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?

Onion Pie

 I hesitated on this post at first, because first, I'm not great with pies, and second, the volume of butter of required for their crust usually puts them out of consideration for an economical dish. But then there was a ten-pounds-of-onion-for three bucks special at one of the area produce markets, and I obtained a pie crust through mysterious means, (COUGH FREEZER COUGH) so I figured I might as well give this pie a shot.

Fruit pies are, obviously, best made in the summer (or possibly fall) when there is more that fruit than you know what to do with. An onion pie, on the other hand, is entirely suitable to winter or early spring, when nothing is growing so nothing is cheap and there's nothing to do but twiddle your thumbs, have Lent, and wait for things to sprout.

Ingredients

6lbs of onions (yes, really.)

A pie crust (and you're not getting a recipe out of me, go ask someone who's better at it)

3tbsp oil (I used bacon grease, thus disqualifying this from being as vegetarian as it would otherwise be)

A sprinkle of a savory herb (I used thyme)

Get your largest and heaviest pan and start heating the oil in it. Meanwhile, start chopping the onions (medium dice) and throwing them into the oil. Do you need to look as if you have suffered a devastating tragedy, without the trouble and bother of suffering a devastating tragedy. Make this pie.

You're going to be caramelizing all six pounds of onions. Dang.

This means keeping the heat on medium (you'll want to err on the side of lower rather higher). As you add them, stir them well to get them coated with the oil. Then keep stirring them - not frantically, but regularly. This will take at least 30 minutes, but you will have the satisfaction of watching your stew pot full of more onions than you think anyone could possibly eat turn to a rich soft caramel just right for your pie crust. 

Once the whole mixture is as brown as you like, and you can no longer distinguish individual onion pieces, pour it in. You can sprinkle something savory on top to contrast with the rich sweetness of the onions. I tried thyme; you could try parmesan cheese maybe.

Oh, right. The pie crust. Do what you do with pie crusts. Here I got all fancy with it, because why not. It still stuck to the pan. Take my advice on onions. Don't take my advice on pie crusts.

(Except this one prize-winning crust I made this one time with ground walnuts, which come to think of it would go really well with this pie.)

Cost:

Onions: $1.50

Crust: (depends, say $1.50 too?)

Serves: 6-8, but works best accompanied with something. A nice sharp green salad, for instance. 

Pricing Rules Part 2

Last week I wrote about my internal price book (highly specific to my region, to be sure) but some readers may have noticed that certain categories are missing. There are some sorts of foods that aren't in my price book because I don't often buy them, and here they are.

Things I Just Don’t Buy (preference)

Bread and bread products: Since I don’t usually buy bread products, I don’t have a good idea of what they should cost. I would say that I wouldn’t buy things like tortillas or English muffins unless there were a number of different varieties that I could compare to get a price spectrum.

Cereal: I’m just not particularly attached to it.

Fish: I buy fish so rarely that I don’t have set patterns for it. I’m not good at cleaning whole fish (I was picking tiny bones out of my hands for days the time I tried). I love fish, though, and I try to buy it when it's on sale, if only to soothe my affronted wallet. Canned salmon can be quite good, as an alternative to fresh.

Frozen prepared foods: All I know is that Trader Joe’s frozen foods always fill me with shame, because they are so much better than what I make, and they aren’t supposed to be. There may well be a place for frozen prepared food even in a frugal budget, but they're not something that I've incorporated into my routine so I have no useful advice.

Things I Just Don’t Buy (principle)

Anything in single-serving packets (CHEESE I AM LOOKING AT YOU)

Any adulterated product trying to pass itself off as something else (oil blends, cheese products, spreadable butters, etc.)

Shrink-wrapped cucumbers: Go away. I hate you.

Sweetened things: I’m not going to PAY YOU to put sugar in something. If I want sugar in it, I know where we keep the sugar bowl.

Light things: I'm also not going to pay you to water something down. If I want fewer calories, I'll eat less of the product.

Come to think of it, anything designed to do something that I could easily do myself. I know, that’s not only a highly personal rule, but a moving target. Right now I don’t buy cookie or cake mixes because that’s just way too easy to make myself. One day maybe I won’t buy orange juice because that’s way too easy to make myself? We'll see.

Those are my rules of thumb. What are yours?

Pricing Rules

I mentioned advanced techniques for the Grocery Game the other day - one of the most useful, time-savey ones is the mental price bank.

A lot of brains are really, really good at keeping track of this sort of thing. Do you drive? Think about filling up your gas tank. When you approach a gas station, do you automatically have a sense of “Hey, this is higher than I paid last week!” or “Woohoo, it’s gone down, time to fill up!”. If so, you’ve got in your head a smaller and occasionally alarmingly imprecise version of those computer algorithms that tell brokerages when to buy and sell on the stock market.

Most of this is unconscious for me. I just think “Pfft, too high,” or “Hey, now that’s a sale! Stock up!” But there are some pretty specific numbers attached to it, and here they are, dragged up fresh from under the surface of my mind.

Standard Cheese (cheddar, mozzarella, swiss)

Over $6/lb: Don’t buy

Under $3/lb: Is something wrong?

Milk:

Over $3/gallon: don’t buy regular

Over $3/half-gallon: don’t buy organic

Eggs:

Over $2/doz: don’t buy industrial

Over $3/doz: don’t buy cage-free/organic

Over $4/doz: don’t buy local

Canned Goods

Over $1/can: don’t buy

Dried Beans:

Over $1/lb: don’t buy.

Greens:

Over $1/lb: don’t buy. (This $1.29 stuff is nonsense. We are talking about collards, people.)

Onions and Potatoes

Over $1.50/3lbs: don’t buy. Check for mushiness though.

Most other veggies:

Over $2/lb: don’t buy standard

Spinach:

Over $2/unit: don’t buy (unless the unit is one of those big containers of washed baby spinach, in which case you can go up to $4)

Frozen Veggies in a Bag:

Over $2/bag: don’t buy. (Exceptions made as bags get larger. And don’t buy those little bitty bags. No one needs those.)

Apples:

Over $2/lb: don’t buy (no, not even the organic local ones, unless you are particularly in the mood to support your farmers, in which case knock yourself out!)

Under $1/lb: What’s wrong with them?

Yogurt:

Over $3/tub: don’t buy. (The little fruit on the bottom things are usually a ripoff even on their frequent sales, though if they are convenient enough that it’s worth it to you, go for it!)

Fish Head Salmon Chowder

I'm still not sure what kind of grandma I want to be. The sweet, jolly, hand-holding kind, filling the kids with sweets and stories, or the stern, crotchety no-nonsense kind, who will tell you exactly what's what? Well, I suppose that's why I've got so many years ahead of me to practice. Today, I'm feeling like the latter, and today, what's on the menu is fish head chowder.

In the evening, floating in the soup!

Yeah, I could have called it "salmon chowder", and just happened to mention in passing that oh yeah, you can use a fish head if you want, but no. You came here to learn how to cook real, nutritious, tasty food at a price you can afford, and in order to do that, you're going to use a fish head. Don't give me any of that whining about "ooh, it has eyes". So do fillets, it's just someone else has been to the trouble of chopping them off for you (and you've paid them for that privilege). If you can't handle where your food comes from, you've got no business eating it.




Besides, the head is full of delicious fat, which is where both the flavor and the nutrients are in a wild-caught salmon (which you can buy since you are buying the least expensive cut and which is a fish you really shouldn't bother buying farmed). One head will give you meat for one pot of soup and bones for a good gallon of stock. Go head or go home.

Fish Head Salmon Chowder

Ingredients: 
1 large fish head
about 4 medium potatoes, chopped into medium chunks
1 large onion, large dice
*1 bunch scallions
*1 large turnip, medium chunks
*2 cups frozen peas
*2 large carrots, medium chunks
*thyme
*yogurt
*salt and pepper


*optional - replace with something similar or leave out, like you do with soup.

Instructions:
Chop your onions, potatoes, turnip and carrot, if using. Wash your fish head.

Saute the onions in a bit of oil until they are just starting to turn golden. Then add the potatoes, and turnip. If your fish head is frozen (mine was), add it here. If not, just add enough water to cover everything and let it boil lightly for five minutes or so.

Try and get the head out whole;'
the bones get EVERYWHERE otherwise

Add the head (if not frozen) and your color-vegetables - peas and carrots are always reliable. I bet this soup would be decent with cauliflower or broccoli, or even celery. Simmer about 20 minutes.

Delicately - you see from the picture how it's coming apart? - remove the head and place it in a large bowl. Have a second bowl - or, save time, a stock-pot - on hand for the bones. Run some cold water over it to cool it down. Wash your hands well - you're going to be getting very close and personal with the head.

Oh yea, sorry about the zested lime.
I'm making tom yum on the other burner.

You'll see right off where the meat is on the neck. Just ease that right off and pop it back into the soup. Then carefully start to disassemble the head. There are little deposits of meat on the cheeks - they'll be lighter in color than the body meat - and along the nose. And  look at that delicious skin! Who would pay good money for fish oil pills when you have the real thing right here?

This should be basically the only solid bit left of the head.
Some people like the eyeballs, but I'm not a fan. 

Since I'm making this soup for other people, though, I will reluctantly save the skin, with the rest of the bones, for making more stock. The bones are full of collagen - a connective tissue protein that will give the stock a thick, creamy texture. It's the stuff you make gelatin out of.

Put the water and the fish head meat back into the soup pot, and put your bones and bits on the back burner for stock. Add spices (I used thyme and scallions; dill is also good), salt and pepper and let the soup simmer a little bit longer, until the potatoes are tender. Don't simmer till the peas turn brown.

Stock options! Ah ha ha ha!

You now have a couple of options for this soup. You can eat it just as it is, and if you simmered that head properly, it should be plenty thick and creamy. If you want to add some dairy in there, as is common for chowders, try stirring in about half a cup of yogurt. (Incidentally, use yogurt just about every time a soup recipe tells you to use cream. It's cheaper, tastier, and just as effective, unless you use the fat-free stuff.)






Look at that beautiful soup! Eat it up, yum.

Can't get enough fish heads? SeriousEats has a great recipe (and a great series, The Nasty Bits, which should be required reading if you want to keep eating meat while keeping your costs under control).







Price:
Salmon Head: $1.50
Potatoes: ~$1
Onion: $.25
Turnip $.75
Scallions: $.50
Carrots $.50
Frozen peas: $.50
TOTAL: $5
SERVES: 6-8 people.

The Grocery Store Video Game

If I had kids, I’d like to take them grocery shopping; teach ‘em how to play the Great Grocery Game. Really, the whole grocery store is like a video game, although the educational kind rather than the kind where you can kill aliens. (Now there’s a way to get kids excited about grocery shopping...) Think about it. You have a certain amount of points you can spend (we could even call them dollars or something) a variety of items you need, and a bunch of distractors trying to get you to make choices that will serve not your interests but their own. This is the Grocery Game! It’s you versus the market - but you can win!

The same way you learn right quick to spot an extra life or a save point, you should be able to spot the sale tags in an aisle or pick out the store brand in seconds. It’s usually the one without any fancy coloration; alternately (especially if you are in a store for the first time) it’s the brand you don’t recognize. Just let your eyes glide right over everything they already know, and catch on the one you don’t recognize.

Once you’ve spotted the sale tag (o my hypothetical child), it’s time for the Stock Check! Is this item on your list of Things We Usually Need? If it’s not there, is it on the list of Things It Might Be Cool to Try? Great! Now it’s on to the Lightning Math Round! Does this sale put it below the store brand or comparable items? Price per unit is usually there on the sign; to try and trip you up during the Lightning Math Round sometimes the unit something ridiculous and random like “pack”. Or it will be in ounces while everything else is in pounds. You don’t need to know the exact answer - it’s just like those GRE math questions where all you have to know is if B is larger, smaller, or the same size as A.

Look, hypothetical child, we’re not just winning the grocery game, we’re doing GRE prep! Man, you are going to be the smartest hypothetical child!

Package sizing is another puzzle to watch out for. If you see an item that is notably cheaper than its comparables, check the package sizing. Is it an 11 oz bag of tortilla chips while everything else is 13 oz? Is it a 64-square roll of toilet paper while everything else is 100? These are some sneaky things - you will think you have beaten the grocery game, but in fact the final boss (CAPITALISM) is laughing at you.

What?! Hypothetical child, get out of the cereal! No, I’m not going to buy you a candy bar! Stop screaming, everyone’s staring at us! Look - um - quick, tell me which brand of coconut water is cheapest!

Can’t take you anywhere, hypothetical child.

Life-Changing Cabbage Soup

Slightly tangy, slightly creamy, this cabbage soup will make you rethink cabbage.

I know, this is a lot to promise from any soup, particularly from a soup made from the notoriously sock-flavored boiled cabbage. But this soup has made believers out of all my housemates. It’s at once tender and hearty, it sticks to your ribs and warms you right through, and it’s just as good if not better the next day.

Adapted from Nash Holos.

Ingredients:

1 head of cabbage

2-4 potatoes (more if small)

2 onions

1 leek (or on this case, a ton of scallions)

2 tbsp butter or oil
2 tbsp flour

1-2 cups yogurt.

2 liters water or stock

Start heating the water or stock in a large soup pot.

Chop the potatoes up pretty small. You’ll be mashing them up in the soup, and a lot of the texture is going to come from how thoroughly you mash them. Personally, I like a few of them to stay chunky, but it’s up to you. So is the type of potato - I just use whatever is on hand, and so far everything’s worked.

Slice the cabbage up pretty small - not grated-level fine, but you don’t want to be fishing out recognizable chunks of cabbage. Drop it in the stock and let simmer. I use green cabbage, but there’s no reason red shouldn’t work, other than it might look odd.

Chop up the onion. The size will depend on how you like your onions in soup. Larger chunks if you like the succulent burst of savory onion flavor and smooth simmered texture, small dice if you’re not so into that and want the onion to blend more into the background. Add it to the soup. Let the whole thing just boil lightly for a while until the potatoes are mashable. In the meantime…

Chop the second onion and the leek - same deal about size depending on how you like them. Heat the butter or oil in a small skillet and start caramelizing the onion and leek. This’ll take about ten minutes or so; don’t skimp on the time here because this is what will give you a rich savory flavor in the soup.

While your onions are caramelizing, mash the potatoes in the soup pot. I just use the back of a spoon. Add water if it's thicker than you'd like.

Add a little more butter or oil to the skillet and then add the flour. I’ve used whole wheat flour and ground oat flour - I like something a little robust. Stir that around with the onions until it starts to smell like toast, 2-3 minutes. Then put the whole thing in the soup pot and stir it around.

Deglaze the onion skillet with the yogurt, and pour it into the soup. Turn down the heat so the yogurt doesn’t separate, stir it well, add salt, pepper, and a dash of lemon juice if you like, and eat.

Serves between four and eight, depending on how hungry they are and how much leftovers they want.

Cost breakdown:
Cabbage: $0.79
Onions: $0.23
Potatoes ~$.50? (part of CSA)
Scallions: $1.00
Yogurt: $1.00
Stock ~$1.00? (made from a $7.00 chicken)

TOTAL: $4.52