Kitchen Fundamentals

         In order to have good results in your own kitchen, you need to have the right tools. You may already, but I am just covering bases here. First off, you need good pans, not cheap flimsy ones, but heavy, thick pans. Anthony Bourdain couldn’t have said it better when he said something like: imagine taking your pan, and bringing it down hard against someone’s skull, if you are not sure which will bend or break, the pan or the skull, then you need a thicker pan.
         A thick pan is important for many reasons, a thick pan takes time to heat up, and when it is hot, it cooks evenly, even on electric burners. You will have a much harder time burning things on a thick pan. When you are searing meats, a thick pan is important because it keeps its own heat better, there is more metal with its own residual heat to stay hot when you drop your meat on in.
         Next, you need a decent cutting board. None of those ceramic or glass ones, or flimsy, paper thin ones. You want wood, or plastic. The glass ones are for people who don’t understand how knives work. Unless you enjoy dulling your knives quickly, throw the glass cutting boards out, preferably not where children play.
         Knives, knives to a cook are like shoes to girls. Your knife is your best friend, if you take care of your knife, your knife will take care of you. They come in all shapes and sizes, you see sets on TV, all kinds of goofy shaped specialty knives, these are all crap. For all intents and purposes, all you need is a chef knife, a decent one. You don’t need to go out and drop a few hundred dollars on one, but you want quality. Personally, I love Japanese knives, the styles, how they are made, their sharpening stones that use water, not oil. Japanese knifes to me just look and feel so much better than German and other leading countries when it comes to knives.
         My first chef knife was a 10” Victorinox by Forschner, and I still use it today. They are great starter knives and are relatively inexpensive. It is good to have a bigger knife, 10” instrad of 8” for example. Especially if you are learning, a big knife forces you to learn better knife control, and once you can manage a big knife and develop your own knife skills, you can manage any other knife.  Only then should you move to a smaller knife.