Five pieces will cover ninety percent of what you cook. Here is what to buy first and what to skip.
A good kitchen is not the one with the most pans -- it is the one where every pan earns its place on the rack. After eight years of teaching home cooks and watching them open their cabinets, I keep arriving at the same short list. A 12-inch cast iron skillet, an 8-quart stockpot, a 3-quart saucepan, a 7-quart Dutch oven, and one nonstick pan you actually love. Five pieces. They will get you through nearly every dinner you ever cook.
The cast iron is your sear, your roast, your cornbread, and your pizza. The stockpot is your pasta, your stocks, your big-batch chili, and your quick blanching station. The saucepan is your sauces, your custards, your reductions, and the unsung hero of the morning oatmeal. The Dutch oven is your braises, your no-knead bread, your stews, and your one-pot curries. The nonstick is for eggs and crepes -- nothing else.
Skip the omelette pan, the grill pan, and the wok-shaped object you saw at a kitchen store. They are mostly single-use props that will spend more time in the cabinet than on the stove. The five pieces above will outlast a decade of cooking and only get better. Build your kitchen around them, then buy the next pan only when you can name three dinners you cannot make without it.
Priya Shahani writes for Simply Gourmet. Reach our editors at info@simplygourmetlakeplacid.com.
