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  CHOPPING

  A good set of knives is the obvious place to start. Kitchen knives aren’t just an expensive status symbol. Sure, there are sets that cost more than your first car, but you don’t need anything that fancy to get started. One sharp, well-balanced chef’s knife will make cutting and chopping food faster, safer, and more fun. A basic chef’s knife can be found almost anywhere, retailing for around $50–60, and with proper care and maintenance can last a decade or more.* If you’ve never had your own good knife, this purchase alone could revolutionize your time in the kitchen.

  The only other essential knife you need is a smaller paring knife for more delicate jobs. A chef’s knife is great for chopping onions and kale, but can be a little awkward for coring a strawberry or peeling an apple. With these two knives in your arsenal, you should be able to handle any basic recipe, and if you shop around you can probably find them bundled as a set for a small discount. The last thing you’ll need is a sharpening steel, the long round poles that often come with knife sets. These help you maintain the sharpness of the blade between uses without grinding down the metal.

  If you’ve invested in good sharp knives, it’s also important to have a decent cutting board or two. For cutting vegetables I prefer wooden boards. Look for a cutting board with a fairly large surface area, at least 14 inches long but preferably bigger. (9½ × 13 is common. 11½ × 17½ is ideal.) You’re going to want a good amount of space for chopping kale, chard, and other large greens. For omnivores it’s nice to have a separate cutting board for handling raw meats. I prefer a plastic board for this task, since it doesn’t absorb smells as readily and can go in the dishwasher. It is also handy if your meat board has a gutter carved around the sides to stop any stray juice trickles from getting onto your counter. No matter what kind you choose, be sure to get a board with enough weight, so that it won’t be sliding and bouncing around the counter as you chop.*

  If you’re a big fruit eater, you may also consider investing in one additional smaller cutting board that never comes in contact with onions or garlic. No matter how thoroughly you clean your cutting boards, I’ve found that the flavor of onions and garlic can seep into most foods that are cut on it afterward. Of course, for vegetables this doesn’t really matter. But it can be slightly horrifying to take a bite of a melon only to realize you sliced it up in the same spot you mashed garlic and anchovies for that puttanesca sauce on Tuesday night. Blech. Having a separate board for fruit and cheese can prevent such unpleasantries.

  The last things you’ll need for chopping are a large mixing bowl and a fine mesh strainer or colander for rinsing and straining. The bowl can be used to hold vegetables that have already been cut and to marinate and toss vegetables in dressing. If you get a nice-looking one, it can double as a large salad serving bowl as well. There’s no reason this bowl needs to be expensive, but I don’t recommend plastic, since it isn’t useful for hot vegetables and can sometimes absorb the flavor if it holds food for more than an hour or two. Ceramic, glass, wood, or even aluminum can all make for beautiful and functional mixing bowls. I use my mesh strainer more often than my colander for rinsing and straining (it’s particularly nice for straining grains, which may fall through larger holes), but it’s convenient to have one with legs as well if you don’t mind buying both.

  COOKING

  Though I wouldn’t blame you if your first “cooking” adventures were all just variations on salad (that’s certainly how I got started), I presume at some point you will want to eat something warm. Pan sets are another of those kitchen items that can be ridiculously expensive, but really don’t need to be. As long as the bottom is decently thick, almost any of the most popular brands of pan sets will serve you well. The advantage of a set is that you’ll get all the essentials, including a basic frying pan (this is what you’ll use the most), a deeper fry pan with taller sides for larger dishes, a basic pot for boiling, a larger stock pot, lids, and a few bells and whistles like an omelet pan. You can get a decent nonstick set on sale for around $100.

  But, wait, doesn’t Teflon kill you? There are a lot of rumors and old wives’ tales on the Internet, but there is actually very little data that Teflon is dangerous. It is true that if your pan is heated to ridiculous temperatures, the fumes of burning Teflon are not very healthy for small birds,* but for most humans in a normal kitchen setting there is pretty good evidence that nonstick pans are safe to use and won’t leech toxic chemicals into your food. They are also much, much easier to clean. If you’re a more advanced chef, there are certainly advantages to copper, cast-iron, or even stainless-steel cookware, but your average home cook is likely to find these more frustrating than revolutionary. If you’re getting married, feel free to add some fancy copper-bottomed pans to your registry, but they are by no means necessary for a wonderful cooking experience. If a big pan set isn’t in your budget, invest in at least one heavy-bottomed frying pan and one pot for boiling. You can add the rest as you go.

  You will also need a few utensils for turning foods you’re cooking. I highly recommend using 12-inch nylon-tipped tongs for nearly everything, including stir-fries, turning roasts, and tossing salads. Honestly, it’s nice to have two pair, if you can splurge on the extra $12.99. That lets you have one for veggies and one for meat or be a little lazier about cleaning. Being tongless is the worst. The other cooking utensils you’ll need are one good spatula for eggs and turning more delicate items, a decent ladle for liquids, and a slotted spoon for things like beans. None of these have to be fancy; the nylon ones work great for me.

  Last, you’ll need at least one good roasting pan. This is the long metal or Pyrex pan with 2- to 3-inch sides that you use in the oven. There are enough life-changing roasting recipes in this book alone to make a nice roasting pan a worthwhile purchase. If you value the skin on your fingers, you should purchase an oven mitt as well.

  EXTRA CREDIT

  Once you’re ready to go beyond the basics (which honestly shouldn’t take very long), there are a few more discretionary items that most people find useful. One is a 2-cup Pyrex measuring cup. As we discussed in chapter 5, knowing how much of something you’re using can be helpful. A sturdy measuring cup is also handy for mixing dressings and marinades and can be microwaved if necessary. Similarly, measuring spoons can really come in handy, especially if you start playing around with cuisines that use a lot of spices, like Indian food. If you can find them, I recommend getting measuring spoons that are as narrow as possible (think long and square, as opposed to big and round), so they can reach into tiny jars and containers. You’ll thank me later. Consider spending a few dollars on a vegetable scrubbing brush and peeler as well, which can shave a ton of time off your produce-cleaning protocol. If you’re a meat eater, you’ll also want to invest in a decent meat thermometer. I like the ones that allow you to set an alarm when it reaches a certain temperature, so you’re less likely to forget and overcook your meat.

  There are a few bigger items that I also recommend for medium-level cooks, including a pressure cooker (for quick beans), a slow cooker (for easy meals), and a hand blender for soups and sauces. I eat enough beans that I consider my pressure cooker indispensable. Canned beans are often flavorless, have a strange texture, and can be, ahem, gas-provoking, but dried beans that have been soaked and cooked on the stove taste amazing and don’t cause any digestive issues. The only problem is that cooking beans on the stovetop in a regular pan can take hours, depending on the bean. In a pressure cooker, however, beans cook up in less than twenty minutes, and a single batch can last nearly a week. For $60, it’s hard to beat a pressure cooker for kitchen efficiency.

  Slow cookers are equally useful, but for the opposite reason. Instead of decreasing cooking time, as their name suggests, slow cookers are perfect for one-pot meals that essentially cook themselves all day while you’re at work. They are ideal for large cuts of meat (e.g., pork shoulder) and hearty vegetables, and few things are as comforting during the winter months as coming home to the s
mell of a delicious, hearty, home-cooked meal. It’s enough to domesticate even the most dedicated urban restaurant goer. You can get an excellent slow cooker for $50.

  A hand blender (also known as an immersion blender) is another ingenious device that changed the way I work in the kitchen. In the past if I wanted to blend a soup or sauce, a food processor or regular blender were my only options. Since both of these tend to result in big messes and occasional accidents,* using them always seemed too complicated to be worth the extra effort. They are also more expensive. My hand blender changed all this. Now I can submerge the blade directly into the pot I cooked my vegetables in and instantly create a creamy, perfectly smooth soup or sauce. A hand blender is also great for making dips like hummus, and blended foods are now far more likely to appear on my dinner menu.

  Pressure cookers, slow cookers, and hand blenders are important, because they enable you to make large batches of food that can be used for several meals throughout the week. This removes some of the biggest barriers to cooking, because it gives you something substantial (e.g., beans, a roast, or a soup) to base subsequent meals around and therefore makes future decisions to eat at home that much easier. This is a good thing. Remember that your elephant is lazy, so you should prioritize tasks that save you future time and effort (i.e., let you be lazier tomorrow). Tricks like these make it far more likely your kitchen time will be rewarding and develop into a habit.

  Since you’re now committed to making large batches of food, you’ll need a place to store them. It’s worth investing in a decent food storage set, whether it’s plastic or glass. The Pyrex sets are more expensive but they’re sturdier, can be heated, and are potentially safer, since plastics can sometimes leech chemicals into foods. If you don’t want to spend a lot of money, feel free to buy the cheap disposable kind. You can reuse them multiple times, but when they get gross or break, you can just toss them out without worrying about the price.

  A FOODIST’S PANTRY

  Once you have your gear, it’s time to focus on your pantry. A well-stocked pantry will enable you to turn almost any random ingredient into a delicious meal, since it can provide flavor, variety, and sometimes even substance to other ingredients. Here are the essentials, plus a few more worth keeping around for good measure.

  OLIVE OIL

  You’ll be cooking pretty much everything in olive oil, so it is important to find a brand you enjoy and can afford in large quantities. I don’t recommend buying a superfancy kind for everyday cooking, so any cold-pressed olive oil should do the trick. I do, however, recommend finding a nicer extra-virgin olive oil for dressing salads and drizzling on finished dishes. These come in smaller bottles and are more expensive, but you use less, and the flavor is worth the extra cost.

  SALT

  Like olive oil, salt is indispensable. Though you’ve probably seen headlines that salt is the devil’s seasoning, the truth is that 75 percent of the sodium consumed in the United States comes from processed foods. If you aren’t eating those foods, then salt isn’t a problem for you. And if it makes your vegetables tastier (and therefore make you more likely to eat them), I’d argue that using salt is healthier than not.

  For a basic kitchen I recommend stocking two kinds of salt, one chunky sea salt that you can grind onto dishes and a carton of plain iodized table salt for adding to boiling water, soups, and other liquid-based dishes. Iodine is an essential nutrient, and unless you eat a lot of seaweed (which I do recommend, but may not be practical for everyone), using the occasional pinch of iodized salt is a good idea. More advanced cooks can experiment with the fancy salts from around the globe.

  PEPPER

  Yep, you’ll need pepper. I recommend getting a grinder with some high-quality whole peppercorns. It’ll taste better than the generic preground stuff or even the peppercorns that come with the grinder you bought. Call me a snob, but I usually toss those out, because they don’t have any flavor. A cheaper option is the spice aisle of the grocery store, which will sometimes carry good peppercorns with their own disposable grinder built into the container.

  VINEGAR

  Vinegar is one of those things that can sound unappealing if you haven’t had much experience with it, but once you start your kitchen experiments, it will become your secret weapon. Vinegar adds acidity to foods, which your palate translates into a sour taste. This might not sound good on its own, but think about what a squeeze of lemon adds to a lobster tail or a splash of lime juice to guacamole (or cold Mexican beer). A hint of acidity can add a brightness to foods that taste dull or flat and is often the best way to fix a boring soup, sauce, or stir-fry. Different vinegars also impart different character to dishes depending on what they are made from. For instance, I prefer a nutty brown rice vinegar when I’m cooking Japanese food, but for a spring salad vinaigrette, I adore a low-acid red wine vinegar mixed with some fruity extra-virgin olive oil, chopped chives, and a hint of Dijon mustard. Balsamic vinegar is another must, because of its distinctive sweet flavor. It’s easy to go crazy with vinegar, but if you’re just getting started I recommend some decent balsamic, rice, and red wine vinegars to start. They don’t have to break the bank, but don’t choose the cheapest stuff in the store either.

  STOCK

  Having chicken, beef, and vegetable stock in your pantry means that on any day of the week you can have soup for dinner. Stock can also add boatloads of flavor to ordinary vegetable and meat dishes, making you wonder how and when you became such an amazing cook. Though die-hard foodies insist on making their own stock, I’ve found that no matter how many chicken carcasses I save in my freezer, I never have enough stock around to rely on consistently. Consequently, I keep store-bought chicken and beef stock in my pantry for whenever I don’t have the real stuff. My favorite lately is the bouillon paste that comes in little jars. I think the flavor is better than bouillon cubes, and they are easier to store than the big boxes or cans of broth. Remember to refrigerate your paste once you open it.

  BEANS AND LENTILS

  At any given time I have about half a dozen dry bean varietals in my pantry. I also keep several kinds of lentils for good measure. Beans and lentils are both members of the legume family, since they are fruits that grow in pods. I always make at least one large batch of beans or lentils to supplement my meals throughout the week.

  GRAINS

  Intact grains are another staple worth stocking in bulk. Of course, I always keep a big container full of my morning muesli (see recipe) and enough rolled grains to make another batch when I run out. I also have an impressive stock of farro, my favorite grain to cook with, and two or three kinds of quinoa (pronounced keen-wah)—red and black are my favorite. My rice collection includes containers of short-, medium-, and long-grain brown rice as well as some Japanese haiga rice, which has had the bran polished away but retains the nutritious (and flavorful) germ. Though I use all of these sparingly, I consider them essential components of my foodist pantry.

  JARRED TOMATOES

  Ironically, tomatoes (my website’s namesake) are one of the few vegetables that survive the canning process with a lot of their qualities intact. Because of the presence of bisphenol A (BPA) in the plastic lining of cans, these days I usually opt for jars of tomatoes instead. But regardless of the vehicle, I’ve come to depend on preserved tomatoes whenever I’m low on fresh ingredients or just feeling as though I need more red foods in my life. Added to meat, vegetables, beans, or all of the above, a jar of tomatoes can turn a few simple ingredients into a full meal.

  NUTS

  Nuts are one of those miracle ingredients that make almost everything taste better and more satisfying. They even bring an air of elegance to a dish that may otherwise seem a little lackluster. The beauty of nuts is they come in so many different sizes and flavors that they’re nearly as useful as herbs for mixing up the taste of a dish. I always have a stock of walnuts, pine nuts, pistachios, pecans, almonds, hazelnuts, and macadamias in my pantry, but your imagination is your limit. Go nuts.

/>   BASIC SPICES

  I don’t recommend buying one of those giant prefilled spice racks that take up half of your kitchen counter with sad, expired herbs. However, there are a few basic spices worth having at all times. For me these include Vietnamese cinnamon, red chili flakes, coriander, cumin seeds, curry powder, dried oregano, cayenne pepper, paprika, garlic powder, and sesame seeds.

  FOODIST PANTRY 2.0

  The list above is more than enough to get you started, but veteran foodists will probably want to expand their pantry with a few more esoteric goodies. Here are some items that, although not 100 percent necessary, can really take your cooking to the next level. These will let you dabble in some ethnic cuisines without a complete pantry overhaul. Feel free to add or omit whatever you please from this list. This is just to give you a sense of what I keep in my own pantry to get you started.

  SOY SAUCE

  There’s so much tastiness you can make with soy sauce that it’s worth always having a supply in the house. Be careful, though. Soy sauce usually contains gluten. So if you are sensitive, be sure to find the gluten-free kind.

  FISH SAUCE

  I know it doesn’t sound appealing, but fish sauce is a wonderful ingredient that, like soy sauce, adds salty and umami* components to Southeast Asian foods. Thai soups are delicious and easy to make, but you’ll need some fish sauce in your pantry.

  DASHI

  If you like Japanese food, you need to keep some dashi around. Dashi is the delicate bonito- and seaweed-based broth that appears in seemingly every Japanese dish. It’s heavenly, and you can’t make good Japanese food at home without it. It’s fairly easy to find instant dashi in dried pellets. It tastes pretty good, but I prefer the bottles of concentrated dashi from the Japanese market here in the city. You may need to bring a Japanese friend to translate if you want to try and find your own.