Cooking for ourselves took time to learn and we are still learning. I probably would still be burning water if it wasn’t for Alton Brown and his scientific and campy approach to cooking called Good Eats. In this post, we will give you some information and a set of resources to help get started. Before we start, here is a quick blurb on being a chef vs cooking to give us context.
Chefs, Cooks, and Celebrities…Oh My!
Chefs make their living creating food and running restaurants. In many countries, they are also stars in the media. Some teach Master Classes. Others will tell you their tale of how they spent their lives in pursuit of certain foods and cuisines. For others, they are entertainers and show people who have reached a pinnacle in their career to the point of making it an art form. The takeaway is that they are all in the business of selling something, whether a lifestyle or an experience. That isn’t always helpful to the home cook on a calorie or financial budget.
The role of a chef in the restaurant industry is different than that of a cook. A chef is an executive-level position in a restaurant while a cook is a person who follows recipes. That doesn’t mean a chef doesn’t cook or a cook doesn’t help manage a budget or create new dishes. In a small restaurant, the owner may do both. Then of course the question becomes why did we bring this up distinction?
Become a Great Cook First
Over our journey, we stopped trying to play chef and learned to cook. We then became our own ‘chefs’ as our knowledge grew about the economies and management of our home kitchen. When we tried to learn everything at once, we bought things we didn’t use. We created waste due to food spoilage or a lack of understanding of things like use-by dates. By focussing on cooking, we learned to make it easy, what we wanted, and then learned to create economies of scale in doing it.
We start here because we feel others like us want to be a celebrity chef when all we need to do is learn to cook. One of the biggest complaints we hear from people is that nothing turns out right. Through learning to cook the other parts will follow. Don’t get upset if something doesn’t work out and the dish you are creating doesn’t come out like a celebrity chef. Reading recipes and understanding cooking jargon is hard enough.
It’s Like Learning a New Language
Disclaimer: Instead of posting a list of everything in our post, we will just link what has been done by others. We don’t necessarily agree or disagree with the brand of products selected for them. The range of information is what we feel is important to create a viable working kitchen from the ground up.
Like many things we looked into, getting alignment on terminology was difficult. Ok, so the recipe says blanch. What does that mean? Sometimes the instructions in recipes are typos or simply wrong. We had to learn what was correct and what wasn’t. Reading recipes can be so challenging that it does need its own blog post. This is a small to large list of terminology to start with as it is good to know.
Some Light Reading
Buying Into A Lifestyle Versus Just Buying Tools
Before we present this next set of lists, a caution and call out, we have no problem shelling out large sums of money for good or necessary equipment. We also have no problem being as frugal as possible to save money. Our blog is about making things simple and solving problems. This is one area where we feel that paying high prices for a name on a pot handle, range or blender may not be worth it. Try to start with being as simple as possible.
Your budget and life are yours but buying top-dollar equipment doesn’t necessarily mean you will produce better food. There are also exceptions where you will want a name brand and high-end for durability, warranty, or ease of use. You don’t need to buy the hype or endorsement of a lifestyle to produce quality food at home. The principle of caveat emptor applies in purchasing any equipment and tools. Do your homework and read the reviews to save time, money, and frustration.
Look to the Pros, Not at the Labels
If you look at the back of the house in a restaurant we very much doubt you will see high-end home equipment. What you will see are tools of the trade that get used and abused every day. Over time we learned we could get a lot of what we needed from restaurant stores instead of high-end merchants. Do your homework and you will save money and frustration. In contrast, you can take away my Kitchen Aid Stand Mixer when you pry it from my cold dead hands as it was worth every penny to us.
Some Resources
Don’t Commit Before You Are Sure
Beyond this, there are specialty items you will want. Before you commit to the specialty items, ask yourself if you will really use them. For example, our dehydrator is an essential piece of equipment for us. We rarely used the bread machine we owned for over 10 years before we realized it was just much easier to make bread by hand. You may enjoy an air fryer, or it may just sit there. what we learned is it is really easy to get up in the romanticism that you will use something versus learning the hard way you won’t.
Oh, There Will Be Questions
These starter lists lead us to other questions. As we started to learn more, we started to ask ourselves about processes in recipes. What is a slow rolling boil vs a simmer? What is cooking using medium-high heat when the heating elements or burners are all different sizes? We will address that in another post to keep this one to basics.
A Specific Callout; Knives
One last note on knives. Knives are very personal and usually one of the biggest expenses in setting up a working kitchen. Find what fits your hand, is good quality holds an edge, and will last. We all have different hand sizes and dexterity. Make sure you are buying something you can use. Just because a super chef endorsed it, it’s a specific brand or type of steel doesn’t mean it will work in your hand. Your knives are one of the most important and most used tools in the kitchen. We found it is worth spending some extra money on if needed as fit and longevity are really important.
Wrapping Up
In this post, we have covered some terminology and basic equipment. We hope it is both just enough to get started with and just enough to prompt further questions. Cooking your good food from scratch is not always easy. It is however rewarding, can save you money, and help you with a calorie budget for better portion control. Getting set up to do it should not be complicated or budget-breaking.