Kitchen Tools Part 1: The Primary Equipments Your Need

Just married ? moved out ? or are you just looking for upgrades for your kitchen ? before we start talking about kitchen tools, you should know that the most important tools of all are your hands, with them you can fix and make everything without the need of any specific tools, of course kitchen helps you make the most delicious dishes, but your hands are responsible for the most part, because you use them to put ingredient and mix things up to your taste, so just keep in mind that your hand do all the job, kitchen tools are just a modifier, keep them clean after using them to assure safe and healthy food for you and your family. This article provides inexpensive essential tools,  don’t worry about money, this is not but a grocery shopping kind of things.

 

Primary Equipments

 

 

    Frying Pans

For fast cooking meals like breakfast, we give you an 8 inch All-Clad steel frying pan, the characteristics of this pan is that it is shaped like a half bowl, in other words, sloped sides. It is made of stainless steel, and aluminum type that is designed to heat as quick as possible, it helps spreading the heat all over the pan and finally make heat last longer after you took it off the fire. Make sure the aluminum is covered, you don’t want your food to react with it and produce acids, these acids can be extracted from tomatoes, citrus and wine.

 

Be careful of the handle getting hot when you put this pan into the oven, always wear oven mitts. Hand washing this pan is favorable, but using the dishwasher is also safe, the company offers compensations if this pan is damaged after a short period of time. make sure the pans you buy are all made of stainless steel, you can cook various type of meat on this pan, it will assure you efficient cooking and beautiful grilling colors. 12 Inches pans are very important in the kitchen, they cook large quantities of food for a big family you don’t have to use the 8 inch pan during cooking for parties and family reunions. If you are the type of people who likes to renew their tools, it won’t hurt if you buy the NonStick Frying pans, also available in 8 inch and 12 inch, they are much cheaper from All-Clad, but you should change them every 3 years on regular bases, always try to find the heaviest, and how strong the handle is.

 

Sometimes you find yourself faced with a lot of frying and cooking, you don’t want to exhaust yourself by frying small quantities of food, one after another, the food will get cold. Cast iron frying pans are the key to this issue, designed to last longer and survive heavy frying, they are heavy and cheap. Don’t use these for the easy tasks, such as making omelets and grilling onions, it is partly disrespectful, don’t you think ?. Use them for meat and big food, steaks, fish, burgers, and french fries. These are fighters that can go into the oven, on the stove, on the grill and everything that comes to your mind, as far as it is related to cooking. The steel of the cast iron pans gets too hot, you can use this to your advantage if you want to grill bread and add a crusty taste to your burger, turn on the fire and let the steel heat do the rest.

 

Although these pans are practical and strong they do need some bit of cleaning, keep the steel oiled while cooking to keep the surface clean, use only hot water to clean these kind of pans, don’t use steel wool, you may damage the surface. To avoid taste of other food in what you are cooking, use different pans to cook the kind of food that leaves a smell and taste, for example, use a cast iron pan for fish, and use another for all types of other cooking, you don’t want your steak to taste like fried fish.

 

 

 

    Quart Saucepans

Available in different sizes, on which we suggest that you buy them all, these Quart saucepans are for cooking simmering liquids and soups. When buying you must choose something with thick steel bottom, a saucepan that is heavy, and finally curved shaped so the heat spreads all over the content of the saucepan. There are two types of saucepans, make sure you buy the one without the pouring nozzle, it will refrain the pot from being closed perfectly with the lid, and eventually make all the steam leak outside which will slow the progress of cooking, you should also make sure the handle is safe and sound, and finally it is preferable that you find one with a glass lid so you can see how the simmering is going. 1 Quart Saucepans, 2 Quart Saucepans 4 Quart Saucepans, and 8 Quart Saucepans are all available in the market.

 

As far as lids are concerned, the ‘all purpose’ pot lid is as good as the glass lid, the only things that makes this lid practical and important is that it can fit on top of all the sizes of pots, you don’t need to find all the suitable glass lids for your quart and pots, buy this one and it will do the job. The vent in this lid makes it easier to extinguish fires if something burned and caught fire in the pan, the vent allows the steam to get out.

 

Camping Ovens

Want to go camping ? not so fast, don’t take a french oven with you, you wish you could but don’t want to, makes any sense ?. These ovens are so expensive you can’t even dare taking one out outside if you are of the middle class social system. Dutch ovens on the other hand, are affordable, you can take them outside and you can use them at home too. Dutch ovens are the best thing to cook a whole chicken in, put it on hot coals or in an oven and make the best chicken dish you can for your family, it can carry up to 9 kilograms, and it comes with an aluminum basket.

 

Griddles

Cast iron is always the key, make sure you buy a cast iron skillet griddle, if you like food such as burgers, grilled sandwiches, home fries, pancakes, and even fish. Lubricate the upper side with oil, and make any of the food we mentioned looks crispy, you don’t need the expensive fish  grilled that is being sold in luxurious restaurants, you can make that dish at home with the cast iron griddle, add seasoning based on your taste. This griddle can be taken outside in picnics and family events, the flat looking side is for burgers and the corrugated side for grilling food such as steaks, the juices that comes out of these types of food evaporates to give the piece of meat a stronger flavor and make your mouth water.

 

Just like the cast iron frying pans, cleaning won’t help in some particular cases. Make sure you don’t cook too much fish on this otherwise you will have the scent and taste of fish in everything you cook, unless you want to taste fish flavored pancakes that would be totally fine. You can use them upper and lower grills to cook sandwiches and paninis.

 

Woks

Get ready to show your skills in cooking, there won’t be no stirring this time, a wok will help you make your fried vegetable and meat or fish crispier and browner, the oil you put before you start cooking helps spread the heat and this will eventually result in giving them more crispiness. Other flat bottomed pans don’t spread enough heat over all the metal, with the help of steam, they give water, and that will eventually result in making water congregate at the bottom, if this happened, the water will prevent the oil from reaching the necessary heat to cook the content perfectly, it will do that however, when all the water evaporates, it will a take a while to cook everything.

The Wok enables you to cook everything at once, but filtering the juices to the bottom and keeping the solid content on the sides.

 

When you go out to buy a wok always go for the biggest and the curviest and the one that is made of stainless steel, if you don’t mind your tools being heavy, you can buy a cast iron wok, they stay hot for a very long time too. Non-stick woks are also good, but keep in mind that they must be thrown away after a year or so, depends on how frequently you used them in cooking. Carbon steel woks are special for cooking chinese food, most of chinese restaurants use this types of works, the problem with this steel is that it can rust, and lead to food poisoning, so these also should be thrown away depends on how many times they have been washed. Make sure you buy a wok with wooden handles.

 

Steam Basket

How this works is very simple, put water in the pot you wish to steam your vegetables in, put the steam basket in it, you will notice that it will fan out depends on how big your pot is, it will keep itself above water, put the vegetables on the basket, close it with a lid and let it do the job. Buying one made of stainless steel is very essential, you must avoid rust in any tools you cook with, get a steam basket with a handle in the middle that will allow you to pick you the food very easily.

 

Oven Mitts

If you have kitchen tools without potholders, you are going to need oven mitts. pick ones that are long enough to cover your hands from fingers to elbows, because your hands, as we said before, are the real tools. Choose oven mitts that are thick enough to pick up coals with. If you did not find oven mitts with all these qualities, you can buy oven gloves, they are more practical, they give firm grim of pots and other hot equipments.

 

 

Barking Pans

There is a big variety of baking pans in the market, we won’t be able to mention them all, but the most important ones are described here. First is the Pie Pans. There are two types of baking pans, one made of metal and the one of pyrex, and obviously the metal ones are way cheaper than the pyrex ones, but they both do the job just fine.

 

Second are the Half Sheet Pans, they are the most important amongst the baking pans, they can do everything related to baking on pans, they can be used for dying, roasting and baking, make sure you get the one that is made of aluminum. Roasting Pans are available in small and big size, use them for thanksgiving food.

 

and finally we would recommend a tea kettle. Every lady is too busy to stick around untill the water is boiled, so that’s why we suggest that you get one with a whistle, this way you can wait for the water to boil while doing another job. Some of the kettles can be very hard to clean, so make sure you get one that can be cleaned easily and easy to pick up when the water is finished boiling.

 

    Other Primary Tools – Electric.

Electric equipments are one of the most important tools in your kitchen, they make the job easier and offer you a big deal of free time. Amongst these tools we can the find as follows:

A hand mixer will make cream whipping much easier than a balloon whisk, it will save you a lot of time, and do the job even better than the whisk.

 

A Toaster will serve making breakfast easier, so instead of warming break on a pan, use this tool to make it much easier. It makes the break brownies and prevent it from getting burned, there plenty of low quality toasters, make sure you buy one that have wide openings.

 

Without a doubt you will need to chop, blend and shred a lot of fruits and vegetables, that is why you must buy a Food Processor, it will serve most efficiently in that task. This tool allows you to save plenty of time by blending or shredding all ingredients at once, and at fast speed. Buy the biggest you can afford. A Blender will do the same, to some extent, it will prove most efficient at making cocktails.

 

Heating food quickly is time saving, although proved not healthy in recent studies, a Microwave Oven is practical for heating food and not burning it, it also a big help in melting substances such as chocolate.

 

You really should try a Deep Fryer if you are a fan of fried food, it gives your food a good look and a crunchy taste. The only problem with deep fryers is that you need to change oil after only 3 or 4 times, which is healthy, but can be a little demanding from the financial factor since they need a big quantity of oil to function as required.