Setting Up a New Kitchen

We've all seen the pictures in the magazines showing beautiful kitches with perfectly coordinated pots and pans hanging from a rack. Sometimes they're shiney copper. Sometimes they're brightly colored enamal. And sometimes they're sleak commercial-looking anodized aluminum. What they never are is used. Not a scortch mark or scratch on them.

Folks, that is not real life. If all you want is a kitchen that looks good in pictures, you wouldn't have read this far. You want to have a kitchen you can use. A kitchen that functions. A kitchen that you can effectively cook in. So the first thing to go is the pretty enamal. Rarely is there well functioning cookware under that pretty exterior. Some copper may be able to stay, but it's not going to look more like an old penny than a golden mirror. The commercial-grade annodized is nice... but if it's a heavy enough gauge, it's probably out of our price range.

There are many, many choices in this category. I'm going to try to steer you into something that balances affordablity and functionality. Part of that strategy involves buying pots and pans in a set, but there is one category that we need to look at first: Skillets and saute pans. Or to use the dirty three-letter word, fry pans. I sometimes go for a couple of weeks without touching a sauce pan, but I don't go a day without grabbing one of my fry pans, so we're going to start there.

Skillets and Sauté Pans

First on the list is a cast iron skillet. One advantage of cast iron is that once it gets hot, it holds its temperature. The other advantage is that you can heat them to a high temperature that could damage other kinds of cookware. Nothing beets a cast iron skillet for browning and searing. In Cooking with Intense Heat I demonstrate how you can make steak as good as any steakhouse in your cast iron skillet.

Yes, cast iron takes a little bit of work to “season” (I'll cover this in a future course), but after that, clean-up is easier than anything else. A little liquid in the hot pan. A quick scrape of anything that doesn’t immediately come loose. Rinse, and wipe. Done. Cast iron is the original non-stick cookware, and unlike the more fragile non-stick coatings of today, cast iron only gets better with age. If you've never cooked with cast iron, I strongly urge you to try. You'll be hooked for life.

On the other end of the spectrum is what I like to call your egg pan. Get reasonably heavy anodized aluminum 8” and 10” sauté pans, coated with a non-stick surface. Never touch the interior with anything other than nylon utensils. Clean with a quick wipe, and never anything stronger than week detergent water.

Baking and Roasting

Let's take one more detore before getting to those sauce pan sets. Something else that I use all the time are my Corningware (R) baking dishes. These can go in the oven or the microwave, but they can’t go on the stove top. They’re great for everything from cooking frozen veggies in the microwave, to baking a casserole in the oven. You can even make small roasts in some of the bigger pieces.

If you’re going to make a lot of roasts, get a roasting pan, and a rack. You’ll want one big enough to hold a small turkey, or a standing rib roast. You may find that the roasting pan spends most of the time at the back of the cabinet, but when you need one, there's no substitute -- except the single-use aluminum foil pans at the grocery store. But accidently puncture one of those, and you'll no longer consider them a viable option. For now, you can delay this purchase, but put it on you wishlist.

Something you can't put off is baking sheets. (By the way... always use a baking sheet under your foil pan. You'll need something solid to lift and support the full pan.) Get one non-stick baking sheet for special times, and only use it for those special times. Get two or three “half-sheet” pans for everyday use. You can also get a cooling rack that’ll fit in one of these sheets, and can be used for everything from cooling cookies, to draining fried foods, to resting meat. I suggest lining the sheet with aluminum foil going up and over the sides for easy clean-up when cooking greasy foods - like Shake-and-Bake (tm) chicken.

Pots and Pans

Now that we have those more important pieces out of the way, let’s talk sauce pan sets. Why a set? Because you’ll get more for your money. A ten piece set may cost no more than three or four pieces. But here, more than anywhere else, we need to be careful about our choices. Most sets are sold based on their aestetics, not their functionality.

I really like non-stick anodized aluminum. It has good heat distribution, and the non-stick cooking surfaces prevent the reactions that acidic foods can have with aluminum. They may be a little pricey, but with care, these pots and pans can last for decades.

A good set is probably going to have a couple of saute pans. We already talked about our cast iron skillet, and our "egg pan". These will be our every-day saute pans.

Food Storage

You might find it strange that I've included food storage with cookware, but I think it makes sense. There will be a fair number of times that you will pop open the lid, and toss your storage container right into the microwave oven. Voila! It's cookware! Larger, round bowl-style containers can also be used as mixing bowls.

Pieces from the same manufacturer tend to nest better, too. Or at least they do if you take the lids off! (It's those darn lids again!) My suggestion is to set aside a drawer for lids. If all your drawers are too big to just hold lids, put boxes of plastic bags in that drawer, too. Now you've got a whole storage solution!

Speaking of drawers, next we're going to fill them up with hand tools -- but only hand tools that you'll actually use.

NEXT: Hand Tools >>

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