What you actually need (and what ends up at the DI)
Let me start with a question, the same one I turn over at the beginning of every one of these classes. When you signed up, what did you quietly assume you'd have to go out and buy first? Whatever came to mind, hold onto it for a moment. Here's the happier truth: if you already have a pot, a pan, and a knife, you're better equipped than half the kitchens I've cooked in.
I mention this gently because every time I teach this course, someone arrives quietly worried they're supposed to own a pasta machine, or a fancy Dutch oven, or one of those garlic presses shaped like a chicken. You don't. I'll admit I'm a little wary of kitchen gadgets as a rule. Half of them get used twice, sit in a drawer for two years, and end up in a bag headed for the DI. I've donated four garlic presses over the years, and I don't use a garlic press myself.
The actual list
Here's everything you truly need:
- One good pan. It doesn't need to be nonstick, and it certainly doesn't need to be expensive. A regular skillet is perfect — the kind that came with a set from Costco, or got handed down from somebody's mom. If it heats fairly evenly and you can move food around without it sticking to the point of tragedy, you're set.
- A pot big enough for pasta. A little bigger than you'd think. Pasta needs room to move around, or it turns into a clump. If your only pot is on the small side, it'll still work — just take care not to crowd it.
- A knife you keep sharp. This matters more than most people realize. A dull knife is actually more dangerous than a sharp one, because you end up pushing hard and it slips. You don't need a whole knife block. One decent chef's knife handles 90% of what we do in this class.
- A wooden spoon or a spatula. Something to stir with that isn't metal scraping across your pan.
- Tongs, if you happen to have them. Not required at all. I'm just fond of tongs. They make you feel like you know what you're doing, even on the days you don't.
That's the whole list. Everything beyond it is nice to have, and none of it is required.
Cook the stove you have
Our first apartment, back in Ogden, had a stove where one burner ran about twice as hot as the other three. I didn't realize it for months. I simply assumed I was bad at cooking, because the same recipe kept coming out burnt on one side of the pan and pale on the other. Eventually I worked out the trick: cook everything on that one hot burner, and just move the pan around, working the food toward the cooler edges whenever it needed to slow down.
That taught me something I still pass along: you cook the stove you have, not the one in the YouTube video. Your burners might run hot or weak. Your pan might not be the one the recipe author owns. None of that is a problem. You adjust as you go, you taste as you go, and you gently stop treating a recipe like a set of instructions from the government. It's really more of a suggestion with strong opinions.
The one thing I'll actually recommend you buy eventually
If you'd like to spend money on one thing, somewhere down the road, spend it on a decent knife. Not a whole set — just one knife you like the feel of, that you keep an edge on. That's the upgrade that genuinely changes your cooking, far more than a $60 garlic gadget ever could.
And one gentle safety note here: a dull knife is the one that hurts you, because you end up sawing and forcing it, and it skips off whatever you're cutting. It takes only two minutes to run it across a sharpening steel before you start. Please do — it's well worth it.
Where the beans come in
A quick aside, since it comes up in nearly every class. Heather teaches spin, and some mornings she's teaching back to back and needs food that will actually hold her over, not just carbs that burn off in twenty minutes. So a while back I started tossing a can of white beans into whatever pasta I was making, or bulking it up with a little extra chicken, just to give it some staying power. It didn't change the flavor much — it simply made the plate do more work.
I bring it up because if you're feeding someone who lifts, runs, or teaches five classes a day, this is an easy fix. You don't need a protein powder or a meal plan. A fifteen-cent can of beans stirred into an ordinary pasta dish will carry someone through their next workout just fine.
That's really my whole feeling about equipment and gear: buy less, cook more, and let the food do the impressing instead of the tools. A cheap pan with real food in it beats a beautiful pan sitting empty in a cupboard.
Before next time
Take a moment to look at what you actually have in your kitchen right now. One pan, one pot, one knife — that's your kit for this entire class. If you find you're missing one of those three, just let me know before next session, and we'll figure something out. It's no trouble at all.
~devin