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Measuring Cups and Spoons

Psychic chefs can use the power of their minds to determine ⅓ cup of nutritional yeast or ¾ teaspoon of vanilla. For the rest of us, a sturdy metal or high-quality plastic set of measuring cups and spoons will do. Bonus: a stainless-steel tablespoon makes a cool MacGyver-style melon baller.

Kitchen Timer

In our carefree youth, we would put some cookies to bake in the oven, then go call a friend, play with the cat, take a nap and watch the last fifteen minutes of the McNeil-Lehrer News Hour. Okay, maybe we’re exaggerating about the nap but the resulting charcoal cookies would make us take note that maybe getting a kitchen timer would be a good idea. Older and wiser, we’ve learned to relax a little and let the timer do all the work of reminding us to do something. Nothing fancy required, as long as you keep a plastic one away from the stove so it doesn’t melt. If you happen to be a cheapskate with a cell phone, most cell phones have a timer feature.

Oven Thermometer

How much do you trust your oven? Unless you have one of those fancy top-of-the-line super expensive ovens (and even if you do), trust us, your oven is lying to you. Buy an oven thermometer, they’re cheap and will save you burnt cookie heartache.

STANDARD UTENSILS

Spatulas: Shop around for a thin, flexible, metal spatula that suits you, You’ll use it for frying and sautéing in cast iron and aluminum, as well as for flipping pancakes and transferring cookies to cooling racks. A wooden (bamboo, preferably) spatula with an angled edge is great for stirring sauces and soups, and for sautéing in enamel or nonstick cookware.

Tongs: Tongs are great for flipping tofu on the grill, sautéing greens, mixing salads, and retrieving the olive oil cap that you dropped into the soup.

Slotted Spoon: It’s the spoon that’s not a spoon, because it doesn’t hold anything! Maybe it sounds like the ultimate rip-off, but a slotted spoon is damn handy when fishing out ravioli from a boiling pot o’ water.

Pasta Spoon: That really creepy looking spoon-thing with teeth is a superhero when it comes to grabbing lumps of linguine or spools of spaghetti.

Ladles: Sometimes ladles make you feel like your pouring out the finest French soup, sometimes they make you feel like you’re in a soup kitchen. Either way, you need a ladle because that tablespoon isn’t going to get that soup into the bowl anytime soon.

Fork and Spoon: You may laugh, but this humble dynamic duo from the cutlery drawer will come to the rescue in your darkest hours. Forks make great mini whisks in a pinch (just don’t use them for stirring anything in a nonstick pan), and spoons are experts at seeding squash and portioning out flours.

OTHER STUFF

Barely a day goes by where the salad spinner doesn’t see some action. And that’s not because we’re eating salads every day; salad spinners are geniuses at washing leafy greens, mushrooms, berries, green beans, and any smallish, numerous fruit or vegetable. Not to mention it doubles as an extra colander and additional large bowl to hold annoyingly large vegetables and greens. Speaking of colanders, you need one. You should get a fine-mesh strainer, too, for straining stuff and sifting flour. A citrus reamer can squeeze the juice out of a lime much, much better than your hands ever will. A whisk is nice to have, also. But the bottom line is that you will cook best with the equipment you are most comfortable with. Spend as much time as you need in the housewares aisle, handling your future equipment and seeing what feels best to you. If you prefer one handle to another, don’t discount this as something trivial. And if you have a hand-me-down skillet from your best friend’s mother, and love cooking with it, well, then keep it and cook on.

COOKING AND PREPPING TERMINOLOGY

When we’re asking you to “sweat” some mushrooms, we’re not implying that you should apply extreme emotional pressure to get the fungus to admit to some dark secret. It’s just one of a few cooking terms we like to throw