Kitchen stuff

Occasionally I read Unclutterer, a blog about getting rid of the clutter in your life. Some of the articles are a bit on the extreme side for me, some are pretty funny (every Wednesday is Unitasker Wednesday), and some are pretty useful. The blog owners created a list of their favorite articles this year, which led me to this article by Mark Bittman. If you aren’t familiar with him, he’s got a regular column in the NY Times, has published a bunch of cookbooks, and also has a blog.

I found his article about essential (and non-essential) kitchen equipment both timely and interesting. Most of our kitchen equipment is packed up in storage while we wait and wait for the insurance check to arrive so we can rebuild. Meanwhile, we live in a furnished apartment but pretty clearly the normal tenant doesn’t cook much, or at least doesn’t cook from scratch the way we do. We aren’t reheating take out, we are preparing our dishes from the mostly raw ingredients—or what Dan at Casual Kitchen calls first order foods.

We’ve picked up some things that were missing from this kitchen, and it’s made cooking go smoothly again. The things we’ve bought might make it to your equipment list or maybe you prefer other items:

Measuring cups—the unit came with one glass 1-cup measuring cup. We bought a set, which means we’ll have three sets once we’re moved back.

Measuring spoons—while the unit had a set, we use these all the time, and washing three or four times while preparing one meal got old.

Silicon spatula—how do people manage without these? We are making do with just one and I got a size we didn’t already have.

Cutting mats—sorry, Furnished Quarters, I detest glass cutting boards plus they are awfully hard on knives. Speaking of which . . .

Knives—fortunately, I snagged three knives from our apartment. The ones here barely cut bread.

Wooden spoon—I love wooden spoons, and this place didn’t have a single one.

Bread pans, small rectangular baking pan, two round baking pans, and a 6-muffin muffin pan—the only baking dishes here were a large glass rectangular pan plus a cookie sheet. I’m using those too, but I make our bread and do a lot of other baking as well.

What do you consider essential in your kitchen?