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By Root 311 0

can—and should—do most of your slicing, dicing, chopping, and mincing with a single knife. It’s known as a chef’s knife or utility knife, and has a blade that’s 6 to 8 inches long, without serrations. A good knife is one that feels comfortable in your hand, heavy enough to let you chop assertively but light enough to work with easily. There are many styles and options, and you need to find the one that feels right to you, but this is a good place not to scrimp, so visit a cookware store and get some advice.

Paring knife: You will also want a sharp paring knife (also straight-bladed, not serrated), which is way smaller than the chef’s knife and thus invaluable for cutting diminutive things (like shallots) or doing fine work (like peeling and seeding fruit and vegetables).

Honing steel: High-quality knives will last you a lifetime if you maintain them properly. To that end, you’ll want to invest in a knife-honing steel. This is a long rod with a handle. Here again, get advice at the cookware store, and ask for a demonstration. Use the steel to hone your knife frequently, and if you notice that the blade is getting dull and the steel isn’t helping, take your knives to a professional sharpener. It’s a good idea to do this once or twice a year, depending on how much of a workout your knives get.

Bread knife: A long-bladed serrated bread knife is good to have for slicing bread. A high-quality bread knife will stay sharp for years. It can’t be honed on a steel, but you can have it sharpened professionally. And speaking of serrated knives, you might also want to have a smaller one on hand for cutting citrus and tomatoes.

CUTTING BOARDS

Buy a few wood or plastic cutting boards—you can’t have too many, and they take up very little space. I recommend having a dedicated one for onions, garlic, and shallots, as these flavors are difficult to get rid of and tend to keep imparting themselves to other things that get cut on the board long after the fact. That’s okay for vegetables, but really frustrating when your fruit salad is inadvertently seasoned with a hint of garlic. You should also have a separate plastic board for raw meat, poultry, and seafood to avoid cross-contamination with other foods. Make sure you clean it with soap and hot water—and thoroughly dry it—after each use.

SOUP POT OR DUTCH OVEN WITH A LID

You will use this a lot! Let it double as a pasta cooking pot to save cupboard space. The pot and its handles and lid need to be ovenproof; you will often start a recipe on the stovetop, and then cover the pot and put it in the oven. Since you’ll often be browning things in this pot as a first step, it’s essential that it have a heavy bottom. (A thin metal pot will scorch food rather than browning it evenly.) Look for a substantial pot, such as one made of enameled cast iron, and treat it with respect, using wooden utensils to avoid scratching its surface.

SKILLETS

A 10-or 12-inch skillet is likely to be one of the most used pieces of equipment in your kitchen, so here again buying a good one matters. That doesn’t mean it needs to be expensive. A cast-iron skillet will work well. If your skillet comes with a lid, all the better. If it doesn’t, look for a heavy lid that will fit it (garage sales and thrift stores are sure to have a selection). A 6-to 8-inch skillet is handy for cooking eggs and small amounts of food. It’s good to have both sizes.

OTHER POTS AND PANS

You will need a medium-sized (around 2-quart) saucepan with a tight-fitting lid and a heavy bottom, a 9-by 13-inch baking pan (metal or glass), and a few good, heavy baking trays.

WAFFLE HEAT ABSORBER

This is a small, round, corrugated metal insulation pad, also known as a Flame Tamer or heat diffuser, that you can put under a pot on the burner. It allows your lowest setting on the stove to become even lower for long simmering of foods, like rice and soup, that you want to cook through very slowly without burning them on the bottom.

OVEN MITTS AND POT HOLDERS

Keep these near the stove, in a drawer or hanging from a hook—and make sure