Equipping a Kitchen for $200

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]