# Batterie de Cuisine



## rickbern (Feb 18, 2019)

Thought for some bizarre reason it would be fun to pull everything out of the cabinets and take pictures by categories. I'm a home cook, but I pretty regularly have dinners for anywhere from 20-40 people, and I do all the cooking; that's why some of these pieces are so large.

Here you go:

Pans:







I'm big on Sitram for Saute and Matfer Bourget for skillets. I'm a relatively recent convert to carbon steel, but man do I love to cook on that stuff! I tend to use stainless saute pans as much as anything in the kitchen, never cottoned to a stainless skillet.

Pots





Again, Sitram stockpots small and large, a super thin Revere Ware 8 qt. for pasta and two sizes of Fagor pressure cookers. That oval combo pot in the back center is great; it's got more capacity than a hotel pan, a thick disk bottom so it only needs one burner and I've made some epic meals in there. I tend to braise in the sitram rondeaus as often as not, but I like the oval le creuset pans because they fit on the stove better than the round ones. I always sear in a separate pan, but use the dutch oven when the liquid is added.

Roasting





Lived my whole life without a fancy roasting pan and I'm still here to tell the story. That cheap Chicago Metallic goes into the self cleaning oven every so often and comes out to fight another day. The stainless oval roaster in the middle is my favorite for large roasts, it's actually the top to the combo pot above. The grids for the half sheet pans were a great addition.



Cutting/Chopping





This isn't a knife gallery per se, but there's a kochi and gesshin ginga gyuto, a itinimmon nakiri, a munetoshi mini gyuto, masamoto petty and honesuki and a gesshin paring.

And, finally, storing/drying





Seriously, this may be my favorite thing in the kitchen. When I'm making a big dinner and I have to wash something, I can just put it in here to dry.


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## Nemo (Feb 18, 2019)

Cooking for 40! Wow, I feel under the pump cooking for 8-10.


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## rickbern (Feb 18, 2019)

Nemo, the height of my insanity; it was the last meal we had in the old apartment after 21 years, had 54 for a passover seder. I'm the one with his back to the camera, walking out the door. There's probably eight people in the foreground you can't see.


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## Xenif (Feb 18, 2019)

Wow [email protected], that is a lot of kitchen equipment for a small kitchen, and cooking for 40 out of it is pretty impressive, now I'm tempted to take a shot at mine ....


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## Michi (Feb 18, 2019)

rickbern said:


> Thought for some bizarre reason it would be fun to pull everything out of the cabinets and take pictures by categories.


That's very impressive! My personal record cooking for a large group is 29 people. It was hard work, and I'm not queueing up to do it again. (I did have some help though, especially for the clean-up.)


Xenif said:


> Wow [email protected], that is a lot of kitchen equipment for a small kitchen, and cooking for 40 out of it is pretty impressive, now I'm tempted to take a shot at mine ....


I'm not—I'd be appalled at the mountain of stuff and, quite possibly, finding out about all the stuff I'd forgotten I had…


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## HRC_64 (Feb 18, 2019)

Sitram and Matfer... +1


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## ACHiPo (Feb 18, 2019)

rickbern said:


> Nemo, the height of my insanity; it was the last meal we had in the old apartment after 21 years, had 54 for a passover seder. I'm the one with his back to the camera, walking out the door. There's probably eight people in the foreground you can't see.View attachment 48836


That is a great image!


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## rickbern (Feb 19, 2019)

Forgot a few categories, and I thought I'd post an overall shot.

Baking





I don't do any pastry at all, but I do lots of things like kugel, stuffing and meatloaf. Most everything but the loaf pans doubles as serving pieces

Sharpening





This all goes under the sink in that little snap ware, and on top of it. There's a generic 220, a gesshin 400, 2000 and 6000 and a JNS 300. I bought the 300 to leave at my son's house in Denver but the 400 was looking a little thin so I brought it home. I wish it was a soaker, so much easier to store! I keep going back and forth about whether I have room for a tub and a bridge. One of these days I'll take the plunge but for now I use that squirt bottle pretty liberally to keep things wet.

Full Kitchen






I think everything I've shown (except that giant oval pot), plus obviously a little food and a few (service for 24) dishes, glassware and silverware fits in here. Actually, now that I think about it, it pretty much all fits (except the baking stuff) on the one metro shelf, the cart in the background, one 30" cabinet and one 15" knife drawer. And it's never jammed in.

When I moved in this place, the island was attached to the wall next to the window and about a foot and a half closer to the stove. I pulled it out of the wall and put that cart in place, it's much more comfortable. Really, the biggest issue I have is there's just not enough room between the sink and the fridge to organize the dirty dishes at the end of the meal. Other than that, this is pretty close to my dream one person kitchen.

Bon appétit!


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## WildBoar (Feb 19, 2019)

Wow, that is a well-organized kitchen! Your cookware collection is great.


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## Paraffin (Feb 19, 2019)

rickbern said:


> And, finally, storing/drying
> 
> View attachment 48835
> 
> Seriously, this may be my favorite thing in the kitchen. When I'm making a big dinner and I have to wash something, I can just put it in here to dry.



Nice kitchen!, but that photo is the one I glommed onto, because in a year or two we'll have to downsize from a once-in-a-lifetime great home kitchen to something a lot smaller. I can use that idea, thanks!


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## rickbern (Feb 20, 2019)

Paraffin said:


> Nice kitchen!, but that photo is the one I glommed onto, because in a year or two we'll have to downsize from a once-in-a-lifetime great home kitchen to something a lot smaller. I can use that idea, thanks!



Your welcome! When I'm actually cooking, the cutting boards are out on the counter so if I wash something thin like a skillet or a small saute I can put it in that top slot to dry. I also take hot pots off the stove with food in them and hold them here to reheat later.


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## Mucho Bocho (Feb 20, 2019)

Iv'e never understood kitchen cabinets with glass doors. Yours are at frosted so that not too bad. Having all those pots, spices and see through cabinets makes my OCD nature go wild.

I display my opts like this:


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## WildBoar (Feb 20, 2019)

Mucho Bocho said:


> I'e never understood why people buy kitchen cabinets with glass doors... Having all those pots, spices and see through cabinets makes my OCD nature go wild.


You just answered your own question -- to drive the OCD guests crazy


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## Xenif (Feb 20, 2019)

WildBoar said:


> You just answered your own question -- to drive the OCD guests crazy


#TRUTH


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## agp (Feb 20, 2019)

I also don't get the glass door thing, aside from keeping dust away. Your kitchen will look more spacious with shelves instead of overhead cabinets.


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## rickbern (Feb 20, 2019)

Sorry, I can't resist...

This kitchen that I'm in now won't drive the OCD nuts. No, the LAST kitchen, in the loft where I took the big dinner picture, THAT one could drive the OCD amongst us crazy.

Here's a couple of shots to give you an idea of how luxurious I'm living now:










I was here for 21 years. After about 5 years of getting by with a hot plate, an electric frying pan and a george foreman grill I bought a couple of used kitchen cabinets and a bottom of the barrel electric range, and a dishwasher! Relocated the sink and tiled the shower. The "pot rack" is electrical piping that I layed from the top of a cabinet to the top of the open shelves and I got some "hooks" from my cousin the dry cleaner to hang the pans up there. Mostly, the same damn pots and pans since then. As you can see from the toothbrushes, the kitchen sink pulled double duty in this place.

Now, that kitchen was fun to work in!


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## milkbaby (Feb 20, 2019)

Very cool thread, I love the pics both of your current kitchen and the old one.


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## podzap (Feb 20, 2019)

Wow, both of those are fairly functional looking kitchens. I think I could manage in either one of them, but of course I do like the newer one better.

How do you get by without any ventilation on top of your stove? Aren't you scared the microwave will short-circuit from steam or something?


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## rickbern (Feb 20, 2019)

Podzap, the first apartment was a commercial (that is, non residential) loft in Soho, in NYC. Like a hundred year old manufacturing building. I had four really steep flights of stairs to carry all that food up. Everything about it was "illegal" which is not uncommon in NYC. It was a pretty big place and I had ceiling fans all over to move air around.

The new one has a pretty terrible unit built into the bottom of the microwave. It's almost useless. If you look carefully, there's a passive grill over the refrigerator that does remove cooking odors, but ventilation comes from opening the windows and flapping towels around.

This summer, I'm going to get an exhaust fan to fit in the window next to the kitchen.

Edit, my 100th message at KKF-took me almost four years!


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## Paraffin (Feb 20, 2019)

agp said:


> I also don't get the glass door thing, aside from keeping dust away. Your kitchen will look more spacious with shelves instead of overhead cabinets.



The whole point of overhead cabinets with doors is to keep the dust out! 

Anyone who has lived in a place long enough with open shelves knows what a pain it is to keep on top of dust that accumulates on open shelves, and everything you store on them. Glass cabinet doors make it easier to remember where your stuff is, and it's not that hard to keep things fairly neat. I'd much rather deal with a bit of OCD neatness than deal with dust and grime that collects on open shelves. Or forget where something is, because I can't see through the door.

The one nice thing about open shelves is if you're working fast, not having to open and close door to grab things. I get that. As a home cook, I don't have to work that fast.

Here's our kitchen, a beauty shot (it's usually messier than this). We're going to put this place up for sale soon, and the next one will be about 1/4 this size (sob):







The two lower cabinet drawers next to the refrigerator are also refrigerators drawers.


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## Michi (Feb 21, 2019)

Mucho Bocho said:


> Iv'e never understood kitchen cabinets with glass doors. Yours are at frosted so that not too bad. Having all those pots, spices and see through cabinets makes my OCD nature go wild.


I have overhead cupboards with sandblasted glass doors, You can't really see in. There are lights inside so the cupboards add to the lighting in the evening. That looks nice and keeps both dust and OCD out


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## podzap (Feb 21, 2019)

rickbern said:


> The new one has a pretty terrible unit built into the bottom of the microwave. It's almost useless. If you look carefully, there's a passive grill over the refrigerator that does remove cooking odors, but ventilation comes from opening the windows and flapping towels around.
> 
> This summer, I'm going to get an exhaust fan to fit in the window next to the kitchen.



Yep, sounds familiar. We have a cheap recirculating exhaust hood from IKEA on top of our stove, due to some serious architectural shortcomings in our kitchen itself - the rowhouse, of which we own 1 out of the 5 condos, was built from cement in the late 1950s. It's not like I can just get a jackhammer out and start getting busy boring exhaust holes in the walls and out through the roof - the neighbors would all have to agree to any structural changes, which they never will due to jealousy, lack of any remodeling money for their own kitchens, etc.

I've remodeled two kitchens during the past 5 years (as in tore them down to bare concrete, took out all the pipes, electricity, flooring, walls, cabinets, etc). Kitchen remodeling sucks more than a vacuum cleaner factorys test automation center. Even in the event that you are not constrained by money, which we were not, you are still usually constrained by incredibly stupid basic architecture such as lack of exhaust ducts, lack of continuous flat wall space, windows and doorways in the most stupid places, etc and so forth. This is even moreso true if your place happens to be built from concrete and/or is in part of a larger building that you don't own entirely.


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## Michi (Feb 21, 2019)

podzap said:


> Even in the event that you are not constrained by money, which we were not, you are still usually constrained by incredibly stupid basic architecture such as lack of exhaust ducts, lack of continuous flat wall space, windows and doorways in the most stupid places, etc and so forth. This is even moreso true if your place happens to be built from concrete and/or is in part of a larger building that you don't own entirely.


Designing a kitchen is tough. Lots of constraints, as you said.

I had the luxury of designing my own home nearly twenty years ago. Because I really care about ergonomics and design efficiency, I spent hundreds of hours thinking about and researching what makes a kitchen tick. I even took notes while I was cooking about what I did, why I did them, where things came from and where they had to go next, what I could do to reduce excessive movement, etc. Then I "cooked" meals on the plans I drew up, moved little cardboard rectangles for hot/cold/wet around on the plan, marked where I was planning to put pots, dishes, utensils, etc, and did motion studies: from beginning to end, how much would I have to move to get the job done, and what could I do to eliminate excessive movement?

I ended up with a pretty good kitchen. But there are numerous things I would change if I could do it again.

No. 1: I'd have 91 cm bench height instead of the 93 cm I actually have. 93 cm is absolutely perfect. Until I decided that I would like to use a large end grain board, which is 4–5 cm thick. Unfortunately, that raises the cutting surface height above what I can tolerate.

I cannot have a large end grain cutting board. Perfection is impossible 

Michi.

PS: If you want to get really deep and fundamental insight into design and how to make things that work for real people, I highly recommend "The Design of Everyday Things" by Donald Norman. No-one who designs anything—whether a software engineer or a cabinet maker—should be allowed to ply their trade without having read that book. Yes, it really is as profound as that.


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## podzap (Feb 21, 2019)

Michi said:


> No. 1: I'd have 91 cm bench height instead of the 93 cm I actually have. 93 cm is absolutely perfect. Until I decided that I would like to use a large end grain board, which is 4–5 cm thick. Unfortunately, that raises the cutting surface height above what I can tolerate.
> 
> I cannot have a large end grain cutting board. Perfection is impossible



What I have seen some people do is to actually cut out a section of their countertop and sort of "permanently" countersink the tall cutting board there so that it doesn't stick up nearly as high as it would were it sitting directly on the countertop. I actually thought about this and very probably would have done it myself were it not for the fact that the only good place I have to do it is directly in front of a very sunny window (which might cause the board to crack). The oak countertop in that area is not actually attached to the walls on either end and it freely expands and contracts during the winter and summer. Well, in fact, all of my oak countertops are installed in the same way - they just rest directly on top of the cabinets.


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## Michi (Feb 21, 2019)

Yes, I've seen that, too. Really nice, when possible. But I'm not going to cut a section out of my granite bench top; the obsessions has to stop somewhere, and this is the point where it stops


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## podzap (Feb 21, 2019)

Michi said:


> Yes, I've seen that, too. Really nice, when possible. But I'm not going to cut a section out of my granite bench top; the obsessions has to stop somewhere, and this is the point where it stops



Come on, Michi, doesn't this look like fun?


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## Michi (Feb 21, 2019)

Yeah, right. Can't eff'n wait to get started…


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## podzap (Feb 21, 2019)

Michi said:


> Yeah, right. Can't eff'n wait to get started…



BTW, I measured my countertops and they are at 92cm. With the cutting board, 100.5cm. Doesn't seem to bother my wife or myself. She's 168cm and I'm 175cm, so neither of us are particularly tall people. Just preferences, I suppose.


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## Michi (Feb 21, 2019)

I'm 170 cm. Yes, at least in part, it's what I'm used to. With a 1.5 cm cutting board on the counter, there is about 12 cm of vertical distance between my elbow and the cutting surface. When cutting, I don't need raise my forearm above the horizontal, as a rule. If stack up cutting boards to a height of about 5 cm, I find that cutting gets uncomfortable. Either I have to lift my forearm too much, or I end up compensating by lifting my right shoulder.

A cabinet maker many years ago told me that the ideal bench height is wrist-high when you stand relaxed. Personally, I find that a bit too low. But 93 cm is already about 10 cm higher than my wrist.


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## rickbern (Feb 21, 2019)

Michi, you could think about getting a mat or that open grid they use behind bars to put at your cutting location.

https://www.webstaurantstore.com/ca...f-rubber-floor-mat-3-4-thick/844220035BK.html

https://www.webstaurantstore.com/sa...MI_9T-9onO4AIVxY-zCh3ZiQI9EAQYAiABEgJzQ_D_BwE

they're 2, 2.5 cm thick, that'd raise you up a bit.

Or, just use thin boards.


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## Michi (Feb 21, 2019)

rickbern said:


> Michi, you could think about getting a mat or that open grid they use behind bars to put at your cutting location.


Thank you for the suggestion, that's a nice way of attacking the problem from a different angle!

I'm currently talking to a board maker in Tasmania who will do custom orders. I might be able to get an edge grain board that fits the space and isn't too thick. If not, I'll probably just put up with the bamboo one I have and resign myself to having to sharpen a bit more often.

I did look at the various Japanese rubber boards. None are the right size. The ones with a wooden core can't be cut to size; I did find one without a wooden core that would be large enough to cut off the 50 x 60 cm size I want, but that's not a cost-effective option.


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## rickbern (Jun 19, 2021)

Thought I’d update this with my clay pot collection. I use all of these on a gas cooktop. Chinese sand pot top left, glazed tagine, la Chamba soup pot from Columbia, Korean super useful small pot, Turkish unglazed guvec.

Bottom row, high tech Italian Piral terra cotta, three graduated sizes of Spanish cazuelas, a smaller la chamba and another piral that I like to use with a Japanese drop lid. Five of these were less than $15, the soup pot was the only expensive thing, I think it costs $80. I bet the whole collection cost me two hundred bucks.


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