stocking a new kitchen: the essentials

I'm going to be moving into a new place at the end of November and, having no food stock at all right now, decided I need to make a running list of things I'll want to stock up on. Feel free to add to it.

first, stuff that will not spoil too quickly:

flour
corn starch
brown sugar
cane sugar
honey
olive oil
peanut oil
canola/vegetable oil
balsamic vinegar
white vinegar

seasonings:
sea salt
kosher salt
peppercorns
some dried herbs (rosemary, basil, oregano)
cumin
chili powder
five spice powder

condiments:
ketchup
brown mustard
some salad dressing

brown rice
white rice
dried beans (black, red)
pasta (spaghetti, other italian noodles, udon, ramen)

This shit is surprisingly expensive when you have to replace it all at once!

I think everything I typed out is already on your list. :)

baking soda
baking powder
crushed red pepper flakes
lentils
rice vinegar

canned tomatoes

otm!

Basically, when I moved out of the place I shared with the ex I had most of this stuff, but I kind of said "fuck it" when I opened up the pantry because I didn't want to spend any more time boxing. Hence the fresh start.

dried thai chilis
dried chipotles
soy sauce
sriracha

canned black beans
assortment of campbell's/progresso soups for laziness and quick ingredient use
vegetable/chicken stock

It's kind of funny how many oils and vinegars you need, but they do such different things! I was afraid it was overkill, but I have red wine vinegar, balsamic, white vin mostly for cleaning jobs and potato salad, and rice vinegar. And sometimes apple cider, too.

apron
nutmeg
triple sec
horseradish

do y'all use both sea salt and kosher salt?? you never really see kosher salt over here in the uk but i always see it mentioned in american recipes

i don't know the difference between all the salts. i just got some kosher salt recently but had always just used table salt before.

I'd put fine sea salt on the table, really. Iodized salt, which is what is commonly used, is kind of unnecessary because you'd have to have some serious nutrition issues to not get your iodine elsewhere.

I used to have three types of soy sauce (half gallon of kikkoman, dark chinese, light chinese) but that is kind of overkill.

oyster sauce
hoisin sauce
some sort of preserved garlic for when I am too lazy to buy fresh

canned white beans
garbanzo beans

you need tamari soy sauce

I don't mean to be hating, here, but when can u be too lazy to use fresh garlic? The stuff keeps for like 3 months! Chop chop and yr done.

Mine always seems to start growing long before 3 months!

Do you keep it in a cool, dark place?

Okay maybe not 3 mos but I still think there's not really a good enough reason to use canned/jarred garlic.

yeah mine sprouts after about 2 weeks

cornmeal
tomato paste

also btw i think that if it sprouts you can just cut it in half, length-wise, and pop out the sprouting part

yeah i usually do that but it starts getting mushy soon after it sprouts. no big deal i just try not to stockpile garlic. jar garlic is not that bad btw

or plant it and harvest the shoots when they are 4"-6" long for garlic scapes.

peanut butter

Worcester Sauce

fish sauce

mh do you know if you'll be moving anywhere near a grocery place w/bulk bins? IMO that's the easiest/cheapest way to get spices – in bulk and as you need them.

Tin of anchovy fillets
Capers

Noodle Vague is absolutely right about Worcester Sauce. Also cinnamon, cardamom, some lemons, frozen peas, english mustard, tinned fish, a massive sack of rice, stock cubes, tins of chick peas. I'm awed by your love of beans.

SQUIRT BOTTLES

need to order some of these, iirc

Whenever I've moved to a new place, the first store I try to find is the restaurant supply store. They are the best for cheap sturdy kitchen/dining stuff.

yeah that only just occurred to me the other day!

fish sauce

― just sayin, Thursday, October 29, 2009 4:46 PM

;)

I've never actually been in this place (and was kind of lol hippies about it) but it looks like they might have bulk stuff! On a warm day it'd be walkable.
http://www.newcitymarket.com/

hey jaq where is a really cheap place i can go and buy cast iron pan + roasting pan/rack?

i got very lucky when i moved here and received the remnants of someone else's recently moved out of kitchen. still needed to add some stuff, but good basics, free :D

guys i have a stainless fry pan---can i use this in the oven??

yes?

oh god now i am questioning everything

what's the handle made of?

ok now i remember i have baked something in a bit stainless thing before.

*big

Tza, for a cast iron pan, I'd check the hardware stores first - they usually have good prices on the Lodge brand. Otherwise, I'd go to Seattle Restaurant Supply up on Aurora - they'd have both cast iron and roasting pan/rack. I need to head there for some 1/2 sheet cookie pans - maybe we should take a li'l trip on Saturday?

gbx, as long as the handle isn't wood or plastic a stainless pan is fine in the oven.

ok that is what i thought, it's all metal, triple-clad something i got on sale at the fancy-ass kitchen store a couple blocks away (THIS IS A DANGEROUS PLACE FOR ME, BTW)

guys can i drop out of school and just cook forever instead

off topic, but here is where all my stuff will be going:
http://cdn-7.eneighborhoods.com/c1/347/356261_6.jpg

(current stuff on counter not mine

wdykll

My kitchen, before we moved in:
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3139/2695909470_d12c94e3d9.jpg

my kitchen is so dirty right now bc i have not done dinner dishes yet!

anyway i want apron pics from you guys!

yeah i'll take a picture of mine after it's clean again. it has awesome bright yellow-green walls.

wtf jaq your kitchen rules!!

u can have it

i gotta gift certificate remember

ok, fair :)

oh snap should we have a poll to see who gets it?

er wait i got an email from harbl
no poll sorry gibby, but they really are over rated
and i would think hard about the kevlar glove cuz i nicked my thumb and middle finger twice dude
the blade is sharp! and all the little pictures showing how to use it are like "watch out! blade is sharp!"

japanese mandolines are def *NOT* overrated IMB

i don't care how good your knife skills are, if you want ultra precise uniform cuts (for like say for a ratatouille) or julienning, there is nothing more efficient and simple. i cook alone 70-80% of the time and i'd rather keep my prep time to a minimum. Plus, uniformly sliced product not only will cook more evenly but it also looks prettier.

all imo (aka you're wrong).

aw shasta . . .

no but yr right cuz i like to dote in the kitchen
i am not necessarily trying to cut everything in 2 minutes or less

i went to target and all they had was OXO mandolines oxo lol wow heh
what i want pretty much is the quickness and evenness of it. i cook for myself mostly too and it gets like anything to get it over with faster would be a +.

i feel like the main problem with ours is that the thingy that you put the vegetable on is shiiiiiiiiit: it ~appears~ to be covered in a multitude of spikes, but there are only like FOUR or something that are metal and the rest are plastic... so the first time i used i cut off about 15 of the plastic ones! its really hard to get the food to stay on the holder thingy and the blade just doesn't seem that sharp. i dunno, there is a good chance i just need someone to teach me how to use it properly.

we just did a big spend on kitchen stuff (thank u wedding presents!) and the best thing we bought was a really deep, large, glass-lidded, non-stick frypan. we've been using it like crazy and it is awesome.

also recommend if you have a small kitchen: we got this large chopping board that has an extender so you can fit it over your sink and utilise bench space better.

got a Globe 8 in chefs knife. ugly as heck IMO but dang it felt the best. which is a bummer because the Shun was so fuckin pretttttttttty

slice some shit up gibby! keep it sharp, yo

I need a knife sharpener.

Don't you already have a husband?

i bought a sharpener and lost it between the store and my house 3 months ago.
so, i still have dull knives.

things i dropped off to get sharpened last night:

-- santoku (which is not gonna see much action from now on u_u)
-- hatchet
-- machete

they were actually kinda thrilled at the prospect of working on the machete, which is better than the reaction i expected : o_O

so do you use the hatchet and machete for food prep? or just keepin 'em sharp to slice/chop up the propspective intruder

while scrolling, read thread title as "shaking a new kitten: the essentials" and got all sad. :(

haha, no, i do not use them for prep.

the hatchet got dinged up over new year's due to drunken last of the mohican impressions, and the machete is a ugandan souvenir that's never been sharpened. i figure if i'm gonna have a machete, it may as well be a functional one. trim the bushes, u kno

a hatchet could actually be useful for spaghetti squash. That shit is hard to halve.

yea and you always see those dudes with the machetes hacking into young coconuts, so i was thinking maybe gbx was into the young coconuts

with the hatchet also use like a cleaver (but don't forget to have a cigarette in yr mouth when doing it if being photographed, see upthread)

Santoku, I love you...

the hatchet got dinged up over new year's due to drunken last of the mohican impressions

be safe :|

image is from my old apartment but I still have the same thing going on with my spices - magnetic spice rack! I just write the names on the front in Sharpie:

http://photos-f.ak.fbcdn.net/photos-ak-sf2p/v197/224/57/516053577/n516053577_397272_6285.jpg

Love my kitchen now, it's pretty big considering we're renters:

(twitpic - can't embed - http://twitpic.com/p6n9o)

The wall not seen has microwave, pots & pans rack, two shelves, wall-mounted spices and a dishwasher.

that's a great spice rack! we keep ours in a lazy susan cupboard near the ground, which is not optimal, but our counter space is full of gadgets, fruit, and bread products.

i need something like that
and a spatter screen for frying tofu, made a mess yesterday

i think we've got pretty much all the equipment you need for a kitchen, just not the best organization. got a knife sharpener and a hand me down slow cooker for christmas, that about covers it!

oooh no wait could still use a food processor. no idea where we'd put it thought, the slow cooker's in its box on the floor in the corner atm.

I can only offer Canadian advice, but in the craft section of Dollarama they have the tins I am using to hold the spices, with a heavy-duty magnetic backing for $1.00 each. Originally I bought a bunch of watchmaker's cases (these are actually in my heart-shaped spice rack picture, as it is a 2 year-old photo) and sheets of magnetic stickers and DIYed it, but the sticker magnets were not very durable and I slowly replaced them with the sturdier, $1.00-each ones, five or so at a time. The board is from IKEA, $7. I tried keeping them on the side of my fridge but there were too many, one or two would fall off with each door slam. I still had a precarious shelf in my cupboard with all the "extra" spices (i.e. I only fill the magnetic ones with about 1/5 of a normal spice jar's contents) and that annoyed me. This might not be the best way to store spices, but I actually ended up emptying a lot into Ziplock bags, labelled them, and shoved them in a tupperware container, tucked at the back (my best guess at cool, dry and dark in this basement apartment). Sadly, one day I found wormy bits (maggots? no idea. chucked em in the outside garbage and furiously inspected rest of spices) in the dill container and I've never used dill since. I love dill, but it's lost to me!

I wish I had good knives. But that's what my upcoming wedding is for :)

i am so ridiculously happy w/new knife, i have been making excuses to chop shit

just dry fry yr tofu! no mess!

i love that magnetic spice rack!

yeah i know about dry-frying (iirc i told u about it!) but i am liking pan-frying in peanut oil lately i dunno

that's because peanut oil is so tasty

yes, you did, i was just sayin, to avoid mess/splatter, it's grebt!

it is indeed

Just want to thank everyone for this thread.

My two essentials are a grill pan and my og Kitchenaid mixer

yo harbl
just get an old shitty 1qt pot with a lid and deep fry the tofu, or shoestring potatos, or tempura. strain the oil through paper towels and reuse. i keep mines in a mason jar.

i have a huge pot i sometimes fry tofu in and you're right it helps but it's not nonstick. w/ nonstick i only need a couple tablespoons to do a good job at it but it's still like oil all over yknow

deep frying tofu is my favorite way to eat it. do you press the tofu cake a bit before frying?

yup!

Ooh good call on the Kitchen-Aid, Elvis. My mom had one & I miss that shit almost as much as I miss having a car. I burnt out my hand mixer trying to make divinity w/it. Srsly, how did people make divinity before the stand mixer?

gahhhh i need some kind of mixer too. i don't even have a hand-mixer or immersion blender! i never notice i need stuff until it's pointed out though so i should stop reading this thread.

My MVPs: stand mixer (not Kitchen-Aid, works just as well I think); immersion blender; dutch oven; four good knives.

I do love my Kitchenaid - 575 watts of dough-kneading, meringue-whipping, sausage-grinding, food-milling power. 10" Lodge cast iron skillet, 8" chef's knife, and le creuset dutch oven are my other complete necessities.

12" lodge cast iron, tongs, santoku, very large cutting board, microplane grater, and my 8 quart all-clad stockpot are the things I would buy first if I had to start over again. I could probably do about 90% of my cooking with just these.

what is divinity?

I have a German mandoline and BOY IS IT SHARP. Yes, I have been cavalier with it and sliced bits off my fingers before :/ Nothing drastic, but shit you have to be careful with those bastards. The only real benefit I find is they are excellent for making scalloped potato bake, cos you can get such thin slices. Ditto, I suppose, fried chips of potato or kumara or beetroot.

I never realised how dull all my knives are til I was using one of my sis in laws at xmas. I need to go get my crappy block of knives pro ground.

i think there's some knife sharpening advice knocking about here somewhere

Knives

I got that Lansky system that Jaq recommends and it is thee bombe.