Also see: Part I - Part II
Knives. The knife is perhaps the chef’s most oft-used kitchen tool, thus it makes sense to spend time on this purchase. Don’t buy knife block sets — you’ll get thirteen different matching knifes, none of them worthwhile to keep around the kitchen. Don’t spend too little – but don’t spend too much.
I use a $40 Santoku knife by Anolon as my main blade of choice - its an excellent all-purpose do-er that chops, dices, and juliennes well. There are also a few quality chef’s knives that can be had for under 50 bucks.
A paring knife is necessary for the small jobs, like cutting the stem out of onions, scraping seeds out of peppers, or, well, paring veggies. I like this one because it’s cheap (replace it every year or so) and has kept its edge for quite a while.
The serrated edge on bread knives make it ideal for sawing through certain types of things like watermelon and giant loaves of bread.
Tongs. Those $4 tongs you see at markets are immensely useful — they keep your hands away from splattering grease, give you grip when you need to flip a steak or pork chop, and are useful when grilling stuff outdoors. Just get one without the locking clip (or snip it off with a wire cutter), they just get in the way at the most inopportune of times.
Scale. You could be like me and get a cheap spring-mechanism analog scale, or spring a few bucks more and get a more accurate digital kitchen scale. Either way, every kitchen should have a scale; many recipes, especially baking ones require you to measure ingredients out by weight, and if they don’t, they should.
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October 19th, 2007 at 8:45 am
Great post! I only use a chefs knife, paring knife, and a bread knife which pretty much get the job done. I don’t think everyone needs to buy a whole set unless they’re extreme cookers or something!
October 21st, 2007 at 2:28 am
@Michael: Even extreme cooks use a limited number of blades in their kitchen tomfoolery! I bet if we were to sneak into a restaurant kitchen, we’d see two or three knives per prep station.