There are a few things that everyone needs in the kitchen.  I shall refer to them as the basics.  You know what I’m talking about, they’re the things even a frat boy would probably have in his dorm room (maybe only if he’s in culinary school.)  If you don’t own these basics:    A whisk, a wooden spoon, measuring cups, measuring spoons, Pyrex bowl, baking sheet, pots, non-stick pan, spatula, and a slotted spoon, you probably don’t own a kitchen either.

These are 10 things I love that you may  not have thought to buy:

1) The Foodsaver

(see How to Use a Foodsaver in video section)

The Foodsaver is a small machine that sucks — I mean that in the kindest way of course.  Basically you shove your food in a Foodsaver bag, shove the Foodsaver bag into the machine and it sucks all the air out of it.

This way you can go to Costco, muscle your way past all the plebes buying individual steaks, head straight to the whole Beef Tenderloin section and head out the door. When you get home with your big hunk of expensive meat you freeze it for a little bit to make it easier to work with, cut it into individual steaks and then Foodsaver them.  Pop ‘em in the freezer for later use.   I usually get about 12 – 14 steaks from a $80 tenderloin.  That averages out to around $6 per thick, ready-to-b-perfectly-seared, succulent morsels of meat.

You can Foodsaver anything really, but using it for freezing meat is where it earns it’s place in my already overcrowded kitchen cupboards.  I actually banished my breadmaker to the basement to make room for it.  You can also order attachments for it that suck the life out of anything.  A gadget that goes over mason jars makes marinating meat disgustingly gory, but really fast and effective.  Another attachment sucks the air out of wine bottles so you can continue to serve that crappy bottle of homemade wine someone gave you for months on end, while you enjoy the good stuff.  In my case that’s a bottle of Diet Coke.  I’m not a good drinker.  It makes me vomit.  But I digress.

2) A Costco membership

See aforementioned post on Foodsaver.

3) A potato ricer

When I was growing up, my mother’s mother used to send her a box of unidentified stuff for Christmas.  It was usually weird kitchen stuff.  Being a 1950’s housewife, anything other than a wooden spoon or a bottle of Crème de Menthe meant it was weird and unidentifiable to my mother.  Since she couldn’t recognize any of it we would often make up other uses for it.  The orange rind peeler became a futuristic ring, good for scratching mosquito bites for example.

Julia shunned her potato ricer after receiving a KitchenAid.

Then one Christmas she got what she somehow recognized as a potato ricer.  So, for the next few months we got the gourmet version of mashed potatoes.  Only my mother wasn’t exactly sure how it worked so she just smashed the potatoes through the ricer directly onto our plates.  For dramatic tableside flare. That’s about the time I decided I hated potato ricers.  Gross, dry, wiggly potatoes.  Blech.

Several years ago I wanted to try a recipe that called for riced potatoes.  I was unimpressed but gave them another try.  My life has never been the same since and I truly believe I could end a multitude of wars with these potatoes.  Maybe not religious wars, but certainly most other types.  Definitely a schoolyard scuffle.

Turns out you’re supposed to rice your potatoes into a bowl, add a ginormous amount of melted butter, stir with a wooden spoon and then add in a ginormous amount of hot milk or cream.  Whisk and then watch their faces light up.  You can add cheddar cheese, sour cream, cream cheese or sliced green onions as well.  But only if you want the person you’re serving to fall completely in love with you.  Awkward at a dinner party.  Otherwise, just use the butter and milk.

4) A really good Chef’s knife

Not much to explain here.  They say a dull knife is more dangerous than a sharp knife, but I’ve cut myself with both so either way be careful and don’t watch television while chopping.  My personal brand of knife is the Wusfhof chef’s knife.  It’s the only good knife I own.  The rest are just crappy bread knifes, and one little paring knife my boyfriend accidentally stole from someone at work.  It’s quite good so I wouldn’t let him return it.

5) An easy to use  knife sharpener

There’s a difference between a honing steel and a knife sharpener.  You should probably own both.  A knife sharpener actually reshapes the blade of your knife but cutting away bits of it.  That’s what makes it sharp again.  There are electric knife sharpeners and simple handheld ones that you just pass your knife through.  Probably 100 passes or so if your knife is really dull.

The honing steel (or sharpening steel) is the long stick thing that you run the knife down at a 22 ½ degree angle.  Whenever you watch a tv show or movie where they’re trying to make someone look like they know what they’re doing in the kitchen, they have them quickly run a knife up and down a honing steel.  It doesn’t necessarily sharpen the knife, so much as gets rid of the burrs and wiggles, the knife sharpener puts into it.

First you sharpen, then you use the honing steel.  Then you’re supposed to cut your knife through a single piece of paper with ease.  Which I have never been able to do.  I don’t use much paper in my cooking anyway.

Butcher's Twine

6) Butcher’s twine

You won’t need this a lot, but when you need it you need it.   I use it mostly to tie around steaks that are a bit raggedy to keep them in shape so they cook evenly.  Also to tie up roasts of all kinds.  And occasionally for playing cats cradle.

7) Non-stick pizza pans for the BBQ

I only discovered these things recently at my local grocery store.  When I bought them (2 … cause one pizza is kind of useless, isn’t it?) I actually said out loud in the grocery store, this is stupid. But sometimes there are things you have to buy on the off chance that they aren’t stupid.  That they are going to work.  This was one of those things.  In fact, they are a bona fide miracle.  If I were on better terms with the Pope I’d definitely mention these pizza pans to him.  After I brought up the irony of the whole gay priest thing.   Check out the pizza blog in the kitchen section on how to use it.

8) Mortar & Pestle

Seriously.  How the hell are you going to grind your spices?  For the love of God.

9)  Good old fashioned cookbooks

All the basics

Tips & tricks throughout.

Just the facts m'am.

Better Homes and Gardens New Cookbook

Good Housekeeping Illustrated Cookbook

America’s Test Kitchen Family Cookbook

Just go buy ‘em.  Don’t ask questions.  Basic recipes like gravy, roast chicken etc.  Tried and true techniques.  No it’s not food porn like you might get with trendy celebrity chef cookbooks.  Just no-fail recipes for the starter cook.  GREAT cheese soufflé recipe in the Good Housekeeping Illustrated Cookbook by the way.  Yum.

10) Pepper Grinder

When we were first dating my big lug  was roaming the bad streets of Toronto on a Sunday morning for some reason.  He came across a band of crackheads who were selling their wares so they could buy more crack.  Naturally, he stopped to chat with them.  One of the women had what she described as an antique pepper grinder for sale.  He immediately thought “A crackhead’s pepper grinder!”.  I KNOW Karen will love this.  So he bought it and brought it home.  Karen did love that crackhead’s pepper grinder.  I cleaned it for an entire day.  Just to be safe.  Get yourself a pepper grinder because fresh cracked pepper makes everything better.  Especially steaks!  You can try and find your own crackhead but it’s probably easier to just head to Homesense or a kitchen store.