If you want to cook well at home, you need to get good equipment

You can't build good things with bad tools

Perhaps the strangest cognitive disconnect in modern America is how fundamentally obsessed our culture is with learning about cooking compared with how little we’re actually interested in doing it. Cooking shows and cooking YouTube channels are combined a megabillion-dollar industry and everyone is obsessed with watching chefs, cooks and “content creators” make food. But nobody is interested in doing it: By some measures just 1/3 of Americans cook a meal at home on a daily basis, which means fully 66% of Americans regularly cook nothing at all at home on any given day. This is weird enough from an historical perspective; when you consider how a sizable portion of that 66% probably obsesses over cooking shows like everyone else, it gets even weirder.

I suppose I am rather rare among strongly conservative men in that I spend a great deal of my free time cooking, literally barefoot in a kitchen wearing an apron (it’s a manly apron). I love to cook. One of the things that makes cooking easier, more fun and more relaxing is that I have good equipment on and in and with which to do it. I think putting more thought into your kitchen equipment can actually be a decisive game-changer for a lot of would-be home cooks who might be ambivalent or even hostile toward the act of cooking. Few things are inimical to good cooking as trash equipment—flimsy, crummy pots and pans, cheap utensils, dull knives, thin warped baking trays, what have you.

I’m not saying you’ll go nuts over cooking like I do if you buy some better stuff, but if you actually outfit your kitchen with well-made, useful, durable cooking tools, you’ll probably find it a lot easier to get in the kitchen and stay in it, which is the first step to cooking well and enjoying it. I’d like to offer some suggestions to that end because I think the world is made better when more people cook well and enjoy it.

A word of advice: The suggestions that follow need not be expensive at all, with one possible exception at the end. It is actually extremely easy to find high-quality cooking equipment at thrift stores, yard sales, on Craigslist and other secondhand websites, etc. Buying new is always an option but if you’re on a budget you can absolutely get what you need to get for what amounts to pennies on the dollar.

Another word of advice: I’m not recommending any specific brands on this list. People get really weird about their brands and I’m not interested in starting brand wars. Do your research and find out which manufacturers sound the best to you, so long as they’re not selling crap.

1. Good knives. Get a good set of knives. Nothing is as frustrating and irritating during the act of cooking as a lame, chipped, dull, low-quality knife. You want a chef’s knife with some heft to it (but not too much), maybe nine inches long; a nice long serrated knife for cutting bread; a paring knife; maybe a longer, thinner carbon steel knife for delicate slicing jobs. Your chef’s knife can be European-style or Japanese-style; I prefer the Japanese knives because I like how sharp I can make them and I don’t mind taking a little extra care with them to ensure they retain their edges. plus they are often made beautifully. Either works. Among all the suggestions on this list, a set of knives (or at least the chef’s knife) is probably the thing you’ll most want to consider buying new, not necessarily because a used knife is inherently going to be of lesser quality but simply because it will be harder to find a high-quality used knife.
   

2. A workhorse fleet of pots and pans. Get heavy-bottomed, durable pots and pans—none of this flimsy crap—of several different sizes: An eight-quart pot for big pasta jobs, a medium-sized saucepan for those medium jobs, a smaller one for…well, you get it. Buy a 12-inch skillet and a nine-inch omelet pan, both stainless steel. Get one or two cast irons, dealer’s choice on the size and style (so long as one of them is big enough to do, say, two steaks at once). Here’s a bit of controversy for you: Don’t get nonstick anything. Nonstick is simply not necessary if you know how to properly manage fat, steam, heat and time. Maybe you like to cook on something that’s a chemical leach disaster waiting to happen but I don’t.
   

3. Dutch ovens. Get a four-quart and an eight-quart, at least. These will be for your all-day soups and stews, your ragu, your braises, your deep-frying.
   

4. One each: A heavy, durable rectangular baking tray, a circular one, a sturdy baking/casserole dish. This should take care of all your baking and roasting needs on any given night.
   

5. Metal and wooden utensils (with some silicone). Please discard any and all plastic utensils you may have. They are awful and, like the grandsons of the great Indian chief Pentaquod in James Michener’s epic Chesapeake, they accomplish nothing. Invest in a few solid metal spatulas of varying sizes and widths to ensure all of your flipping and pushing jobs will be covered. Get a few heavy metal cooking spoons (they’re also good for serving). Get a large heavy whisk and a smaller lighter one, again both metal. Buy a half-dozen wooden spoons. The only thing resembling plastic in your arsenal should be a few silicone spatulas and a silicone baster. Buy precisely one heavy-duty ladle for your soup jobs. You don’t need any more than that because nobody on Earth has ever served two soups in one meal. It is considered a war crime at the Hague.
   

6. A good food processor. Actually this one is more optional than anything, in large part because it’s the most expensive item on the menu and one you’re much less likely to find one worth buying secondhand. A food processor is immensely useful for those days when you’re strapped for time a little more than you normally are; it can do several minutes’ worth of chopping in about ten seconds. It can process canned tomatoes for soups and stews; it can chop and pulverize nuts and cheeses for pestos; it can bring doughs together; it can mix panades for meatballs and meatloafs and whatnot. It’s highly versatile and useful; the downside is the ones worth buying tend to start at around $250-$300. Splurge on one if you want and you’ll enjoy it.

   
   These things can’t tell you what to cook or even technically how to cook, but they can and will help to make the act of cooking much more pleasurable, easier, efficient and relaxing, which is of course exactly what cooking should be. If you’re going to get in the kitchen—and more importantly if you’re going to enjoy it—you’re going to need a well-appointed kitchen, one that doesn’t stymie your efforts at every turn. Make it so.