Make a kitchen needs list and add to it until you have everything you need for a complete working kitchen. Give extra un-needed items to a family in need or one just setting up a home for the first time.
This kitchen tool audit was the product of Master Class "Essential Cooking Tools;" Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat; and Cooking for Geeks.
I'm happy to report that after doing some reflection on the type of cook I am, I have everything I need. Using the Geeks archetypes, my priority is "healthy." I have a minor in "innovative" because I am much more comfortable making substitutions based on what I have on hand rather than someone who is "competitive" and perfectionistic or "methodical" and closely following the recipe. This means kit for elaborate desserts and baked goods is out of scope. It means precision tweezers, smoke guns, torches, squeeze bottles and ramekins for attractive plating are optional and unlikely to get used.
That doesn't mean there aren't a few upgrades I wouldn't consider, though...
- Thermometers: I have an infrared thermometer that works great. A second "candy" thermometer could help with tempering chocolate since my first one is devoted to wax and beauty product diy. A meat probe might help cross reference internal temperatures for safety better than the infrared gun. An oven thermometer could be useful to check whether my convection oven runs hot/cold and what is going on with the preheating the dutch ovens. However Geeks has a neat trick about using sugar's melting point to guestimate whether you and your oven are on the same page about 367*F.
- Mortar and pestle/molcajete/metate: I am reluctant to get more of these because we have several... in our yard. They are so appealing to our young cultivator as a tool, they don't stay in the drawer and then once they've been grinding up cosmetics and grass seeds, I am skeptical I have returned their porous surfaces to "food grade."
- Salad spinner: We had an acrylic one, it took up a ton of space and we didn't use it, so I donated it. If we get back into growing more of our own greens (see: lettuce cyclospora outbreak in the summer of '26), a smaller, glass bowl spinner might come in handy.
- Rasp grater: young cultivator loves zesting things, so I feel bad she is box-grating citrus when she could be wielding a microplane. However, the frequency with which we do this doesn't really justify the investment and storage space.
- Diamond honing steel: We sharpen our knives on a whetstone, but that invariably sits in a soupy casserole dish for a couple days before I get around to it. Maybe if we get in a good rhythm of using the honing rod, we would switch it out for one that also has sharpening capacity.
- "Better" utility and chef knives. I like our stable of Victorinox ones and risk of "messing up" sharpening them isn't a barrier. Perhaps swapping them form more heirloom-quality craftsmanship sometime down the road would make sense. But I so dislike shopping and this is a really tactile item to purchase.
- Pyrex storage dishes and wide mouth mason jars: we have a huge stack of plastic meal prep containers that are lightweight and claim to be dishwasher/microwave safe. But as we learn more about plastic breakdown and leaching, I'm not so sure. As these deteriorate to the point of retirement, I am planning to backfill with glass containers. I need to be using the 5 I have more consistently to buy more though. We also have a whole cabinet full of mason jars but as we find more uses for them, we are constantly feeling like we could use a few more palettes of them.
- Stand mixer? Again, I am not a baker. In a world where we were making more bread and pasta from scratch, this might have a place.
If, in my dotage I were to retreat to a tiny home or she-shed, what would I take with me? What would I encourage my young cultivator to invest in when she heads out on her own?
- Compost bin
- Instantpot
- Electric kettle
- Immersion blender
- Hotplate
- Dutch oven with skillet top
- Sauce pan
- Cutting board
- Chef knife
- Utility knife
- Honing rod
- Tongs
- Silicon spatula
- Wooden spoon
- Whisk
- Measuring cups
- Measuring spoons
- Scale
- Can opener
- Citrus juicer
- Strainer/Colander
- Box grater
- bottle and wide mouth funnels
- Wide mouth pint+quart mason jars
- Pyrex glass food storage containers
- Silicon freezer bags
- Painter's tape
- Sharpie
- Quarter sheet pan
- Nesting mixing bowls
- Kitchen towels
- Microfiber cloths (in lieu of sponges)
