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The essential kitchen tools for beginners usually come down to a few knives, a board to use them on, and a drawer of things you’ll reach for every single day. That’s it.
Start with Pots and pans if you haven’t — and check your stove before you buy any cookware.
If cooking is an art, then your kitchen tools are your paintbrushes.
Knives
There’s a reason that chefs buy their own knives and take care of them so carefully: They’re the most important tool in the kitchen.
Learn some basic knife skills, and in no time you’ll be slicing onions, dicing carrots, trimming roasts, and smashing garlic, all faster than you could ever do hunched over a counter with a dull paring knife. If you don’t have much experience in this area, YouTube is filled with (opens in a new tab) videos that will show you the ropes. Watch, learn, and practice.
How many knives do you actually need
You can buy a set of knives, or you can just cherry-pick the ones you need. Chances are, you probably can get by with only three kinds of knives:
- Chef’s knife (or santoku) (opens in a new tab). This is the big workhorse, an 8- or 10-inch beast that can cut through almost anything. In this case, “chef’s knife” doesn’t have to mean a traditional French-style knife; a Japanese santoku knife can execute the same tasks admirably. Get whatever fits your hand and is comfortable to use.
- Paring knives (opens in a new tab). You’ll want a few of these for everything from cutting vegetables to trimming meat.
- A serrated bread knife (opens in a new tab). This will cut through a crusty loaf without squishing the inside.
This doesn’t mean that other knives aren’t necessary; a boning knife might justify springing for a full knife block set.
You can get decent knives for almost any budget. You can spend as little as $50 for an unglamorous but genuinely good chef’s knife, or you can spend a few hundred and invest for decades to come. Either way, take care of it: Never, ever put it in the dishwasher; hand-wash and dry right away. (Joe still uses the same Wüsthof Grand Prix 8-inch chef’s knife that he bought 25 years ago.)
Don’t be dull
There’s a popular misconception that it’s better to use dull knives to avoid cutting yourself. This is both wrong and dangerous.
When you can slice through ingredients effortlessly, you’re less likely to cut yourself. By contrast, using dull knives is how you end up pushing hard through your food, cutting yourself, and ending up in the Emergency Room. (Just ask Sharp Cooking’s co-founder.)
If you want to give your knives the spa treatment, you have a few options:
- Find a local shop that offers hand-sharpening services. That will basically give them a factory reconditioning.
- Buy an electric knife sharpener (opens in a new tab). This will save you money in the long run, but the quality varies; for example, some models don’t allow you to sharpen all the way down to the heel of the knife. If you have expensive knives, an electric sharpener may not cut it.
- Go old-school: learn how to sharpen knives with a whetstone (opens in a new tab).
Whatever you choose, get a honing steel (opens in a new tab) for regular tune-ups (and be sure to watch some videos to understand how to use it properly).
A warning: Once you start using high-quality, sharpened knives properly, you’ll never go back. And when a friend or relative asks you to cook in their kitchen, you’ll discover how few people actually keep good knives in their drawer. On a brighter note, at least you’ll identify a new gift you can give them.
Cutting Boards
Once your nice, new blades slice through your ingredients, they’ll need a soft surface on the other side to keep from dulling the edge. Enter the cutting board.
Get several, in a couple of different sizes, because when you really start cooking, you’ll need clean cutting boards at the ready. Some have juice moats, which aren’t just for slicing roasts; they’ll keep the juice from your fruit salad from running onto the floor. Others are just flat (or double-sided) so you can slide food off after you cut it.
Wood and bamboo are both fine, but avoid plastic cutting boards, which shed little bits of plastic into your food. Have enough boards that you’re not cutting raw meat and then vegetables on the same surface without washing in between. Never put wood or bamboo cutting boards in the dishwasher.
Bakeware & Pans
Half sheet pans (opens in a new tab) are one of the easiest and fastest ways to whip up home meals for a group. Add parchment paper (opens in a new tab) and you can cook an entire meal on one pan.
A broiler pan (opens in a new tab) is often underused because broilers are underused. A broiler is magic, basically an upside-down grill built into your oven. If your oven doesn’t come with a broiler pan, it’s worth getting one. (You can also put oven-safe skillets under the broiler, too.)
If you like to bake (lasagna, potatoes, cake, etc.) a cake pan (opens in a new tab) is a must.
A large pan for ice baths, plus ice packs in the freezer, for cooling hot food fast before it goes in the fridge (especially if you’re cooking in bulk). The bottom half of your broiler pan may work fine for this if it’s deep enough.
Depends how you cook
Some gear only earns its space if it matches how you actually eat.
- Colanders are useful for rinsing and draining items like pasta and vegetables. If fresh produce is a big part of your diet, get two colanders. (If it’s not a big part of your diet, it probably should be.)
- If you eat green salads, then you should always wash lettuce before serving. Skip bagged or boxed salad mixes, which are more likely to cause food-borne illnesses; the recall record is not reassuring (opens in a new tab). A salad spinner lets you rinse and dry your greens for crisp, fresh salads.
- Get a bunch of big mixing bowls for fruit salad, tossed salad, mixing, baking. You’ll use them constantly.
- If you like to brown meat in a skillet, then you’ll want a splatter screen to cut down on the mess.
Tools
Round out the drawer with wooden spoons, scoops, spatulas, a turning spatula (opens in a new tab), tongs and a slotted spoon (opens in a new tab). Never use metal tools on nonstick surfaces. These silicone spatulas (opens in a new tab) and this OXO silicone set (opens in a new tab) both do the job.
A fish spatula (opens in a new tab) is a great tool that slides under meat, fish, potatoes, or pancakes and flips them without tearing off the browned crust you worked so hard to get. Like all metal tools, don’t use it on nonstick cookware, or it will scratch the coating.
Get both liquid measuring cups (opens in a new tab) and dry measuring cups (opens in a new tab), and use the correct one for the right task. Add a set of measuring spoons (opens in a new tab). A little shot glass with measurements (opens in a new tab) is genuinely useful here for small liquid amounts, e.g., a teaspoon or tablespoon at a time. If you hand-wash them instead of putting them in the dishwasher, then the printed-on labels will last longer.
Buy plenty of dish towels, nothing fancy. They dry hands, dishes, counters, messes, and you can even put a damp one under a cutting board to keep it from sliding while you work.
Optional but useful: a microplane grater (opens in a new tab) and a box grater for everything from cheese to potatoes to nutmeg. You don’t need oven mitts or pot holders either — a folded dish towel does the job, and you’ll already have plenty.
An apron. Express yourself while you protect your clothes. Don’t think you’re too neat to need one.
Thermometers
Get several thermometers:
- Instant-read meat thermometer. Works for meat, baking, and vegetables. It tells you when food is ready and keeps you from poisoning yourself and your guests. We use the Lavatools Javelin PRO (opens in a new tab).
See the USDA’s safe minimum internal temperature chart (opens in a new tab) for the numbers worth memorising.
- A fridge and freezer thermometer (opens in a new tab) — a two-pack covers both.
- An oven thermometer. (opens in a new tab) Every oven is different, and some are more accurate than others.
Small appliances
If you’re really into smoothies, then consider a blender. If you like to make soups, then get an immersion blender to puree they right in the saucepan. Keep it simple. You don’t need a mountain bike with 30 gears; you need a single-gear bike. An inexpensive, powerful blender needs three settings: On, Off, and Pulse.
Skip the stand mixer and the food processor unless you’re doing genuinely serious baking or cooking. They’re expensive, and most people don’t use them enough to justify the cost or the counter space.
As for the other tools, it all depends on what you like to cook. Air fryer, instant pot, rice cooker, slow cooker, pressure cooker, toaster oven, convection oven, pizza oven, pasta maker, ice cream maker… . Take your time and see what you’ll actually use.
When in doubt, be skeptical of single-use gadgets. The question isn’t whether a thing works; most of them work. It’s whether it earns the cupboard space it will occupy for years to come.