Buying kitchen equipment is like buying any tool. You don't necessarily have to buy the most expensive, but you definitely want to buy quality. Start with the basic necessities and add to your own kitchen drawer over time. Just like a mechanic, you’re only as good as the tools you're working with. Here’s a starter list of some basic tools you should have in your kitchen. It’s by no way complete, just a starter. I'll turn you on to some great gadgets.

Pots and Pans Here’s where you want to spend a little money and buy good quality wares. You don’t have to go out and spend a ton of money on a matching set of expensive pans. Instead, buy a couple of good quality essentials and add to your collection as you go along. Like investing in stocks, you wouldn’t buy your whole portfolio at one time but add to it when the market is right.

You start with a couple of “Blue Chips.” These should include a heavy duty 10 inch sauté pan that can double as a frying pan, a 2 qt. sauce pan and a 7-8 qt. stock pot that can be used for stewing, boiling pasta, or making soups and sauces. Later you can augment your portfolio by adding additional sizes and types like omelet pans, double-boilers, roasting pans, etc. Forget about buying cheap aluminum pans or any pan that is thin and light. They conduct heat poorly and you’ll spend more time cleaning the stuff that burns on the bottom than enjoying your food.

What to look for??? You want pots and pans made of stainless steel or heavy-gauge aluminum with nonoxidizing surfaces. The base of the pan should be thick and flat on both the inside and out for better heat efficiency. You also want handles that are riveted to the pan and can be put in the oven(no plastic handles) and well fitting lids. And most importantly, make sure they feel good in your hands. Just because they might be highly touted, doesn’t mean they’re the right fit for you.

A Good Knife
Probably the most important tool you can invest in. Think of it as buying a blue chip stock. You’ll own it forever and over the years it will pay back tremendous dividends. There are a number of styles and sizes, but I suggest you start with a Chef’s(Cooks) 8 incher, an all around all purpose knife. You can use it for chopping, slicing, fine cutting, and as a mallet for crushing garlic. Make sure it has a secure grip and a good feel in your hand, you’re looking for balance. The handle should be riveted to the blade which should be made of high carbon stainless. For three thousand years, knives were made of carbon steel which held a great edge but would unfortunately rust and stain. Stainless steel came along and although it will never rust, it doesn’t hold a very good edge. So the knife manufacturers put the two materials together to come up with a high carbon stainless steel knife that is durable and won’t rust. Don’t skimp on this one.

A Knife Sharpener
What good is a capable knife if you don’t keep it sharp? Have you ever tried sawing a piece of lumber with a dull saw? It’s the same with a kitchen knife; you get the job done, but your arm falls off by the time you finish. Most cookbooks suggest purchasing a steel to keep your knife sharp, but you need more. A steel is great for removing the microscopic burrs and returning the blade to its original condition, but to actually sharpen a knife, you need a sharpening device. The best, but the most expensive, are the electric sharpeners. They’re great because they keep the blade at a precise angle to the stone. You can also look for flat sharpening stones like the ones you honed your boy scout knife with, ceramic rods, manual pull through gizmos that attach to your kitchen cabinet, and even ones that are attached to another appliance.

Ricer/Potato Masher
My recent favorite productis not new at all, but a tool that’s been around for quite some time. It is a ricer and I use it to make perfect mashed potatoes. I know what you’re thinking, “How tough is it to make mashed potatoes?” It’s not, but perfect mashed potatoes are another story.

This ricer, a giant “garlic press” -looking contraption, costs under ten bucks and should be in your arsenal of tools even if you use it just for potatoes. When smooshed in the press, the cooked potatoes look almost like potato noodles, but add a little milk and butter and stir them with a fork and you have perfect mashed. Try it and let me know what you think.

Cutting Board
Although I always thought there was no difference between wood and plastic cutting boards, I recently received an e-mail from another novice cook, David from Toronto, that opened my eyes to cutting boards. Here’s what he said, “You should use a hard wood cutting board for the sake of your knives and for sanitary reasons. The myth is that wooden boards are so porous that harmful organisms such as salmonella, e-coli and listeria soak in, are hard to remove, and easily contaminate other foods placed upon it later. The myth has been compounded with the belief that plastic, because it is not porous, can be more easily and safely cleaned. These beliefs were so widely held by everyone including health officials that no one actually bothered to test them until 1993. Microbiologists at the University of Wisconsin's Food Research Institute contaminated wooden cutting boards and plastic ones with all bacteria that cause food poisoning.... Guess what? Without washing, without touching it, the bacteria on the wooden board died off in three minutes. On the plastic board? The bacteria remained and actually multiplied overnight. It seems wood has a natural bacteria-killing property, plastic and glass don't.”

Next time I’ll be a little more Reluctant when thinking about using my plastic cutting board, especially with chicken. A Good Corkscrew is an important item to have in your kitchen toolbox especially if you enjoy a glass of wine with your meals. The Reluctant Gourmet has been known to enjoy a sip or two while preparing a meal. So lucky for me, I was given the Cadillac of corkscrews for my birthday. Called a Screwpull, it's pictured in the middle of the photo and opens most bottles with very little effort and comes with a foil cutter. I've tried them all, including a shoelace in an emergency, but this is my favorite.

 
A Hand Blender is one of my favorite tools in the kitchen. Sometimes called an immersion blender, this versatile tool can be used to blend, whisk, emulsify, and puree soups and sauces. What I really like about hand blenders is how easy they are to use and clean. No longer do I have to transfer the contents of a soup or sauce to a food processor to puree, all I do is plug it in and bring the hand blender to the pot. It is a heck of lot easier to clean too. And for emulsifying salad dressing, it's a snap. I own a Braun that came with some additional accessories including a chopping attachment, whipping disk, and a wall mount. This is a "must have" tool for all us novice cooks.

Grilling Tools After living in a condo in NYC for almost 20 years, my grilling experiences were limited to weekends at friends' summer homes. Although I experimented with different types of indoor grills, the results were usually less than perfect and often smoke alarm setting disasters. Anyway, as soon as we moved to a real house with a real backyard, we purchased a gas grill. We even had the builder add an exterior gas line so we would never have to worry about those little propane canisters running out. Of course I had the standard cooking tools: Rosewood-long handled tongs, spatula, fork, and grill cleaner but for my birthday my wife bought me some new "toys" ( I mean tools) that have made my grilling experiences even better.

First of all, how many times have you grilled veggies or shimp to perfection just to have a few pieces fall through the grill as you prepare to remove them? Curses!!! Now with my new black porcelain non-stick Grilling Grid this is no longer a problem. Measuring 12 inches x 13 inches, this grid with tiny holes prevents any small pieces of food from being sacrificed to the fire god. It has a rear edge that provides a stop for my spatula and helps in turning what I am grilling.

How about grilling fish...either whole or fillets? My experience has been whenever I try to flip the fish over, it breaks apart into pieces. There also seems to be a residue fishy taste on whatever I cook next no matter how much I scrape the grill. No more, now with my handy fish grilling basket, also made of black porcelain non-stick material, I can flip the fish without worry. The whole thing measures 22 inches with a 6" x 12 " basket that holds the fish. It's works great when grilling a whole fish that's been stuffed by helping keep the fish together.

Wooden Spoons
One of the most important tools you can have in your kitchen is a wooden spoon. And I recommend you have more than one. Why a wooden spoon? The feel for one. There's nothing like stirring a sauce or sautéing veggies with a wooden spoon in your hand. I'm sure there are scientific reasons wooden spoons are still popular with professional chefs, but for me it's all how they feel. I have a friend who is a professional chef and he uses the same spoon every time he makes his tomato sauce. He tells me the flavors become part of the spoon and add to the taste of his sauce. I received an e-mail from The Spoon Lady with a brief history of the wooden spoon that I think you will enjoy.

A Short History on Wooden Spoons - from The Spoon Lady
"Spoons -- if not as old as the world -- are certainly as old as soup," said the learned anthropologist Laborde. However, their recorded history seems to begin in Egypt more than a thousand years before the birth of Christ. Those early spoons were used mainly for ointments.

The spoon was often the only worldly possession owned by an individual and it was common to will it to another person upon one's death. Early history in Wales and some Scandinavian countries relate that spoons were carved and given to a young mans intended for her to hang on the wall as a message she was taken (hence the term: spooning).

Wooden spoons were items listed in the inventories of early settlers in America (in Jamestown and on the Mayflower) in the early 1600's. In fact wooden eating and cooking implements were one of the items enterprising Indians sold to those early colonists.

The Indians whittled them mostly from Laurel wood (now often called cottonwood but includes trees such as the Aspen. If you've seen a wooden match; you've seen laurel wood). Wooden eating and cooking implements were used by both rich and poor for nearly all of the first century of American colonization. In fact, the first metal fork in America was owned by Governor John Winthrop of Boston in 1633. It was from England and came in a leather case with a matching knife and bodkin. Very, very wealthy families added such items to their household inventories over the next 30 to 40 years'; but it was well into the 1700's before metal eating implements were common-place in the colonies.

Long after the introduction of metal implements for eating, wooden spoons continued to be favored as kitchen tools. In the 1894 edition of the WhiteHouse Cookbook by Ziemann and Gillette; a good wooden spoon for cake making was listed as a necessary item for kitchen equipment.

Today it is well documented by scientific study that the harder the wood the better the use for kitchen work (hardwoods have tighter pores so food does not lodge in it). Some common hardwoods include: alder, apple, ash, birth, cherry, chestnut, mahogany, maple, oak, poplar, teak and walnut. Other not so commonly known hardwoods are: blackwood (African); boxwood, Brazilwood, cocobolo (Central America); ebony; koa (Hawaiian); lignum vitae (South American, very slow growing); persimmon (called white ebony!); purpleheart; and zebrawood (African).