you need to replace it.

Well, DUH, why would a normal brained person use a bread knife
(especially an expensive one) for other than bread... would you use an
expensive set of wood chisels to scrape paint. My 9" Commercial
Sabatier bread knife cost I think $70, some 20 years ago... still in
the same shape as the first time I used it, cuts only bread. And btw,
bread knives are not serrated, their blades are scalloped (big
difference), and quite easy to sharpen, as easy as a chain saw... but
if used properly a bread knife should never need sharpening. A bread
knife is something typically used every day, many times every day...
buy the best quality bread knife you can find, spare no cost... all
your other knives can be inexpensive but not your bread knife... a
cheapo bread knife won't cut well from day one.

A person who holds themself out as a cook should own no serrated
knives... a serrated knife in the kitchen is an absolute sign that no
kind of cook lives here... even steak knives should not be serrated,
those ruin a steak. Even a good grapefruit knife is scalloped, not
serrated.

Sheldon

Thanks, this will help a lot.

To everyone who've responded with american stores that don't exist in
Canada --- thanks anyway :P I do however live in Toronto and will
check out some large chinese supermarkets for some wares. I don't even
have a mixing bowl. 🙁

And to Julia -- you're right that I am probably making a lot of
excuses, but at least I'm trying here. It may not seem like much to
you but to me it's a pretty big step forward.