There’s no shortage of fun gadgets for the kitchen, but there are only a few that you absolutely need. Here’s your basic starter kit, in descending order of importance. Notice that the three most important items on this list are tools used for measuring. That is not an accident.
1. Instant-Read Thermometer
This is it, folks: the one thing that more than any other purchase you can make will really revolutionize your cooking (especially if you often cook, or have ever been afraid of cooking, proteins). A good instant-read thermometer is the only way to ensure that your roasts, steaks, chops, and burgers come out that perfect medium-rare every time. Forget about poking meat with your finger, relying on inaccurate timing guides, or the nick-and-peek method. Buy a high-quality digital instant-read thermometer, and never serve a piece of over- or undercooked meat again.
The Splash-Proof Super-Fast Thermapen by ThermoWorks has a hefty price tag ($86), but it’s money well spent. It’s head and shoulders above the competition, with a stunning range of –58° to 572°F (–50° to 300°C), one-tenth of a degree precision, unparalleled accuracy, and a read time of under three seconds. Because of its wide range, you won’t need separate meat, candy, and deep-fry thermometers—a single tool does all three tasks, and how.
Aside from my knives, it’s my favorite piece of kit. For
the best inexpensive model, which is slower and more difficult to use but still perfectly serviceable, check out the CDN Pro Accurate Quick-Read Thermometer ($16.95).
2. Digital Kitchen Scale
If you’re on the fence about whether or not you need a kitchen scale, jump to here, “Weight Versus Volume,” and read that section. Got it? See why you want a digital scale?
Once I got one, I’ve used it almost every single day. A good digital scale will make inaccuracies and inconsistencies a thing of the past. And if you’re the obsessive type, a scale can also help you figure out how much moisture your chicken lost during roasting, or exactly how far you’ve reduced that stock. Hooray!
Things to look for in a good scale: at least 1-gram (⅛-ounce) accuracy; a capacity of at least 7 pounds; a tare (zero) function; measurements in both metric and imperial units; a large, easy-to-read display; and a fold-flat design for storage.
The OXO Good Grips Food Scale with Pull-out Display ($45.95) has got all of that, plus a neat pull-out display that allows you to read measurements with ease, even when weighing large, bulky items that would otherwise obscure the screen. The only problem? Annoying fractions in the display instead of decimal places. Who the heck wants to measure ⅜ ounce? The Aquatronic Kitchen Scale by Salter ($49.95) lacks the pull-out-display feature, but it uses easy-to-read decimals, which makes both math and looking cool in front of Europeans much easier.
If you don’t mind fractions or intend to go all metric, then
stick with the OXO (that’s what I use). Otherwise, the Salter Aquatronic wins.
3. Digital Timer/Stopwatch
Did you know that in restaurant kitchens, croutons are the number-one item most burnt by line cooks?§ I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve popped a tray of sliced bread in the oven for crostini only to pull it out thirty minutes later after it sets off the smoke alarm.
At least I used to.
These days, I keep a Polder 3 in 1 Timer, Clock, and Stopwatch ($13.95) around my neck at all times. It’s got an easy-to-read display, an unobtrusive size, intuitive buttons, a loud alarm, a magnet for sticking it to the fridge, and a nylon lanyard for keeping it around your neck, so there’s no way you can forget about your roasting peppers, even if you leave the kitchen. With both count-up and count-down functions, what more could you want in a kitchen timer?
4. Immersion Blender
Really? some of you might be saying. You’d really say that your immersion blender is more important than your food processor or mixer? Well, if you rate importance by frequency of use, then absolutely. I use my immersion blender so frequently that I have it mounted on a holster on the wall right next to my stove and cutting board, ready at a moment’s notice to emulsify a sauce, whip up a batch of mayonnaise, roughly puree some whole canned tomatoes directly in the pot, blend a cheese sauce, puree soup, whip cream in no time flat . . . you get the picture. It’s a versatile
tool, and you don’t need a silly infomercial from the 1980s to tell you that.
Want a pitcherful of margaritas? The regular blender’s your friend. Need to make two quarts of pesto? OK, pull out the food processor. But for smaller, everyday blending tasks, an immersion blender is the tool for the job. Ever get annoyed at those ropy pieces of egg white you come across when breading food? Blend the eggs for a few seconds, and they’ll be perfectly uniform and smooth. You like froth on your hot chocolate? Heat it up in the pot and buzz it to create a luxurious foam. Lumps in your béchamel? All gone. How about if you want to make just a few ounces of perfectly smooth cauliflower puree or a half-cup of mayonnaise? Yep, you can do that with an immersion blender too.
The Braun PowerMax, which is only about $30, has been performing admirably at least three times a week in my kitchen for the past eleven years now. It’s the most reliable sidekick I know. Unfortunately, it’s not widely available these days, as I found out when stocking the kitchen at the Serious Eats World Headquarters. So there we use the KitchenAid Immersion Blender (about $50), which works just as well. You can get it as part of a package that includes a whisk attachment and a mini–food processor, but believe me, those are dust collectors and you don’t need ’em.
5. Food Processor
At a bare minimum, a good food processor should be able to:
• Finely chop dry ingredients like nuts and bread crumbs.
In order to do this, a processor must have an easy-to-use pulsing action and a motor that stops and starts on a turn.
• Roughly puree vegetables for things like marinades, dips, and rustic soups (for full-on smoothness, use a regular blender). Bowl shape, power, and blade design all affect how well a processor can accomplish this. It should also not leak.
• Grind meat. Short of a dedicated meat grinder or an attachment for a stand mixer, the food processor is the best way to grind fresh meat. Meat can be tough to chop, so a very sharp blade and powerful motor are necessary.
• Easily form emulsions when making sauces like mayonnaise or a light vinaigrette. Bowl design can affect the way the blade makes contact with liquids.
• Knead bread dough quickly and efficiently. This is the most-heavy-duty kitchen task of all, and the processor’s effectiveness relies mostly on the power of the motor.
I also like to have at least an 11- to 12-cup-capacity processor, which makes grinding meat and making dough much easier. Some models come with a mini-prep bowl that can be inserted into the main bowl for small tasks. These are cute but essentially useless. Whatever the tiny bowl can do, I can do with a knife. That may take slightly longer, but if you consider the time it takes to wash the blade, bowl insert, and lid, it’s no contest.
There’s also no use for a processor that’s going to get gummed up or jammed every time it hits a hard nut or sticky dough. Particularly prone to failure are models with a
side-mounted motor that drives the blade via a belt. Failing at even the easiest of tasks, those processors aren’t worth the box they come in. Instead, look for models with a solid-state motor attached directly to the blade shaft, with no intermediary belt or chain. These take up a little extra space in terms of height, because the motor must be placed underneath the processor bowl, but that’s an easy trade-off.
The two best processors that fit all this criteria at a reasonable price are the KitchenAid 12-cup Food Processor ($199.95) and the Cuisinart Prep 11 Plus 11-cup Food Processor (about $165). And at such similar price points (admittedly much more expensive than many useless models), it all comes down to bowl design, and in this category, the Cuisinart wins: it’s got a larger feed tube, as well as straight sides that ensure that all your food falls back down into the blade. For some reason, the KitchenAid has sloping sides. Ingredients can ride up the sides more easily and may not be chopped or emulsified properly.
6. Stand Mixer, with Meat Grinder Attachment
A good stand mixer is a true workhorse for anyone who bakes more than occasionally. When selecting one, there are a few criteria that I look for:
• It should have a dough hook attachment and a motor powerful enough to mix at least 2 pounds of bread dough without straining, shaking, or burning out.
• It should have a whisk attachment to whip cream and to whip egg whites quickly and efficiently into frothy meringues and foams.
• It should have a paddle attachment to cream butter and sugar effortlessly, as well as make short work of mashed potatoes and sausage mixtures.
• It should feature planetary motion, meaning the whisk attachment spins around its axis in one direction and orbits around the work bowl in the opposite direction, to maximize contact and mixing power.
• It should have a port for attachments such as a meat grinder or pasta maker.
Once again, just as with food processors, the epic battle for kitchen superiority (at least for the home consumer) comes down to KitchenAid and Cuisinart. Despite the fact that many manufacturers boast their motor wattages in their advertising (for instance, Cuisinart does a side-by-side comparison of their 800-watt SM-55 mixer versus the 325 watts of the KitchenAid Artisan), these numbers mean very little. Within a given manufacturer’s product lineup, it is an indicator of how powerful the motor will be, but the wattage is actually the power consumed by the mixer, not the power produced by the motor. It’s a marketing gimmick, pure and simple. Given a choice between two motors that perform equally well (say the 325-watt motor of the KitchenAid Pro 500 versus the 800-watt motor of the Cuisinart SM-55), it’s actually better to pick the one with lower wattage and save on electricity.
Both the KitchenAid and the Cuisinart have a meat grinder attachment available, an absolute must in my kitchen. It saves money and produces incalculably better results for burgers, sausages, meatballs, and meat loaves.
Here, the Cuisinart’s all-metal Large Meat Grinder Attachment ($128.95) has an advantage over KitchenAid’s plastic-and-metal Food Grinder Attachment ($49.95). But for the price of the Cuisinart attachment, you could buy a full-on dedicated meat grinder. The KitchenAid grinder has served me fine for years.
While either brand will do you well, the KitchenAid Pro 500 ($299.95) gets my vote for wedding-registry priority numero uno. It’s ideal for both heavy-duty bakers who make bread at least a couple times a week and want a real powerhouse and for those who will be mostly mixing batters, whipping cream, or even grinding meat.
7. Powerful Blender
There are a ton of decent blenders on the market—far more than good stand mixers or food processors. Then again, there are also a ton of poor blenders out there. You want a blender that’s powerful enough to puree soup to a completely smooth, velvety texture, with enough vortex action to thoroughly mix a thick blue cheese dressing or crush a pitcherful of ice for frozen drinks. You also want a blender with simple, easy-to-understand controls; the ability to pulse; and the capacity to slowly and evenly build up from a slow speed to a fast one, in order to prevent the lid from blowing off when you blend hot foods too fast. (Raise your hand if you’ve done this. Yep, thought so.)
The cream of the crop when it comes to blenders, the one that’ll turn your shoes into soup or scare the pants off the fat kid in The Goonies, the one that’ll turn all your cheffy foodie friends spinach-green with envy, is one from the
Vitamix Pro Series. This is what every professional kitchen I’ve ever worked in has used, and with good reason. It’s crazy powerful, has a very large capacity, and is built like a rock. They clock in at around $450 and up, placing them firmly out of the reach of most home cooks. Nearly as good and way cooler looking is the BlendTec, which, for around
$400, will turn everything from a carrot to a full-sized Alpine ski into dust. (Don’t believe me? Just Google it.
Seriously, it’s a great video.)
For a blender that won’t break the bank, I’d go with the KitchenAid Vortex 5-Speed Blender (around $150). It has an easy to clean wide polycarbonate pitcher and a blade that creates a big enough vortex that I can blend a full batch of cheese sauce for Cheesy Broccoli Casserole (here) in one go without it gumming up.
8. Rice Cooker
There’s no easier, more foolproof way to cook rice and other grains than in a rice cooker. Sure, you can cook rice in a pot, carefully monitoring the flame, hoping that you’ve added the right amount of water and that your rice isn’t burning on the bottom, and taking it off the heat at just the right moment, but if you’re anything like me, you’ve burnt one too many batches to fuss with that method any more.
With a rice cooker, you just add your rice and water, shut the lid, flip the switch, and go, with the added advantage that it’ll keep the cooked rice (or other grain) hot for hours.
Even the cheapest rice cooker will do—I had a $25 model I picked up in Chinatown that lasted me all through college and a good five years afterward. When I got married, I
upgraded to a fancy-pants model with a fuzzy logic processor¶ and a nifty latching top that keeps the moisture level inside at the exact right level. I love my rice cooker almost as much as I love my instant-read thermometer, which is just a hair more than I love my wife (just kidding, honey).