Dispatches from No Fun City

Some of you that still hold out hope that I will frequently update this site (bless your deluded little souls) have exceptional culinary arts training. As such, you will find this article, at best, banal and at worst misinformed and downright ignorant.

But for the rest of you, here's a great, informative article about the very basics of a well-stocked kitchen!

It‘s the stereotypical bachelor’s kitchen: a jar of pickles with one gherkin remaining, a bottle of unnaturally yellow mustard, a can of non-stick cooking spray and a box of Hamburger Helper. It‘s an unfair generalization and it’ s a myth that the man of 21st Century has to shatter. It was partly my ability to bluff my way through the kitchen that scored me the woman in my life. So don't knock it until you try it.

A well-stocked kitchen is essential if a man living alone wants to be taken seriously. Just as a bedroom with mismatched bed linens and swimsuit pin-ups can scare off a potential date, so too can the kitchen mentioned above. But beyond improving your image, a well-stocked kitchen also has the added bonus of making your cooking better.

While cooking talent varies from man to man, there are some key ingredients no kitchen should be without:

- Cooking oil. This is the very core kitchen essentials. Any respectable kitchen should have at least a bottle of sunflower oil. It’s versatile, low in fat, and it has a neutral flavour that allows it to be used in everything cakes to black bean chili. For a slightly more-advanced oil selection, start with a good virgin olive oil, then work your way up to the more exotic grape seed, peanut, sesame and the like.

- Fresh herbs. In this day and age, it is far too easy to walk to the local market and get some fresh basil, rosemary or sage. Better yet, grow it yourself. Nothing improves a kitchen window like your own herb planter. While you’re at it, throw out the garlic salt and get yourself a garlic press.

- A good set of knives. Cooks, it is said, are only as good as their ingredients, and this also true of their tools. Every kitchen needs at least a chef’s knife (the large chopping blade), a paring knife (for those up-close slicing and dicing jobs), a bread knife (if you ever tried slicing a baguette with a butter knife you’ll know why), a heavy cleaver (for tough breastbones and recalcitrant turnips), and a vegetable peeler (which, as they say, peels vegetables). Of course a set of steak knives that all match is also good, but leave that for the well-stocked dining room article.

- Pots and pans. Some things are so obvious they are often overlooked. But in the case of pots and pans, a little attention to detail can go a long way. For the best range of cookery options, you will need at least the following: two saucepans; large and small (for everything from whipping up a gravy to heating up the canned soup you hope to pass off as homemade), a cooking pot (whether you choose non-stick depends on how much you like scrubbing off overcooked rice), a vegetable steamer that can fit in the cooking pot, a skillet (to sauté, flambé, and crush peppercorns), a cast-iron frying pan (it can go from browning on the stove to baking in the oven in two easy steps, plus it can protect you from cartoon cats and mice), a cookie sheet, a breadpan, and most important of all, a nice, deep stock pot (few cooking feats are more satisfying than making your own soup stock).
With these essential kitchen tools, a man can finally cast off the unfair stereotype of an inept bachelor that cooks eggs in the toaster and has Domino‘s on his emergency speed-dial. The only step left is to learn how to cook.