Resources
This page is a work in process, and will have more information as time goes on.
Tips and Tricks
Techniques and practices used by professional chefs that will get you out of the kitchen faster, make the time while you are cooking more enjoyable, and make you feel like a bad-ass. These are some of the most popular posts on the site.
Tricks of the Trade – Rethink Your Workspace
Tricks of the Trade – How to Chop an Onion
Tricks of the Trade – Weights and Measures
Tricks of the Trade – How to Rough-Chop a Carrot
Beyond the Basics – Kitchen Equipment
As you spend more time in the kitchen, the list of essentials grows a little. We all get those 30% off coupons from Bed, Bath & Beyond in the mail, and those are a good way to pick up big ticket items for a fair price. Signing up for price alerts on sale-watcher web sites help, too. Once you have these things and get used to using them, you’ll wonder how you did without them.
- A good quality chef’s knife. You only need three knives – a paring knife, serrated bread knife, and chef’s knife. Some people have more, but if you don’t prepare meat you won’t need more. I’m so averse to being stuck with a bad knife that I travel with my chef’s knife. There are a lot of knives out there, but not a lot of quality knives, and if you are on a budget it is very helpful to have a good guide. (You can get a reasonable knife for $50 if that is all you have.) This site is excellent for getting some education.
- A food processor
. On days when I’m cooking a lot of dishes at once for testing, the bowl of my processor is in the soapy water or in use all day long. They have become such a integral part of the standard kitchen that recipes that use them, such as pesto, have made their way into our everyday repertoire. In my opinion, there is no need to comparison shop for food processors – get the Cuisinart. Restaurants use them, they last forever, and they can handle anything. All of the other food processors want to grow up to be just like them; mine is almost 15 years old. Compared to the new ones it looks like a dinosaur, but it does exactly the same things.
- Measuring scoops. See, not everything costs a lot of money. Dry measurements differ from wet, and you need these. Scoops, as opposed to cups, fit easily into dry goods containers and make baking just a little bit faster.
- An accurate kitchen scale. Get one that measures both ounces and grams. A scale is another thing that, once you get accustomed to using it, can make measuring things like liquids much faster. It also lets you use fewer dishes when doing prep, which makes cleanup faster. And some recipes, especially those posted by professional bakers, only use weights for measurements and it is a pain to convert grams to Imperial volume measurements. (And it is inaccurate.)
- An immersion blender. I put off getting one of these for over ten years, and I don’t know what the heck I was waiting for. They are super easy to clean. They are so much better than the food processor or regular blender for making sauces, salad dressings and smoothies, and are far and away the best way to puree soups. No more transferring hot stuff into a blender in batches and having the contents expand as soon as you turn it on. So superior.
- One other thing that is great, if you have the counter space, is convection toaster oven
that is large enough for baking, especially if you do not have a regular convection oven. If you are making one pan of corn bread, it makes much more sense to heat up the toaster oven than the large oven, and a convection oven cooks in about 2/3 the time.
Conversion Chart
Chart for conversion of often used volume and weight measurements for Imperial and metric units. (Link for PDF and Word docs below.)
Date: March 7, 2010