When cooking, it’s important to have the right equipment. Equipping yourself with the right tools will make your life in the kitchen orders of magnitude easier. However, beginner cooks can sometimes be intimidated by the range of choice when it comes to kitchenware. Is it more important to have a slow cooker, an air fryer, or perhaps a waffle maker? Variety in quality and price for any specific tool may also be a source of indecision. All these factors can be a barrier to entry for new cooks. In this article we will break down what we believe is the most essential kitchenware for people wanting to begin cooking more.
This list is ordered by priority. The first 5 are essential, while the following items are “nice-to-haves”.
Here is a selection of recipes we’ve made that make use of the top 5 tools listed here:
- Creamy mushroom orzo with pan-fried chicken
- Japanese curry with carrot greens
- Asian turkey lettuce wraps
- Vietnamese lemongrass pork chops
1. Cutting Board
You will probably use your cutting board every time you’re in the kitchen. Sometimes you may not even be cutting on it! We often just use it as an easy to clean flat surface to do things on such as arrange sandwiches, place washed fruit, or mix drinks.
As a beginner cook, your cutting board does not need to be expensive (it doesn’t even have to be wood), but it should be as large as convenient. At a minimum, your cutting board should probably be 12″x9″. An ideal size might be around 20″x15″. Even if you don’t expect to cut big/many things, it’s still handy to have a large cutting board. This is because some things you may need to cut are really messy. Such things include juicy meat, juicy fruits, and crusty bread. Having a large cutting board keeps your counters clean from runny juices and flaky breadcrumbs.
For beginners, we’d recommend a large plastic cutting board from a place like Walmart. They will be super cheap, and very easy to take care of (unlike wood which usually needs to be seasoned). The only downside is that you cannot place hot pots on them because they can melt.
2. Chef’s Knife
A good chef’s knife is really the only knife a beginner cook needs in the kitchen. It can be used as a bread knife, a paring knife, a vegetable peeler, a pizza cutter, or basically any other knife you don’t yet own. You can get a decent quality chef’s knife from stores such as Walmart, Canadian Tire, Amazon. Spending $30-$60 on a beginner chef’s knife would be reasonable. Normally more expensive knives require maintenance such as regular honing and sharpening. However, knives in this price range are generally don’t need too much maintenance. At least honing your knife with a honing steel would be ideal, but if you need to save money, you can probably do without it at this stage.
3. Non-Stick Frying Pan
A simple non-stick frying pan can accomplish most things such as cooking meat, sauces, vegetables, and caramelizing onions. The most important reason to have a non-stick pan compared to a stainless steel pan is so that you can easily cook eggs.
4. Silicon Spatula
You can pick this up from almost any dollar store and it will last you a lifetime. Beware, do NOT purchase a plastic spatula! Plastic spatulas can melt, may poison your food, and will not last very long. Silicon spatulas are much more durable, and will not melt in hot pans. They are generally also dishwasher safe if they are pure silicon.
5. Medium Sized Pot
As a beginner, you would generally only need this for making things like soups or boiling water for pasta and rice. And stainless steel pot will do. Make sure there are no plastic parts (such as handles etc.). It’s also really nice if you buy a pot that comes with a lid. Lids can help you boil water much faster and is also good if you want to simmer stews without losing too much liquid through evaporation.
6. Measuring Cups/Spoons
These are very handy if you want to make a new recipe. If you’re interested in baking, you may want to also get a kitchen scale (which serves an almost similar purpose).
7. Baking Sheets
These are excellent for quick weeknight dinners. You can put vegetables and meat in the oven and forget about them until the cooking timer goes off. You can also use them for baking cookies of course!
8. Large Mixing Bowls
Great for adding seasoning to meats/vegetables, marinating, and baking! Not strictly necessary (except for baking) because you can season directly into the pan/pot/baking sheet.
9. Vegetable Peeler
You can also peel with a chef’s knife with a bit of practice, but using a peeler is so much easier.
10. Can Opener
Useful when you want to use canned beans, condensed milk, coconut milk, etc. Even though many can openers are stainless steel, I like to quickly towel dry the little gears after washing to avoid rust. This may be unnecessary, but I feel like it lengthens the lifespan of your tools. I do the same for knives.
11. Kitchen Scissors
This really just for convenience. Useful for cutting pizza, chives, green onion, etc. In some situations it results in making less dishes then taking out your chef’s knife and cutting board.
12. Silicon Tongs
These can be very handy when flipping meat such as pork chops and steaks in a pan. Flipping meat with a spatula is a little more tricky and you run more of a risk of getting splattered by oil when flipping stuff in the pan.
13. Whisk
Useful mainly for baking. You can also just whisk with a fork if you need to save some money.
14. Splatter Screen
You can put this over a pan when you are pan frying something very messy. This reduces cleanup and the hot oil splatter when pan frying things.