| Cooking Equipment Reviews Find out what equipment best suits your needs. Share your experiences with various kitchen equipment products, gadgets, and more. |
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10-14-2009, 12:24 AM
| | Registered User Culinary Experience: Food Writer | | Join Date: Oct 2009
Posts: 10
| |  Ultimate Minimalist Kitchen
My Main Cooking Method: Steaming
My Diet (in order of frequency): Vegs, Fruits, Whole Grains, Extra Virgin Olive Oil, Seafood, Legumes, Nuts & Seeds, Spices & Herbs, Lean Meats & Turkey, Soymilk, part-skim mozzarella
Kitchen Gears Objectives - Healthy cooking-oriented, Minimalist & Mobile, Energy-Efficient, Environmentally-Sound, No need for Dishwasher, Scalable up to family size,
1 A Steamer
2 A 2 quart? Saucepan (for pasta, and other grains, beans)
3 Bowls - 3 nonreactive stainless steel bowls (or glass, cleans easier)
4 A single really good Knife (forgot the name, but it's that really good one for fish and can be used for steaks, etc.)
5 Cutting board (hardwood)
6 Blender (not a core necessity, but extremely convenient and useful)
7 other stuff, a few storage containers, 1 spoon/fork, plastic wraps, and.. paper towels)
For family size, we could add:
A 8 quart? Pressure cooker
Need? Extras?? (Don't know what I would use them for)
2 wooden spoons
can opener
tongs
Spoon Shaped Spatula
Sieve
Advice to Improve?
Ultimate Minimalist Kitchen  |
10-14-2009, 08:39 AM
|  | Registered User Culinary Experience: Private Chef | | Join Date: Aug 2009 Location: Montreal Canada
Posts: 422
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I must speak..............or I should say , I am speechless.....
Minimalist ?
Then, why do you need " tongs " when you can use the two spoons ?
I know.................spoons for mixing..................inside joke here !
__________________ Petals I would give up chocolate but I am no quitter ! 
Last edited by petalsandcoco; 10-14-2009 at 08:48 AM.
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10-14-2009, 09:34 AM
|  | ChefTalk Moderator Culinary Experience: Retired Chef | | Join Date: Jun 2001 Location: Minnesota
Posts: 4,718
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A wok would make sense here. |
10-17-2009, 11:27 AM
|  | Registered User Culinary Experience: Professional Chef | | Join Date: Aug 2008 Location: USA
Posts: 347
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For a minimalist you already have too much!  |
10-17-2009, 02:30 PM
| | Registered User Culinary Experience: Cook At Home | | Join Date: Oct 2008 Location: Quincy, MA -- and unfortunately not Kyoto
Posts: 680
| | 
Quote:
Originally Posted by inventivefficie  1 A Steamer | It really depends what you mean by "steamer." If you mean one of those foldy things you drop in the bottom of a pot, you need a pot too; if you mean one of those sets with a perforated tray that sits in the top of the pot and so on, I'm not convinced that's the cheapest option, but it works fine. For cheap and simple, I'd buy a biggish pot -- 8qt or so, light aluminum, Vollrath or something -- with a lid and get one of those little stands you put in the bottom so you can put a bowl or whatever on top. You could also go a long way with a much smaller pot and a big stack of cheap bamboo steamers. Quote: |
2 A 2 quart? Saucepan (for pasta, and other grains, beans)
| I'd make that a 3 or 4 qt saucier, so you can use it more easily for cooking mirepoix and so forth at the start of a dish. Quote:
3 Bowls - 3 nonreactive stainless steel bowls (or glass, cleans easier)
4 A single really good Knife (forgot the name, but it's that really good one for fish and can be used for steaks, etc.)
| Chef's knife. 8". Try Forschner, Dexter, or F. Dick for cheap and excellent. Quote: |
5 Cutting board (hardwood)
| If you're only using one board, you may want to consider SaniTuf instead. If you prefer hardwood, you want end-grain (butcher-block), not side-grain. You probably do not want bamboo -- the glues used to bond them are usually too hard. No matter what, you're going to need another piece of equipment based on this one board.... Quote: |
6 Blender (not a core necessity, but extremely convenient and useful)
| This does not belong in a minimalist list, if you ask me. Replace it with a small spray bottle. Fill this with dilute bleach solution (the formula is on the back of a Clorox bottle). Use this to sanitize your cutting board after cutting any kind of meat or fish. Quote: |
7 other stuff, a few storage containers, 1 spoon/fork, plastic wraps, and.. paper towels)
| If you want to be really environmentally sound, you could replace the paper towels with a stack of cheap bar towels, and certainly you should be using storage containers with lids rather than a whole bunch of plastic wrap.
I should note that Martha Stewart: Living -- the Thanksgiving issue -- just did a column about this very question. I was positively impressed by the list, which was rather longer but struck me as an eminently reasonable balance between convenience and minimalism. |
10-17-2009, 02:36 PM
| | ChefTalk Moderator Culinary Experience: Retired Chef | | Join Date: Jun 2001 Location: Minnesota
Posts: 4,718
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When my wife isn't around me and the boy love to eat right out of the pan. "Cowboy style" he calls it. |
10-17-2009, 06:57 PM
| | Registered User Culinary Experience: Cook At Home | | Join Date: Dec 2006 Location: NH
Posts: 147
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I would add a vegetable peeler. Not a necessity, but for the type of foods you cook, it's a lot of bang for the buck, and for the space. |
10-20-2009, 01:45 AM
| | Registered User Culinary Experience: Cook At Home | | Join Date: Oct 2008 Location: Quincy, MA -- and unfortunately not Kyoto
Posts: 680
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Quote:
Originally Posted by inventivefficie So the knife I was thinking off is call a "Santoku" and since I eat a close to Mediterranean diet, with more seafood over meats, I'm likely going with a Santoku. | Unless you have very strong reasons to want a 7" or shorter knife, a santoku won't be all that much help. Buy one only if it's dirt cheap, is my advice. The only thing it's got over a chef's knife is that it works passably in a shorter length. As to the diet, that's got nothing to do with it: either way, you're talking about an all-purpose knife, not one with any special strengths. Don't be fooled by the notion that the santoku, being a Japanese knife design, is better for fish: it's not, nor was it designed in that way. I much prefer a swivel peeler, which is faster and defter when peeling things like carrots and cucumbers. Quote: |
Lastly, I don't know what I would need a wok for. I plan to steam or boil the lean meats.
| Everyone needs something to saute in, for one thing. Besides that, if you got a wok you could use it as your base for the steamers, and thus as a saucepan, killing two birds with one stone. That said, I'm not myself much of a fan of woks unless they're carbon steel, which makes them rather less effective as saucepans or steamer bases. |
10-20-2009, 06:39 PM
| | Registered User Culinary Experience: Food Writer | | Join Date: Oct 2009
Posts: 10
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Last edited by inventivefficie; 10-20-2009 at 06:42 PM.
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10-20-2009, 06:54 PM
| | Registered User Culinary Experience: Food Writer | | Join Date: Oct 2009
Posts: 10
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Also, I don't think I'm going to get the other stuff:
"Need? Extras?? (Don't know what I would use them for)
2 wooden spoons
can opener
tongs
Spoon Shaped Spatula
Sieve" |
10-23-2009, 09:50 PM
| | Registered User Culinary Experience: Cook At Home | | Join Date: Oct 2009
Posts: 2
| | Your all-in-one answer
A chef stir pan is your answer! You can stir-fry, saute', re-heat, steam! All in a 3 quart counter top appliance! The coolest thing...it has a stirrer at the bottom to stir for you while you do other kitchen prep! I love mine! Check it out on their website under kitchenstir. They even have some great video's showing how it works. |
10-23-2009, 10:12 PM
| | Registered User Culinary Experience: Cook At Home | | Join Date: Oct 2008 Location: Quincy, MA -- and unfortunately not Kyoto
Posts: 680
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ladygourmet A chef stir pan is your answer! You can stir-fry, saute', re-heat, steam! All in a 3 quart counter top appliance! The coolest thing...it has a stirrer at the bottom to stir for you while you do other kitchen prep! I love mine! Check it out on their website under kitchenstir. They even have some great video's showing how it works. | Jeepers. You have got to be kidding me. What's so hard about tossing a skillet that we have to spend a lot on another countertop appliance? inventivefficie is, I am sure, too smart to be gulled by something like this -- especially as an addition to a "minimalist" kitchen! |
10-23-2009, 11:04 PM
| | Registered User Culinary Experience: Cook At Home | | Join Date: Oct 2008 Location: Quincy, MA -- and unfortunately not Kyoto
Posts: 680
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Quote:
Originally Posted by inventivefficie "nor was it designed in that way."- It's based on what I read a while ago. I don't know if this part is true. I'll read up on knives later on. | So as not to totally derail your interesting and valuable thread, I've posted a lengthy explanation in this thread here. It's a complicated question, I'm afraid, but at least to me an interesting one.
But totally off-topic.... |
10-27-2009, 03:47 AM
| | Registered User Culinary Experience: Cook At Home | | Join Date: Oct 2009
Posts: 6
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good for you! you organize your stuffs in the kitchen. i practically throw any kitchen supplies in the grocery cart and end up not using them at all. maybe i'll start organizing now.  | |
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