Mark Bittman has a great piece up in the Times explaining how to equip a basic kitchen at a restaurant supply store for just a couple hundred dollars. The upshot is this: most of the basic knives, pans, and accessories can be had for just a few bucks apiece and are more than sufficient for most cooking tasks.
Bittman also tells you what to avoid, such as our beloved KitchenAid and other stand mixers (which, yes, I must concede, often gets put to the wayside), bread machines, and woks. There will be anecdotal evidence for each of the things he shoots down—I think a stick blender is more useful than a traditional food processor or blender, for instance—but I like where he’s going with this. A real kitchen should be about the food, not the tools you use.
A No-Frills Kitchen Still Cooks [NYTimes]
I agree with a lot of what the article says. After all, I got much of my kitchen ware from the local restaurant supply place (for instance: the plastic tupperware-like containers with lids are nearly bulletproof–unlike tupperware–and dirt cheap). However, I have a KitchenAid stand mixer and I use it all the time. Especially for making bread. Kneading dough by hand sucks when you can have the mixer do it for you in half the time. Also, buying those cheap industrial knives seems like a good idea until you realize that you need the whetstone or the electric sharpener because you will have to sharpen the cheap steel all the time. If you invest in a nice set of knives made of really quality steel, then you will only need to sharpen them once a year, and they will last long enough to be passed on to your children if cared for properly.
So I agree that a lot of things should be bought at the restaurant supply, but some things are worth the investment for the quality.
I still want a KitchenAid.
KitchenAid mixers are pretty cool - my mama has one with all the little attachments and doodads and she just loves it. But God knows what she had to pay for it. I have a little cheapo Sunbeam hand mixer and wouldn’t trade it in for the world. It’s compact, easy to clean, doesn’t take up much space, and gets the job done. Had it for 7 years and its still going strong.
This article totally misses the point:
If you need to outfit a kitchen for $200, then the person has nothing kitchen-wise.
Barring an experienced cook going through a divorce or house fire. This just doesn’t happen.
This is a much better synopsis of what you can make out of a kitchen for
Gaaah, the comment filter sliced and diced up my last comment.
Click on my name on this comment to get a link to a *much* better article on outfitting your kitchen for less than $200, targeted at *new cooks*, and doesn’t require finding a restaurant supply store (which is a pain in the ass in my native city of Atlanta).
Most of the items you’d buy in a restaurant supply store is going to be unsatisfactory to people who will want to use a diswasher and whom will burn things to pots quite often. The guy is right that name brand stuff isn’t necessary to start out, but a restaurant supply store will just frustrate those starting out as many items sold there require a skill that newbies just won’t have and won’t recognize they need to use the equipment.
I’m sure if *I* wanted to outfit *my* kitchen for 200, I could handle cooking on this stuff. But a new college grad? No way, you’re just going to teach him/her to eat out all the time.
–Michael