August 9, 2005
Ground Work: Tools 101a
This is the first installment in my short series on inexpensively outfitting your kitchen for total culinary dominance. Where would Batman be without his utility belt? Where would Elvis be without his guitar and hip pads? Where would Paris Hilton be without her purse full of nasal drugs?
Nowhere, I tells ya.
This time around, I’ll be covering the bare essentials. The BASICS. I will be naming brands, and maybe even stealing a couple of images from manufacturer’s sites- but if you find something in your local store that seems to fit the bill and doesn’t align with exactly what I’ve outlined here, go for it. This stuff is cheap enough that you can afford to make mistakes.
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1. That most holy piece of cookware, the Iron Skillet. The unit pictured is a Lodge Logic 10.5-inch model, my personal weapon of choice, perfect for my tiny stove. It costs roughly $16, you can use it quite effectively as a club in battle (it’s got a lot of heft), and it makes cooking a whole lot more fun. Why? Well, there are a few reasons.
a. Iron retains heat better than anything. When you dump a load of tofu into most non-iron pans, the metal can’t really keep up. It says (ostensibly in a squeaky little voice), “Oh gee, there’s a bunch of cold stuff here- I’d better transfer the small amount of heat I can retain into it”. So, you end up waiting for the pan to re-heat, which frankly sucks when you want to get your sear on, and also can mean that fattier/juicier foods lose a lot of fluid due to time spent gearing back up to temperature. You can heat iron to dangerous temperatures and expect it to stay that way no matter what you throw at it.
b. Iron browns better than anything. This has a lot to do with point a above, and a lot to do with the fact that browning is simply the act of sugar/protien-laden juices leaching out of food, and, well, burning onto it, for lack of a better term. The teflon coating of a non-stick pan, is non-porous by its very nature, and wants to wick moisture out from under cooking food. Iron is quite porous, so it gives the juices someplace to kick back and sit under the food while browning occurs. You can retain the crispness (and maybe even the nutritive value) of your veggies by cooking quickly, instead of steaming them into oblivion. You can turn tempeh into crispy goodness. Very Nice.
c. Iron is well-nigh indestructable. I admit, I’m not perfect. I’ve burned the living hell out of food, vigorously used metal utensils (a no-no with most teflon pans), even let food residue or water sit in my skillet overnight after cooking a late-night anti-hangover snack! Over time, my skillet has charred, rusted, scratched, smoked, everything that will kill most cookware. Yea, and verily, I have grumbled, scrubbed the pan, dabbed it with some sesame oil, and put it in a 400 degree oven for 10 minutes, and had it return to like-new condition every time. You can turn the pan upside down, bang it into the oven and use it as the world’s most awesome pizza stone. You can run at the highest heats without worry. Worrying less is a valuable thing, especially in the kitchen.
d. Did I mention you can fend off assailants with them?
2. A wok. Unseasoned carbon steel is preferable. 12″ is an optimal size. This will come very much in handy for stir-fries, most of the Thai cooking I’ll be writing about, and working with large amounts of food (I even use mine for soups where I want to pre-cook or sear the solid ingredients). Woks don’t retain much heat unless you get an iron model, but they’re so heavy as to negate the nice, light manoeverability the carbon steel models enjoy. However, light carbon woks at least conduct heat well, are easy to clean and take care of, and they certainly look the business.
Certaintly less essential than the skillet, but at ~$20, they’re well worth picking up. If you go to 2nd hand stores (especially in areas with a large asian population), you’ll likely find tons of well-seasoned, well-loved old woks for $5. My wok of choice is not really a wok at all, but what’s called a Peking Pan, which has a flat bottom and one handle rather than two. It sits happily on a burner without a flame ring to support it, it takes up less space on my tiny stove, and in my tiny cupboard, than a full-on model.
3. A decent heavy saucepan or dutch oven. The model above is an Calphalon Hard Anodized 2.5 Quart Saucepan. Amazon seems to be in a perpetual state of selling a lot of Calphalon products at 70-80% off.. This one is an absolute steal at $19.99. I chose an aluminum pan for this task because iron and slow cooking with tomatoes don’t mix so well (the acids in the tomatoes can strip your hard-earned seasoning right off the pan), and, well, slow cooking with tomatoes is one of the reasons I wanted a saucepan.
I chose a rather small model (have I mentioned my postage-stamp sized stove?) but you may want to go for something larger. I use it for everything from boiling rice and pasta to simmering soup and sauces. It, too, has good weight and looks the business (important for materialistic urban hipsters like ourselves). If you’ve already got a pasta or stock pot, you can wait on this- but a dense, heavy pan is a beautiful thing if you feel like springing for one.
4. Much as I like to harp on nonstick cookware, having a small nonstick skillet around can be a lifesaver, especially when making egg dishes (iron’s achilles heel) and other delicate things (like fruit sauces) that need fine heat control and an inert, slippery surface to cook with (that won’t flavor the food). The model above is my favorite, the Scanpan 9-inch model, which uses a nonstick coating made from ceramic and titanium, which are obviously less likely to induce genetic mutations than teflon…..
Well, maybe not, but the surface is incredibly tough, works with metal utensils, takes high heat, and, well, looks the business. The pan costs ~$40 right now, which is more than I’d suggest you spend on any cookware at first. In a lot of asian markets, you’ll find quite servicable little nonstick pans for $5. Overheat and burn them, scratch them, destroy them- then use them as planters and buy another.
Utensils and Accessories
1. A nice big cutting board is a critical item. I like cheapo bamboo models because they’re more hygenic than plastic, they don’t mess up your knives, and they don’t slide around on your counter much. I got mine at, yeah, an asian market, for $5.
2. A couple of sharp knives will make life fun again. The dull, crappy serrated knives you bought for the dorms are sucking your vital life force away day by day. At some asian markets, you’ll find Kiwi brand knives from Thailand. They’re sharp, light, functional, and they cost $2. $2! I got a smallish cleaver and a paring knife, and haven’t looked back. You may want to blow serious dough on something really nice like a Kai Shun or Global knife set, but that’ll come later. I must admit, my hoity-toity santoku has seen much less use since I got the Kiwis.
3. Wooden, metal, and plastic spoons, spatulas et al are a wonderful thing to have around. Wooden utensils treat food with a soft touch and thus are great for fragile dishes or for stirring dishes where an undesirable burnt crust forms on the bottom of the pan, and you simply want to work the unburned food without disturbing the burnt layer. Flat metal spatulas work wonders to unstick stuck foods and to help carry ungainly items out of the pan without marring them. My favorite is a very flat unit called “The Indestructible”. I can’t find any info about it online but I picked mine up for a song at Rainbow Grocery here in San Francisco. Plastic utensils are nice when you want a non-porous tool that won’t retain flavors and will release food easily (good for ladling sauces or soups, and working with delicate-flavored dishes).
4. Microplane graters are too much fun to have around. They work wonders on ginger, cheese, chocolate, even butter. They’ll make you wonder why you ever bought pre-shredded cheese. They create angel-soft curls of parmesan that melt instantly into your sauces. They’ll choppa you good (SHPLAMENGE!) if you’re not careful.
5. Then comes the sort of boring stuff, like a decent side-cutting can opener, metal tongs, vegetable peeler, etc. They’re not sexy but they’re very useful.
Summary:
If you’re starting off and can only get a few things, go for the iron skillet, a couple of spoons and spatulas, a cutting board, and a couple of knives. you’ll be set for a while, and you’ll have spent all of $30. If you’ve got $100 or so to spend, then go for the gold and get all of the crap I’ve mentioned here. You won’t regret it. Your tastes in cooking will also govern what you find useful or not. YMMVW (your milage may vary wildly). This is simply what has worked beautifully for me.
Wishing you fresh tumeric (yum),
-GC
P.S. - I must give credit where credit is due- I learned a great deal of what I’ve spoken of here, along with a wealth of other information, from Alton Brown, Good Eats host and author of great cookbooks. Someday I’ll get all of his series on DVD. *cough* *cough* great gift idea *cough* for me *cough*
Filed under: Tools
August 9th, 2005 at 5:20 pm
I’m still trying to find a place to download the dvds. I’ll let you know when I find them!
August 17th, 2005 at 6:17 pm
- did i tell you that i did another cooking demo on video (like the one you and i did of the Thai dish for the Urban Peasant years ago).
- this one was sent to Connecticutt for Katie, the Katie that did the art sessions with me and others.
- it was just wetting and cooking white corn on the stovetop in the shuck (the way the Mexicans cook bell peppers on the stovetop). this takes four or five minutes. then you soak down the cooked corn in the sink again to cool it off enough to handle and remove the shuck. then back on the stove top, turning it for about one minute to pick up some brown spots. this is either for added taste or just for show. haven’t done a taste test to compare. i used to slather corn with butter and salt. i eat this with nothing added except that i do eat it with gusto.
August 17th, 2005 at 6:27 pm
- You wrote above, about the iron fry pan, ….”Lodge Logic 10.5-inch model, my personal weapon of choice….. you can use it quite effectively as a club in battle”…
- i will mention [what you probably won’t] that you come from a long line of Vikings.
- your maternal grandmother’s family came from Dublin, a Viking base.
- your paternal grandfather’s family came from Edinborough, another Viking base. if they didn’t actually have iron skillets, they would have admired them greatly, and might have even thought to use them to cook in in a pinch.