A friend has recently moved back to London and is starting from scratch in putting together what they need in their kitchen. They asked me what I thought were the essentials they should focus on. I have been ruminating on just that ever since.
I personally have a very small kitchen. I have a stand-alone single oven, I have four cupboards and I have one drawer (yes that is right, only one drawer.) And yet, this holds all the kitchen equipment I ever use. This kitchen and the equipment it holds have tested hundreds of recipes for cookbooks, cooked dinners for 20 people, produced three meals a day (give or take) for the best part of the last two years, and I can’t recall feeling frustrated at not having the right tool to hand even once.
For a happy period, once upon a time ago, I was a private caterer with a friend. Our schtick was Cucina Povera for the mobile upper-middle classes; we cooked for an eclectic cast, journalists, writers, artists, a handful of hooray hedgies, some old school bumblers, a diplomat or two, and some lawyers and the like as well. No matter the time of year, however hard one might have tried to sway clients one way or another, they always wanted one of two things; slow-cooked lamb shoulder on a sweet herb pilaf with fattoush and tahini sauce; or, sea bass with braised greens and some naughty potatoes such as Janson’s temptation or a dauphinoise. We’d often start with toasts topped with tasty bits, smashed borlotti beans or broad beans or peas, maybe some braised greens, maybe some seasoned ricotta or a smoosh of aubergine, or a mess of tomato, or some cod’s roe. More often than not pudding was lemon posset, a lemon tart or a lemon and polenta cake with creme fraiche.
I bring this up only to say that, not only were their dinner requests surprisingly monotonous, but so too were their kitchens completely ill-equipt for producing food (perhaps unsurprisingly with hindsight). They’d have gadgetry and trendy bits and bobs and artful storage solutions on every available surface, their cupboards would be stuffed with useless things still in their boxes, their shelves lined with multiple dinner sets, their drawers stuffed to bursting with whimsical ephemera that might ball or spiralise or julienne or pulverise beyond recognition, but if you wanted to peel and then chop something on a chopping board - not in here sunshine; if you hoped to brown something in a frying pan, turning it halfway through with tongs, or flipping it with a fish slice - nope, not for you my son, grab a couple of flimsy coloured silicone spoons and give it a go with those. Even the basic lidded saucepan seemed to have been chalked up to culinary irrelevance. And in its place? Well, more often than not, an air fryer and a rusting griddle pan.
There is a time and place for all sorts of gadgetry and pageantry in our kitchens, of course there is, but we should all have a basic cast of essentials. If one cooks a particular style of cuisine an inordinate amount, absolutely explore the kit and equipment that will make your life easier. If one has a fetish for the niche or the whimsical, indulge until you’ve bled yourself dry. But, if one wants to open a cookbook, bring up a recipe blog, cook along with your favourite YouTuber, or simply stand a reasonable chance of working through the methodology of your next Hello Fresh box, you’re going to need some key equipment.
And so to help my friend I pulled everything out of my kitchen cupboards and photographed it. If you can bear it, what follows is me going through each thing, one by one, and explaining why I have it, what I use it for, and why I love it. I haven’t photographed my plates, glasses or my collection of takeaway containers that are too numerous to admit to; nor my cling film and chopsticks and cutlery, but rest assured I have all of those too, as I am sure do you. I do also have a stick blender, a Kitchen Aid and a Magimix, and if you’re a keen cook I am sure you will end up with some or all of those, but if you’re starting from scratch like my friend, it is with the list of things below I would start.
The Pots & Pans:
If I could only have one pot:
It would be this one, a 24cm large Le Creuset Casserole or similar, basically a workhorse of a cast iron pan. Too innumerable are the tasks that I have done in this pan to list them here. It holds 4.5 litres of stuff, or thereabout. You can boil pasta for up to four people in it; you can brown and braise and stew and simmer; if you’re that way inclined it can become a dutch oven for your bread fetish’ and you can even, at a push, fry an egg or some bacon in it. If you only have one pan in your kitchen I suggest it is something similar to this. Two downsides to a pot like this; one, they cost a pretty penny, or £270 ish of them to be precise, (although per use, especially if it’s your only pan, it will soon wash its face,) and there are plenty of alternatives too (Crane cookware being a good example. A classic stainless steel casserole with a lid such as this one being a winner too,) and; two, they are heavy as sin, which is a blessing and a curse. There are some wonderful cast aluminium equivalents, which weigh a fraction of what these cast iron big boys weight, for about half the price - not that I can actually vouch for their efficacy in the kitchen. I’d lean towards stainless steel casseroles for a cheaper option if it was me.
A big pot:
This is an 11-litre stockpot with a lid. It has been battered and bruised by years of abuse. Every pasta I have cooked in the last 10 years has been emptied into boiling salted water in this pot. It has also been pressed into service to make stock and as a vessel to brine things. It has a nice heavy bottom and is made from good quality stainless steel so it heats up quickly. By some clever quirk of design, the handles stay relatively cool even when the big flame is ripping away underneath it, and it heats up on basically any heat source, induction included. From memory, this pot is from John Lewis, might have cost £60 new, and by a rough estimate has cost me about £0.05 per use (and decreasing.) If you are in the habit of cooking big pasta dishes, making stock, or boiling potatoes for a crowd then this pot is a must. I used to have a baby blue enamelware version of this stockpot which I picked up for less than a tenner at TK Maxx. You’re looking for volume with a pan like this, nothing technical or clever.
A frying pan:
This is a de Buyer 32cm frying pan and I use it for almost everything that needs shallow frying. It has a nice blue handle, which I like. They have other sizes and these have green and yellow and red handles, which is nice also. Before being given this as a gift, I used a frying pan from Sainsbury’s that cost £7 and lasted me almost 9 years. I tend to only have one frying pan and use it for everything. This is a larger size than my previous frying pan which has advantages - I can fry four eggs in here, I can fit 1 whole aubergine cut into 8 lozenges in here, I can fry 9 rashers of streaky bacon in here, I can fit two burger patties in here side by side, I can fry a small box of mushrooms in here without crowding the pan, etc - but also has some disadvantages - it is a little too large for a two-egg omelette so I am sometimes forced into a three-egg omelette against my will. I would always stipulate that any frying pan you own must be able to go into the oven, this makes things like cooking fish and making frittatas a damn sight easier. If it has a metal handle you should be golden, if not, maybe not.
A saute pan:
Bloody hell this pan has taken a battering, just look at it. This one is another gift, and if I had to purchase something similar I’d definitely head to Crane cookware for their version, or to Nisbets for a cheaper alternative. I’ve used this pan for every sauce I’ve made in the last seven years. Name a pasta sauce, it’s been made in this pan, name a curry from Sri Lanka to Japan, yup, this fella has had a go on it. It’s about 26cm across and can hold a couple of aubergines, a whole deboned chicken, two kilos of most any meat on the bone, four tins of tomatoes or two tins of tomato and two tins of coconut milk. The long and the short of it is that this is the pan that comes out of the cupboard more times a week than any other.
A little fella:
This is a 20cm Le Creuset Casserole. This stands in for what in most kitchens would be a classic saucepan with a lid. This was a gift and as I only need one regular-sized saucepan I have never bothered buying anything else. If I didn’t have this I would purchase a simple saucepan with a lid from somewhere like Nisbets. I mainly use this for cooking rice and heating up portions of soup or stew. I make my tomato sauce in this pot, I heat up packet noodles in this pot. My point is it is versatile and I wouldn’t do without it.
For those who are interested, my rice method is foolproof. I learned it from Alex Jackson who is now the Head Chef at Noble Rot in Soho, but was my Head Chef at The Dock Kitchen in Ladbroke Grove, a place in which we cooked a lot of rice. The technique I use is as follows:
Boil the kettle. Put a small drizzle of oil in the pot and place it over your medium-sized hob with the flame on full tilt. Add 1 large handful of rice per person to the pan and turn the uncooked rice in the warming oil, don’t be rough you’ll break up all the grains. It is worth noting that, by rights, everyone would say you should wash the rice before cooking it. I have never ever done so, not even in the restaurant (sorry Alex) and the rice cooks perfectly, even better maybe, every time. Now the rice is coated in oil and heated up, pour in enough water to cover the rice by half a centimetre. The water should start boiling the minute it hits the rice. Place the lid on tight and cook for 4 minutes. Then, reduce the heat to as low as it will go, and cook for a further 6 minutes. The pot will likely whine and whistle a bit but do not be alarmed, and certainly don’t lift the lid. Once the 6 minutes are up, turn off the heat and do not touch the pan or its lid for 10 minutes. Inside that pot, some magical steaming is taking place, and this is essential to this foolproof method. After 10 minutes, remove the lid, rough up the rice with the back of a spoon or fork, and serve.
A tiny pan:
I have a tiny milk pan that my wife bought me when we were first going out. It is rather pleasing in that it has a spout and fits over the smallest ring on my hob. I tend to crack this pan out for nice little jobs like warming milk for a custard, melting butter and sugar together for baking, making porridge or heating up a tin of beans or portion of soup for lunch. I wouldn’t deem a diminutive pan like this essential, really, the little fella above can handle any job this guy could be needed for, but sometimes it just feels nice to use a tiny little pan that doesn’t demand much washing up.
The Remaining Essentials:
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