Cheapskate Cookery, Kitchen Tools Edition

Of all the things worth spending money on, good tools are right up there. It's worth living on rice and beans for a while if it means you're putting the money towards buying a tool that will make cooking them more fun. If your tools are a pleasure to use, you'll use them. Conversely, if your tools are a headache, you'll find yourself avoiding them, and that means not cooking as much, or as well, as you want to.

One great thing about kitchen gadgets: they are easy to find cheap - often, the more obscure they are, the cheaper they will be on the secondhand market. People give other people kitchen things when they don't know what else to give them, and then after a few years they wind up in a yard sale or a Goodwill box. Show me a thrift store without a fondue set, and I'll show you a thrift store that doesn't have its donations program together. You've got to keep your eyes open with any secondhand kitchen goods, of course. A shoddy secondhand good is more trouble than it's worth, and it's not a bargain to get a cheap tool of poor quality. Electronics are a bit of a roulette wheel, and much as I hate to say it, it's worth looking for name brands

The big exception to this? Cutting tools. I've never had much luck finding cutting tools of any variety - knives, graters, peelers, etc. - on the secondhand market. It's not surprising, I suppose - they're dangerous to handle, and people don't get rid of them until they have lost their edge altogether.

If you're not willing to cruise the tag sales for your kitchen tools, another way to furnish your empty kitchen is to help friends and acquaintances move. People divest themselves of astonishing amounts of stuff in the moving process, and if you make clear that you're interested in any leftover kitchen equipment, you may be able to round out the gaps in your collection.

So here are my thoughts on which kitchen tools you need, organized by range of quality:

Getting the Good Stuff

Absolutely Essential

• Skillet: If you're going to cook, you need a skillet you love. I have a skillet I love. It's medium-sized, square, about two inches deep, and has a lid. I can use it to make basically any stovetop dish short of mashed potatoes or large quantities of stew. You want something that's easy to clean, heats and cools quickly and evenly, holds enough food for more than one person, has a solid and stable handle, and doesn't slide around on the stovetop. I think most households have a skillet like this. You can tell because it's the one that's always on the stove, the sink, or the dish-drainer, even as fancier or prettier ones languish unused. A skillet like this can be found secondhand fairly easily - look for something heavily used but in good condition. That alone should tell you it's worth trying out.
• Chef's Knife. This is hard to find cheap. If people have good knives, they hang onto them. Suck it up, buy a good one, and take care of it. 

Next on the List

• Pot: Anything between a saucepan and a small Dutch oven. Something with a lid. Big enough to make a rice or a small stew in. Same caveats about handles and stability. 
• Paring knife. See above.
• Spatula (turner): This is the one you use for pushing stuff around in a hot pot, flipping things that need to be flipped, and so on. Yes, at a pinch you can use a fork to do this. At a pinch you can use a fork to do anything. But you're already on step two, so you've graduated from forks, and so you want a decent one of these - one that won't melt if you leave it on your pan too long and won't tear up your food or the surface of your pan. Get this one new. Even the good ones wear out.

Stuff You Should Have where Quality Doesn't Make Much of a Difference

• Baking sheets. Obviously, it's nicer to have a good baking sheet than a bad baking sheet, and how important the quality of your baking sheet is to you will depend in part on how delicate the items you propose to bake are. But if you're not on the level of French pastry, you basically need something large and flat that you can put in the oven.
• Forks. This is the first, and some would argue the only, mixing tool you need. (Whipping egg whites to stiff peaks with a fork is a pain in the neck, but it can be done!) The good thing is, almost any fork will do the job! You want it to be reasonable large, sturdy, and easy to clean, but beyond that, there's not much difference 
• Bowls. You really just need something to mix things in. As long as it doesn't have corners and isn't coated in anything toxic, you're fine.
• Stockpot. This is the third of your three essential pots (the skillet, the saucepan, and the stockpot, or the flat one, the medium one, and the big one. Because anything you'll be making in it will start with a lot of liquid, its heat-conducting qualities aren't nearly as important as those for the other two. 

Stuff It's Nice to Have where Quality Makes or Breaks the Item

• Spatulas (for scraping). A spatula should have just the right blend of sturdiness, flexibility, and drag, otherwise you're better off just scraping your bowls with spoons.
• Food processors/Blenders. The cheap ones will just blow out the second you give them something even slightly challenging. Don't encourage the cheap blender industry. Encourage rich people to buy even more expensive ones so you can pick up their old ones. 

Don't Both Getting It If You Don't Get the Nice One

• Pan sets. If you find a whole pan set for cheap, you're either incredibly lucky or it's just junk. One junk pan in a kitchen is okay, a whole set of junk pans in a kitchen is a wearisome pain and takes up space that could be better used. Save it for when you get married.
• Cutting Implements. A blunt pizza cutter is worse than useless. A blunt peeler somehow still manages to cut the tips of your fingers. And you don't even want to think about what happens when the filmsy metal of your cheap knife breaks. No. Pay good money for good cutting things.

I know you have opinions about kitchenware - let me hear 'em! What's worth paying for? What's a waste of money? What's your favorite kitchen tool?