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Buying Cheap Shit to Cook With
Mai-Kero
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
I'm trying to get my first apartment now, and hoping to be able to furnish it to some degree on my limited college student who works at target financial plan. I know from watching many episodes of Good Eats that buying cooking equipment with one specific use is dumb and I can use lots of things for stuff other than their intended uses.
I'm wondering where I should buy any of it. Are there cheaper places online than just going to Target and getting a 20% discount? What should I get that I would probably forget to?
I'm wondering where I should buy any of it. Are there cheaper places online than just going to Target and getting a 20% discount? What should I get that I would probably forget to?
Mai-Kero on
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Don't go crazy and get that shit that "cooks pasta in 2 easy steps!" I also recommend against getting steel pots and pans if you don't know how to cook.
Most of this stuff can be had probably for a grand total of $40-50.
http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.do?product_id=1151829 - some utensils (includes some knives)
http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.do?product_id=785571 - you'll most definitely want containers like this if you plan to bake stuff -- don't keep your sugar and flour in bags, I also use it for rice.
http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.do?product_id=9606035 - measuring stuff
http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.do?product_id=9606034 - strainer
I'm sure I'm missing something.
Rice Cooker - Doubles as a veggie steamer with the little insert that comes with it, and I eat a shitload of rice. If you're cooking for one, a small model will do a surprising amount of rice/veggies. Steamed veggies are the only way to go.
Toaster Oven - Fucking invaluable. Cheaper to run than a gas or electric oven, lets you cook two things at once at two different temperatures. Quick to heat up when you're cooking something small and don't want to wait on the oven. Apparently can also make toast. Convection style toaster ovens cook shit fast and thoroughly.
Electric skillet - The frying pan equivalent of the toaster oven. Quick to heat, bigger than your average frying pan, easy to clean. Good for everything from pancakes to stir fry to steak/burgers. If you have a gas stove, these can be easier to cook with for temperature sensitive recipies.
If you cook a lot, and actually make food instead of taking the plastic off and heating it up, I wouldn't be without any of these devices.
Really what you'll need depends on how much cooking you plan on doing. If you're going to end up mostly cooking already prepared or mostly prepared food, you'll need much less than if you're going to be making tons of stuff from scratch. Start off with a couple decent knives, and some decent cookware (like a fry pan or two, a sauce pan or two -- one of them big enough to cook up pasta)
Maybe look for a cheap food-processor or food-processor+blender. A toaster oven. Those two and my stand mixer are what I end up using the most of my appliances.
There are online restaurant suppliers as well - they might have a couple quirks about shipping (make you buy a case of plates instead of just the 3 or 4 you could pick up in an actual supply store), but the prices are still rock bottom. I've been looking at www.zesco.com b/c I can't find a nearby restaurant supply store (incidentally, if anyone knows of one in the Washington, DC around please post it) - havn't bought anything yet, but it looks pretty good pricewise.
This stuff is marvelous. Get one big enough to do a turkey in, trust me on that. They'll run you about $60 at JCPenny if you go high-end.
What you absolutely positively need in even the most basic kitchen:
This, in addition to the usual cutlery and crockery and a four ring gas or electric stove and an oven should be all you need to cook a huge variety of meals. I'd recommend a vegetable or rice steamer, but you can always just boil vegetable and rice so it is technically surplus IMO. There's probably some bits and bobs I've missed, but that's certainly the beginnings of core essentials for 'proper' cooking. I would also add serving spoon and ladle by preference but you can always use the wooden spoon you cooked with or just pour stuff out of the pots, so technically surplus but if you can afford them, get them. Less messy. I'd also sheepishly recommend a microwave. Decadent and a symbol of the decay of society but still bloody handy in a pinch.
Crock Pot
These are your best friends.....
I just went beyond "Pots and pans and knives" cause thats pretty staple. I agree that one can get by fine without anything I mentioned, but I wouldn't care to.
I assume most people know to buy a pan.
Shogun Streams Vidya
My list of basic stuff.
-2 cutting boards (one meat, one veg, avoids cross contamination)
- six-eight inch Chef's knife
- 3-4 mixing bowls
- 2 medium pots, 1 small pot, frying pan
- 1 or 2 casserole dish, cookie sheet, muffin tin
With that you can do tons of meals as well as some desserts.
This is extremely true. You are much more likely to cut yourself with a dull knife than a sharp one. Get a good knife, and get a good sharpener.
Yeah, totally. A bad chefs knife means cutting things like onions and tomatoes neatly is basically impossible. Better off using a bread knife if you can afford a good chefs knife. On the other hand, if you do get a good chefs knife, you can dice hard and soft vegetables with ease and butcher meat like warm butter. Even in a budget kitchen, I'd easily recommend spending serious money on knives even if you buy cheap-as-chips economy everything else. You only really need three or four knives as well, so better to get three or four really excellent knives than a cheap block of mostly useless and dull knives.
I'm trying to think of an example to prove you wrong.
But I'm not sure I can.
Assuming it's a wok with a removable handle, I guess you can even stick it in the oven to roast things in it. There's definitely easier ways to cook some things, but I guess if you're seriously determined.
So what exactly is a good knife? What brands should I look for?
Wok's work better if your cooking with gas... or with coals. If you have an elvectric range, nto so much.
Honestly, even own-brand knives can be excellent quality. Price is probably more of a guide. In the UK you're looking at around £20-£25 minimum for an all right, large chef's knife from a department store (John Lewis 25cm Cook's Knife - £21 eg). So potentially $40+ in the US? Per knife, naturally.
Flat bottomed woks help mitigate some of those issues, but yeah, generally better on a flame. And really, they are mainly best at stir frying. You could cook just about anything in one but you probably don't want too.
Make sure you get non-stick as opposed to steel; it might cost you more, but in the long run it will be a huge benefit.
That's not really saying much, as you could also cook anything in a big enough pot or pan. I don't think I'd want a steak cooked in a wok, but one on an electric griddle can be fine.
Woks are pretty good for stir-fry or other one-pan dishes, but I think they occupy alot of cooktop space in case you're doing multi-pan dishes. My cooktop doesn't play nice with the wok-ring (stand the holds the wok on the burner) I have. Anyone know of alternative methods of getting the wok to say put?
I have absolutely no trouble cooking rice in a pot or saucepan, not sure why people have trouble with that. I burn toast, that's how bad of a cook I am. I find rice cookers make my rice really fucking sticky, like Chinese food restaurants do when they don't fry it.
Just be cautious about cheap teflon-coated stuff, because it starts to flake off real quick if you're not careful about using rubber/plastic utensils on it, and cleaning it carefully. If a pan or tray is losing surface, chuck it out.
Yeah, they can if you don't fluff the rice while it's cooking. I dunno, my rice cooker does rice up right nice the way I like it. I don't mind a little sticky. It's easy, doesn't steal space on my stove while I'm cooking, takes care of the time and temp itself, and does a great job steaming veggies.
If I had to give up one of the 3 things I mentioned, it would be the rice cooker, but I would miss it so.
Largely a red-herring. The worst you're going to get is flu-like symptoms if you're cooking things near it's degradation temperature (which almost never happens unless you like to fry beef and stuff on high). This was a really over-hyped reaction which was really meant towards the byproducts of the chemicals used in production.
Yeah if you have a $100 to drop, they're definitely worth it. Especially the skillet if you're making pancakes, eggs, bacon, or sausage/hot-dogs a lot.
Other design concerns: my flatmate got a baby teflon frypan a while back, which is perfect except for the screw that holds the handle to the pan. That heats up when it shouldn't, and its really easy to burn yourself when picking the pan up
Yeah I love me some of those non-Teflon pans, but if you're not cooking absolutely perfectly it can be the worst nightmare in the world to clean. I have a skillet that still has shit on it I can't get off after 3 years.
Sticky rice is mostly the point. It makes it easier to eat with chopsticks.
Tofu wrote: Here be Littleboots, destroyer of threads and master of drunkposting.
I can't speak for getting a good set of knives there, though. They probably wouldn't be the best place. I don't understand why so many people buy new cheaply made kitchenware at Target or Wal-Mart just because it's convenient. You can save a heck of a lot of money buying from thrift stores, and often buy something of better quality. This is just for the basics though...I wouldn't buy a microwave from a thrift store : P
water spirals the wrong way out the sink
i got a nonstick 3-pan set for $12 at bed bath + beyond. they're cheap, but they've been fine so far. everything else in that store seems overpriced though.
All that other stuff is pretty useless if you can't open the packaging to get to your raw ingredients
It's supposed to be like that.
I fucking hate it. Nothing worse than trying to swallow sticky rice.
Also if you go the route of thrift/second hand was it like it was infected with the plague. Two or three washes before use.