Comments on: Stuff you need for cooking

By: psu

psu — Sun, 13 Nov 2005 03:50:06 +0000

Luckily, I don’t bake.

By: Honus

Honus — Sun, 13 Nov 2005 01:26:37 +0000

You’re gonna have a hard time baking a pie.

By: Nat

Nat — Thu, 24 Feb 2005 05:37:14 +0000

So much of this is preference and technique — I use garlic near-constantly, and it’s never occurred to me to want or need a garlic press. That’s what the side of a good solid chef’s knife is for.

By: joe

joe — Wed, 23 Feb 2005 20:45:29 +0000

howdy… first time here… anyway…

* A good set of knives, Wusthof is a very good choice.

* A set of good pots & pans, non-stick, but not the teflon coated crap, get hard-anondized instead and dont worry about the teflon question.

* A wok – the size of the sides is for cooking stuff at different temperatures, something you cant do effectively in a saute pan.

* A garlic press. Fresh garlic is best, and it gets extremely tedious to cut it by hand.

* A rice cooker. Absolute, must-have. Good rice is a pain in the ass by hand.

* Metal Collander for steaming veggies.

* Huge wooden BooS Block cutting board. It should be big enough to place a virgin on it to sacrifice.

By: peterb

peterb — Thu, 10 Feb 2005 21:31:23 +0000

If you cook meat, you need a digital probe thermometer. They’re about $15 at Target, and they take all of the guesswork out of cooking. They are one of the wonders of the modern kitchen.

By: Shelby

Shelby — Wed, 19 Jan 2005 15:13:06 +0000

I’m still in the “If I want non-stick, I’ll use my cast iron” stage. But I also like to think I’m beyond the basics in my kitchen, except for the decent stove part. That will be coming soon, though.

By: psu

psu — Wed, 19 Jan 2005 14:34:52 +0000

With regard to pan deglazing, the main downside of the nonstick is that there is not as much cool burnt junk on the bottom of the pan to deglaze. Otherwise it works OK.

The silverstone is pretty tough stuff. Like I said, I spend about $30 on a pan every two or three years. Which, for something I abuse every day seems like a good deal.

By: rmitz

rmitz — Wed, 19 Jan 2005 13:39:07 +0000

I think you’re right on the knife. One good one is all that’s necessary. I would personally not need a rice cooker, as I really don’t make rice for myself, and I actually have appearantly been really lucky in the times I’ve cooked it for other people, as it’s been basically perfect every time. I would insist on a large cast iron pan. Baking, frying, etc, it’s simply too versatile to ignore. That said, I do like having a decent non-stick pan–not the el crapo ones, but something in the $30 range is perfect.

By: peterb

peterb — Wed, 19 Jan 2005 13:06:35 +0000

I’m an advocate of the cast-iron skillet school, but not for the reasons you think.

First, there’s at least some research that shows that some classes of nonstick pans can emit fumes that are toxic to birds when heated above a certain temperature (see, for example, http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/sepp/2004/01/31/toxic_teflon_frying_pans.htm). There are no birds in my kitchen, but I’m operating from the assumption that if they’re majorly harmful to birds, they might be minorly harmful to me. So anything done at high heat I do in the cast-iron skillet (I also wear my tinfoil hat while cooking, to protect me from the radios the CIA put in my teeth).

Second, I find my cast-iron skillet to be easier to clean than my nonstick pans. Just dump a generous amount of kosher salt in and wipe vigorously. And I can be as rough as I want, and not worry that I’m going to damage the delicate coating.

By: psu

psu — Wed, 19 Jan 2005 13:02:10 +0000

I actually noticed after the fact that my favorite knife is an 8 inch and my second favorite is my wife’s 6. So I edited the knife part a bit.

For some reason I always think my stuff is bigger than it is.