I'd go for a food processor (~$100) over a stand mixer, but I don't make a lot of deserts. For making bread and pizza dough, I got a cheap bread maker for $50, and it was well-spent. The food processor comes in handy quite often; I'd hate to make bread crumbs, sliced or shredded vegetables, fresh salsa and a bunch of other things without one. Also, for those who are (like me) too lazy to keep their steel knives in proper working sharpness at all times, a ceramic knife is pretty handy for preparing veggies.
The Minimum Viable Kitchen
31–40 of 209 posts
Re: The Minimum Viable Kitchen
#32I'd highly recommend adding kitchen shears and butcher twine to this list. Both items have a ton of uses and I've found them to be indispensable to have around.
Re: The Minimum Viable Kitchen
#33I cook quite a bit and have a lot of friends who own commercial kitchens. - Victorinox Fibrox knives are by far the best value you will get. They are inexpensive and are quite the workhorse. - I agree for the most part about the pots and pans except cast iron should be #1 on the list. The one thing you will learn very quickly as a cook is that cast iron is your friend. It also lasts forever. - Someone said something…
Seconding the whisk. I have a very minimalist kitchen, and its one of the few things I feel I'm missing.
Re: The Minimum Viable Kitchen
#34Definitely should have put "for gourmet cooking" or something to that effect in the title, as that was the intended purpose. Half the comments here are "you can cook with less than that" with which I agree. You just can't cook a high percentage of the stuff in a cookbook written by a guy with Michelin stars.
Re: The Minimum Viable Kitchen
#35Title should read "The Minimum Viable Kitchen for heavy consumers"
Go and live in a developing country for a few years, see and taste the phenomenal food, then double check if you need to spend a fraction of $971
Re: The Minimum Viable Kitchen
#36Mark Bittman wrote a nice column about outfitting a "no-frills kitchen" over at the NYT. I came across it via a review of knives over at the wirecutter. I can recommend both.
NYT article: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/09/dining/09mini.html?_r=1...;
The Wirecutter review: http://thewirecutter.com/reviews/a-great-chefs-knife/>
Re: The Minimum Viable Kitchen
#37There are a few cases on there where they mention something as the undisputed best in the high end, but you should get the cheaper thing, and they got the cheaper thing right 100% of the time, but either neglected another top option (which may be better in many ways), or actually didn't pick the top option. e.g. Demeyere is objectively better than All-Clad in every way except advertising spending. Shun Ken Onion is only mid-range for knives (but very good); MAC, Global, and a variety of both cheaper and more expensive Japanese options are better for Japanese, and there's a style argument for Japanese (sharper, harder) vs. European (tougher). Staub > Le Creuset, although the lodge or tramontina is 95% as good for 20% of the cost, and unglazed cast iron from lodge (or old stuff from Griswold, etc.) is just fine for $20-30 (but unglazed cast iron is fundamentally different from glazed).
Re: The Minimum Viable Kitchen
#38I've either purchased or influenced the purchase of at least ten copies of Ad Hoc. It has a lot of tips throughout and the recipes are simple enough for most cooks while showy enough for dinner parties.
Oh, and a good set of tongs are my must have in the kitchen.
Re: The Minimum Viable Kitchen
#39This article is horribly titled (not the HN one, the article's actual title). The full quote from the article (Minimum Viable Kitchen (MVK) for creating gourmet food) would have been better. The thesis statement is also helpful to understand what he is trying to achieve: I define the Minimum Viable Kitchen as one that can allow you to create over 75% of the recipes that are in what I consider to be the best cookbooks…
I get that, but also i'm going to echo the points of the other folks up here that MV is totally an "eye of the beholder" metric.
For cooking most western foods, for example, i think he totally misses the mark in the pots/pans section. Having worked in a 'new american' kitchen, i can confidently say that buying cheap aluminum/stainless 8", 10" sautee pans, an 8" nonstick, a 1pt saucepan, a 2qt pot, (~$9 ea at fsw or whatever) and a cheap $30 dutch oven covers the vast majority of of cooking needs if you throw in a few pieces of steel wool and let the sheet tray pass for whatever baking.
the notion that heavy pans for 'even heat distribution' are essential is true at some echelon of gourmet cuisine, but getting to know how your pan behaves on your stove is infinitely more valuable and cost effective than buying a set of all-clads. case in point, buy a cast-iron fry pan and discover its 'even heat' characteristic still includes a hotspot right under the burner.
75% of all recipes don't require all that much, though, it's the 25% that add much of the weird equipment overhead (i'm looking at you, spring form pan!)
Re: The Minimum Viable Kitchen
#40Line by line, my disagreements: - You don't need cookbooks. The internet is better in terms of 'MVK', and the best cookbook is the one you make yourself. - Get rid of half of the pots and the dutch oven. Cast iron is indeed the greatest. - A stand mixer is nice, but by no means is it Minimum Viable. - If you insist on getting a mixing bowl that isn't a regular bowl, don't get three of them. - Ditch the whisk. - Sayin…
Maybe it's because I'm confused about what a "regular bowl" is (I assume you mean salad/cereal bowl), but I don't understand how you can cook without mixing bowls. I use mixing bowls for all kinds of things from pancake batter to tossing veggies for roasting to putting stuff in as I prepare it. I also sometimes use it as sort of a crappy double boiler for melting stuff at low temperatures. I would want at least two so I can do more than one thing, and really three so I can have a couple different sizes.