Splurge, Save, or Skip: Outfitting your Kitchen on a Budget

Or, what’s worth buying at IKEA.

I live to cook and orient my social life, home, and thoughts entirely around cooking. As such, I don’t hesitate to treat myself to the occasional new tool, but generally, I try to run a lean ship due to space and cost pressures. While I have bins of kitchen stuff collecting dust in a Minnesota basement, moving abroad has helped me really assess what’s most vital in a kitchen, and I have some tips for others outfitting their small, far-from-luxury stations for relaxed and effective cooking.

Many cooks either live to build the lastest-and-greatest temples of marble and copper. Others, out of necessity or apathy, go for the cheapest options to get the job done. Of course, there is a middle path between the two according to anybody’s means that will keep you feeling at home and at peace above your stove. It’s also important to remember that if you’re fully comfortable in your own kitchen, you’re going to spend more time there, increasing the value of the kitchen and leading you to a healthier, tastier, and cheaper relationship with food.

So, here I’ll share a dozen or so tips on when I think it’s ok to splurge on quality, when you should buy cheap (but still buy!), and what I find to be entirely skippable. 

Splurge

Chef’s Knife

The quality of the knife isn’t as important as how you care for it, but you should still seek out a chef’s knife that feels good (heavy,  but balanced) in your hand, with a tang (the part of the blade covered by the handle) that plunges all the way into the handle, rivets that hold the blade and handle in place (not plastic glued on), and a heel that prevents your hand from sliding down onto the blade. It might be easier to describe what to avoid: these grey-and-white plastic handled IKEA chef’s knives.I’m lucky to have a 20-cm entry-level chef’s knife from Wusthof, retailing for around €100. If investing in this (or higher) quality, you should also consider if you’ll be better served by a chef’s knife (curved blade for rocking) or a santoku (straighter blade for more precise slicing). Both will do the trick, just think if you’d be happier making clean, thin slices (santoku) or finely mincing (chef’s).

Cutting Board

Every kitchen needs at least one steady, large cutting board. Wood or plastic both perform at a similar level in terms of (1) food safety, (2) knife treatment, and (3) ease of use and cleanup, so you should really be looking for something that’s both large and delightful to you.

This ‘splurge’ isn’t asking you to shell out big bucks: just to expand beyond a small plastic board and get a proper work station. I get by with two large €20 Laemplig chopping boards (currently repurposed into a quarantine standing desk), but I daydream often of my end-cut butcher’s block board in storage in the US. My recommendation would be to buy two large cutting boards, not breaking €80 on the two combined. Note: if you go with wood, you’ll just have to rub them with mineral oil once every 2-4 weeks to avoid splitting.

Never, ever consider purchasing a glass cutting board. Hard on the knife, your ears, and your food, and dangerous to clean.

Stainless Steel Pan 

A proper, heavy-bottomed, even-heating stainless pan is simply a must. The best options are a sandwich of stainless-aluminum-stainless, sometimes with other layers like copper thrown in for extra conductivity of evenness.My thesis is this: you will be better off with one (only one!) high-quality, large saute pan or sauteuse pan than a 15-piece set of thin Victorinox die-pressed shit. Most home cooks will also cook better with one pan they know intimately well than with a cluttered cabinet of lightweight, thin pans.

I’m still doing without and run into issues every week, having to calculate if I’d rather deal with the risk of ripping off the seasoning of my carbon steel, the nonstick coating of my nonstick, or deal with the cleanup of my enameled dutch oven. 

Buy one kick-ass pan like the All-Clad Sauteuse (walls high enough to make a soup!) and you’ll be ready for most anything. Add a cast iron / carbon steel (below) and a large pot for boiling water / stock, and you’re outfitted for 95% of cases for under €200.

Now, if you must buy cheap instead of a proper All-Clad-like option, simply look for a restaurant supply stainless steel option (without the fancy layering) with an incredibly thick bottom. For these pans, weight is your best predictor of quality.

Save (buy, but buy cheap!)

Cast Iron / Carbon Steel Pans

We have been in a cast iron renaissance for several years, with heritage cast iron becoming a fixture of the aspirational folksy-woodsman-working-at-a-startup lifestyle many to which many of us aspire. Good news –– cast iron and carbon steel can both be quite cheap.Heritage and high-end cast iron is demonstrably different: polished by hand to a near-mirror finish, with far fewer nooks and crannies in the surface of the pan. However, the performance boost is not worth the leap in price, and a pre-seasoned cast iron (i.e. Lodge) or a restaurant supply priced carbon steel (i.e. de Buyer) will serve you just fine.This should be your go-to pan for high-temp cooking: browning meats, vegetables, etc. Both cast iron and carbon steel require light maintenance to maintain the polymerized layer of burned fat which creates the ‘natural’ nonstick coating, but read one blog article and don’t worry about it. These things are meant to take a beating.

Nonstick Skillet

You should get as cheap of a nonstick skillet as you can trust isn’t going to slough toxic coating into your food on the first few cooks.It is an uncomfortable embodiment of our throwaway culture, but there’s simply no way around it –– nonstick coating will erode. As soon as you see a scratch, it should go in the trash.Nonstick skillets should also be used for precious few things –– mostly omelets and eggs. The vast majority of foods will be worse from being made in a nonstick skillet. Take a chicken breast for example: the moderate sticking you get from steel or iron ensures the breast stays in contact with the pan and browns up for a satisfying crust. In nonstick, the breast slides around like a dog on hardwood, with far less contact and browning at a microscopic level. I recommend lower-quality but trustworthy brands like IKEA.

Bread Knife (and other un-sharpenable blades)

Regrettably, another item which simply doesn’t last, and cannot be resharpened. Go cheap and atone for generating plastic waste another day.Same goes for cheese graters, microplanes, and vegetable peelers –– spend ½ as much for a modest dip in quality, and replace more often for better performance.

Mise en place Bowls

A cheap way to feel like a pro is to assemble a consistent set of small bowls for preparation of ingredients. I have 10 (yes, 10!) small Blanda Blank bowls I use almost daily, as well as 2 larger bowls for holding higher-volume ingredients like flour for bread.

Bench Scraper

Using a bench scraper to transfer chopped ingredients to your mise-en-place bowls or a cooking surface isn’t just satisfying, it prevents dropping things in transit and dulling your knife scraping against a board (owch!). 

Kitchen Towels

Towels are the ultimate utility workhorse in my kitchen: picking up hot dishes, polishing glassware, drying dishes, drying hands, drying produce, etc –– but for sanitary reasons you should rarely mix a use case without washing.So, simply stock up on over a dozen cheap cotton towels and round the in-use ones up any time you run a load of wash. I keep 15 IKEA dish towels folded and at the ready. They start with a plasticky feel but that goes away with light use and a wash or two.Pretty, decorative towels have no place in my kitchen, unless their designs and luxurious fabrics are enhanced by splatters, spills, and scalds.

Knife Sharpener

Respect your knives and buy a cheap, foolproof sharpener with a handle on one side and two or three v-shaped slots on the other side. These will eat your blade with years of regular use, but they’re far more user-friendly than the whetstone I use.Remember: a sharp knife is a safe knife! Bust this thing out every 2-4 weeks for 60 seconds and you’ll always be able to bust out paper-thin tomato slices. 

Kitchen Scale

Only relevant for bakers, but a must have if you bake even the occasional bread or cake. More common here in Europe, but a slow and arduous crusade against the tyranny of “Cups” in the USA.

Affordable Miscellany

Squeeze bottles (for oil, vinegar, sauces, syrups, etc), long kitchen tongs (as in the photo of this post), and a spray bottle are a few of the items which came into my kitchen for a specific reason and are now never out of arm’s reach.

Skip

If it makes you happy, I’ll glady buzz off and leave you in peace. These are just the decisions I’ve made to run a lean ship while still cranking out great food. 

Stand mixer

I am an avid baker and have often thought about dropping > €200 for a proper Kitchen-Aid, but am keeping this one until I have a wedding registry to fill.

Miscellaneous Electronics

Blenders, food processors, toasters, bread proofers, rice cookers, waffle griddles, etc –– the cash for each of these is surely better spent on a better knife, more towels, or higher-quality ingredients.If you eat toast every day or rice twice a week, that’s a different story, but the vast majority of kitchen electronics are simply there to gather dust and keep Procter & Gamble or WMF in business.

So, now your IKEA shopping list…

• 12x BLANDA BLANK bowls, small

• 2x BLANDA BLANK bowls, medium

• 3x ELLY dish towel, 4-packs

• 1x SKÄNKA frying pan

• 1x 365+ bread knife

• 2x LÄMPLIG cutting boards

Pick up a Lodge cast iron or DeBuyer carbon steel skillet and save up for a good Wusthof knife, and you’re ready for most any culinary task for under €250.