Kitchen Tools & Pantry Items

talking about essential kitchen tools and also pantry items. And I wanted to talk about this because I was trying to cook something out of your Bobby at Home cookbook, trying to cook. I told you I failed on the muffins. But I noticed in here which I hadn't noticed before because I've made, I've made somethings. Out here was Bobby's essential pantry and equipment. And you really give such a great list of what you should have in your pantry and what equipment you should have to set yourself up

for success. So, because I knew we were doing this podcast today on this particular subject, I literally went around my kitchen a little while ago and I just wrote down what I have not everything. But what do you want to start with your equipment? I want to talk about equipment. So basically, UM have like a little container right next to my stove that I called my hand tools or the things that I go to most that

I that I use when I'm at the stove. So like a rubber spatula, a metal spatula, a wooden spoon, a zester. Yeah I don't have a zester. Yeah, you should get one. And then a couple of whisks of different sizes, some tongs both long and short, very important. Then I have some brushes if if I'm going to glaze something, you know, I don't have any brushes ladles in case I want to, like I don't know, pasta water into the pan so to speak. Um, I have

something called a spider you know what that is. It's like a big like a basically like a big spoon strainer sort of thing. It's round and it has a lot of holes in it so you can actually take something solid out of something liquid and the liquid will stay in the pot. Right yeah yeah, And then um, I have a meat thermometer. I don't have one of those. Well, this is what you should get to meet them. Roometer because a lot of people say, how do you know

when it's done? Well, check check you know, I meat thermometer is important. Um. And then like then I have a host of things. I want me to read some of the things I have. So I have a citrus juicer, like a hand citrus juice used to squeeze like lemon and limes juice basically, Um, Christina, there's some pasta pots and desk here if you want it, okay, And then um, I have a mallet. Do you know what that's for?

You have to pound like chicken breast or you know, if you're making milonnaise or chicken cutlets or something like that. I have a cheese grater, a box grater if you want a great cheese of course, a potato peeler. I have lots of different sizes of mixing bowls. Yeah, see, I have like three any more than that. Then I have measuring measuring cups, both for liquid and for dry.

So I have measuring cups, and then I have measuring spoons, you know for like baking, but also measuring cups for like liquid measure Okay, and then uh, I have a colander to strain things out and then some other strainers that are finer, you know, if there's like smaller particles that you want to sort of get rid of, then then like pants, pots and pans. Definitely, I definitely have my cast iron pans. I use you use those two. I love my cast iron pan. Yeah, those should you

should be able to have those forever. Then I also have stainless steel pans. But then I also have my green pans, which are uh, nonstick, and I love them because they go in the dishwasher and you can also see in them. It's the one pan that I found where it's non stick and you can get it hot hot enough that they can see see her at the same time, It's very hard to find a pan like that. Um, cutting boards, so I like cutting on wood, especially when

I'm cutting vegetables, onions and things like that. But then I also have plastic ones for like meats and fish. Okay. Um. Then I have oh, I have these plastic cord containers that I get from restaurants supply house. You get them on Amazon, and those are good for leftovers, you know, because because the plastic cord containers, you should just you should go on Amazon just buy a bunch of them

because you can never have enough for those things. Then of course I need a roasting pan or two with a rack, so I can roast a chicken or a roast or a turkey what have you. Um, I have one or two stock pots so I can make big things of chicken soup so to speak, every seven to ten days exactly. I have some sheet trays, um, and

I used she trees a lot. I used she trays to kind of like, especially if I'm doing a dinner party or a lunch party, I UM like, I'll I'll put you know, different preparations on different sheet trays to keep them, to keep them in lime. And I also like, I'm gonna bake biscuits, I need a shoot tray or

make chocolate or something like that. So this is a really good example of how do you use something, how to make something right out of your pantry, Like I couldn't make it to the store snowstorm, or you're just lazy and hungover whatever it is like, and you're like, I just want I'm hungry, and you know what can I what can I make from out of my pantry? Okay, we're gonna make pasta, putanesca which actually is translated as

um in pasta in the style of prostitutes. Puttanesca is yeah, yeah, it's The stories are like varied as to how it became part of that one of it. One of the stories I read was that they would make this dish because it was had such strong because it has anchovies and capers and garlic, et cetera, and olives, and it would lore like the like the men to the to the to the brothels what. I don't believe it, but anyway, it's called possible, and who knows what the story is.

This is a classic Southern Italian dish. It's so good. Um. So, basically, what we're gonna do is we're gonna start with some garlic and crushed garlic. So we have garlic, we have anchovies, we have tomato sauce, we have crushed red pepper capers, and then we have we have some herbs, and then to put some basil the bag, you know, and parsley in it, and then some some palmers and cheese. This is a good dish. Are you hungry? So hungry? This

is a you know, it's really flavorable. But what's really great is, you know, you have all these things that are basically coming out of your pantry, you know, Aunt Showby's, the capers. They always hopefully have some garlic in the refrigerator or on top of your counter, which I always do. And then you know, a good quality Jared tomato sauce or some can tomatoes make you make your own sauce to you. Yeah, today, I'm usings. I always have a

good quality tomato sauce in my just in case. I you know, you never know who's gonna come over here exactly. It's I usually have it for you because when you like like show up unannounced, um, and you're like, Dad, I'm hungry, it's like all right here of course. Um. Then I have some things that a lot of people might not have. I have like a tortilla press because I'm gonna make tortillas. Although I'd like one of those, yeah, I mean, they're cheap and it's cool to make your

own tortillas. Well, you need some massa herrena and some water and you can make your tortillas. They're not easy to do. And frankly, I've been cooking Southwestern food and you know, Mexican inspired food for a very long time. I'm not great at it because there are people that do it every single day and they're sleep Those people were good. Um. I have a pasta machine, so I have pasta attachments that I actually, Um, you can have like a a hand cracked pasta machine, which are the

classic ones. But I also have attachments for my kitchen aid. You know. I think you've seen me do that before. I also have a good expressive machine, very important for me to to get both through the day. Then I have criswellas, which are these earthenware sort of these brown earthenware dishes around that you'll see like in a lot of Mexican and Spanish cooking, lots of Latin cuisines. And I use them for for for kitchen from oven to

table cooking, you know, roasting mushrooms, roasting shrimp, roasting. You're usually using them in your pizza oven though, right, you can put them in any of it. Absolutely, Yeah, yeah, for sure. Um that I have a muffin tin to make muffins or the other day I made those morning buns from tarteen. Do you ever make cupcakes? Never? I've never seen a cupcake and I'm not a cupcake fan. A cupcake. There's only one good part of the cupcake,

the topping. A kind of garden said to me that cupcakes, like the bottom of the cupcake is just the vehicle for the top. She's right, that's face facts, all right. Anyway, Um, I'm looking on your equipment list here in your book. It's a ramkin. What's a ramican? So a ramican is like a round little porcelain um, not a bowl. But it's like strange and that's what it was. So like the thing that I think about most is it makes su flames in them, right, you know exactly. I just

didn't know that's what it was called. Um. Spice grinder. Yeah, oh, that's actually a good point. It's a it's a coffee grinder, like for coffee greens, coffee greens, coffee, coffee beans. I use it to grind spices so like black peppercorns, like literally your coffee grinder. I have to. I have one for coffee and one for spices. Um, you don't get it mixed up because then your coffee is gonna be very spicy, which could be cool to wait wait, wait,

digital scale? Do I really need that? You need a scale if you're gonna bake because basically, instead of like good bakers will tell you that you can't measure cups, you have to weigh grahams. It drives me a little crazy. But I'm not a baker. So but when I'm making now, when I make pizza dough, I weigh it. You do do what? I also take temperature of the air and the flour. Are you serious? Oh my god? Yeah, you're getting well because the guy who owns Rotsa, Dan Rickert,

told me, like took me through it. He's like, dude, this is science. This isn't like you know, this isn't pancake batter. Yeah, that's really interesting. Yeah, I'm gonna make it this weekend. Um, okay, So then I'm sorry, Well, I just have questions about this. I don't have I don't have these things. A deep fried thermometer and an instant read thermometer are different. They are you can you can, I guess. But the deep fried ones. The thing. The thing about the deep fried ones is that it actually

it's you can. You can. You can submerge it the whole thing in the in the oil and it will actually attach to the pot that you're cooking, that you're heating the oil up in so you can watch it rise. A a instant read thermometer, you just kind of like you probe whatever the meat is and then it tells you, like in the next few seconds, what the temperature is. So, I mean, they do somewhat the same thing, but they are different. I don't have a food processor. Let me

write this down seriously. I need to know what to get you for certain holidays, like your birthday. Great food processor. For my birthday, listen, I bought you an this Presso machine. You were thrilled because I love Like, do I really need a food press food processor if I have a blender? Yes, they're very different. Just think about it for a second. A blender is incredibly powerful from the bottom up, and a food processor will actually cut and mix things in

a circle. It does things very differently. Sometimes a blender is too powerful for something you want a food process microplane. That's that's what it's called a microplane. Yeah, because it was used for something else and then somebody figured out that it made It made a better zester than the zesters that we used to use. Got it, Okay, Okay, now we can move on to pantry. Okay, So here's the things that I have in my pantry. So I have a couple of different olive oil. I've a couple

of different oils. I have extra virgin olive oil, and I have cooking oils like canola oil for instance, something light canola or vegetable oils, and and basically the extra virgin olive oil I don't. I don't usually heat up very often because you can get really bitter very quickly.

I usually finished things with it. It's almost like a sauce because it's so it's so pungent in terms of flavor and um, it's it's got such a rich, sort of thick texture to it, and you don't I think when you add heat to it, I think it loses its properties. So I use something that has a higher smoke point, a lighter oil like canola or vegetable oil, peanut oil, something along those lines to cook with. I also use a ton of honey. Am I cooking not to make things sweet, but to make I mean to

to kind of balance out the big flavors that I use. Um, I use coach of salt and sea salt. Um. I grab I cracked my own black pepper, So I always have a big bowl of crack black pepper or ground black pepper. I use the season everything. But what's the difference between black peppercorns and white peppercorns other than obviously the color the whole, Like do they taste different? They do taste different white pepper, yes, um, yeah, they definitely don't. Yeah,

I find how do you describe the flavor? Like why would you choose to use one over the other? They have different flavors. I mean, black pepper tastes to me like what peppers supposed to taste like. White pepper is peppery as well, but it almost has like a what's the best way to describe this, almost like a like a like an earthier flavor. I don't know. I just

like the flavor of white pepper. One of the things I'm really into is sexion on peppercorns, and they give like they give you like a tingle on your tongue. But I'm gonna make a session one peppercorn hot sauce tacos with it. I don't know why anybody hasn't done that yet. We don't tell anyone about that. That could be like a new business whatever. I mean, there's no

secrets in the world, alright. So then um, then I have like, uh, you know, then I have different things in my pantry, so lots of different kind of vinegars, balsamic vinegar, cider vinegar, rice wine vinegar, red wine vinegar, white wine vinegar. Yeah, I have some of these, you do, right, Yeah, yeah, vinegars are great to have around, yeah, definitely. And then I have you know, I have I have a handful of like, you know, different bottles of Asian ingredients, you know.

So there's you know, soy sauce of course, and tomari which is a gluten free soy sauce tomori. And then I have sesame oil delicious, you know, rice wine, vinegar. Then I have like some thaie things like um red curry, green curry paste, some coconut some coconut milk, you know, and cans. Yeah, I always have um red curry paste in my cabinets, right. And then I have some sweeteners things like a gove molasses don't even I don't, but it's but it's in there. I have a gove of molasses.

I have you know, of course, honey maple syrup by pomegranum molasses. Here's my new favorite one date date nectar, date molasses so good for what I use it for, like glazes, and it's really good in like like smoothies, like a date ching so good. Yeah good. It's good in dressings as well, delicious. And then of course, like you know, I have some olives of course, capers, um, and then mustard's like whole grain dijon. You know, I have yellow mustard in case somebody wants a hot dog.

What are you making hot dogs? Not exactly? And then um yeah, and then I actually sometimes I have like corse rashed mustard or honey mustard in there as well. All right, so we're gonna start by cooking the garlic. Just starts hanging it really quickly an showbies. We don't want to brown the garlic. Put the tomato saus right over it, and showbies are one of the great things in the world. Has so much flavor and not enough people use them. Yeah, right now we have the little

olive oil, garlic ant shobies, tomato sauce. Well, put some capers in there as well, the pressure at pepper. Let's just cook in the sauce. We'll cooking spaghetti, you know, Okay, we use something. Yeah, let's saghetti younie. I've never made this before. It's like everything I love, Yeah, exactly, lots of salty flavors. We'll chop up some green olives. He's a Sicilian olvas olives, which makes sense for this dish.

It's it's really a Southern Italian dish. Some olives in there, but it's kind of bathe and the tomato sauce with the anchovies and the garlic, and then we have some fresh herbs. We're gonna add the fresh erbs at the end, so we have parsley, we have some fresh oregano and a little bit of basil, and then of course it's like baking, you know, baking powder, baking soda. I know.

I feel like it's so easy once you have like every everything on this list or the list that you're about to read, But like if you don't have one thing, it's so stressful. Like half the time when I don't have like baking powder, I'm like, should I just drive to Dads and go get like cook it, like a

cop of it. I think it's so annoying. You just I feel like if you have like five or six things stocked in your pantry for baking like you're good to go, like some of the times, Well, the problem here is like this happened to me the other day. This this pantry. My pantry is so well stocked all the time that I always feel like I have everything, except the other day you wanted to come over for brunch and you wanted waffles, and then I looked. I was like, oh my god, I don't have any baking powder.

So you know, Christina got me some baking powder. But like I didn't realize I didn't have any baking powder. Like I'm not sitting around doing inventory right but I should. And then like different kinds of flowers, like all purpose flower for all purpose things, you know, bread, flour for different kinds of you know, cakes, etcetera. Then there's almond flower, semolina flower to make some pastas or things like that,

massa harina to make tortillas. I have Wonder Flower, which is like it's a brand actually, but it's basically steamed flour. The flowers already cooked, so it's good to if you're breading something and you don't want it to be you don't want the flower to be clumping up on straw. Wonder Flower like melts very easily. You have stone ground corn meal on here. Yeah, corn meal corn meal is really great because you can you can crust like fish or chicken in corn meal, so you can have a

cornmeal crusted fish. Um. Obviously you can make corn bread, you can make cornmeal waffles. I'm a I'm a huge cormeal fan. I love it. UM. Sometimes I have blue corn meal too, which will it's just it's which is a little softer, but it's got a great nutty flavor to it. Um. Then different kinds of sugars. Of course, you know, you you need gratulated sugar, but then you know brown sugar, light dark. You know, the darker the sugar,

the more sort of molasses flavor it's going to have. UM. And you know, of course I have chili peppers everywhere, you know, pods literally like literally dried chilies, Antio Chili's, cascabell chili, chili's chili powders. And then of course there's a spice rack, you know, and that's a whole other thing, which is you know, you know, it's important to keep your your dried spices like kind of up to date,

like they don't last forever. You know after a year or so, like it's time that we've we plenish them. And they're not cheap, so it's like it's a it's a pain. But the bottom line is if you're gonna use these spices and I and and like, you don't need every spice ever made, right, But like so sometimes I see like online, Like I was thinking about this the other day, I don't have like a real spice rack, Like I just have some random spices that I bought,

like for different recipes and whatnot. Like is there a good place to go get spices? Like should I just order like a spice rack online of like where do you get your spices? I buy them in bulk and then put them in containers. Okay, so yeah, I don't necessarily need to do that. You don't need to do that, but you want, But I'm not. I'm never going to run through spices like you you want to go to a place that sells spices a lot because you want to make sure that that's a spice store. Yeah, that's

a great idea spice store in my area. There's a place, well there's a place called in New York City called Calusians, which is an Indian spice store there and it's an amazing store. Um, you walk in there, you're intoxicated by the amazing aromas and they have this just gorgeous spices. It's just so good. So you want like, you don't want to go, you don't You just don't want to buy it online because you don't know how long has been sitting in the warehouse. Oh, spice station, Silver Lake,

there you go, see you there? Interesting? Um, what's a saffron thread? It's saffron. So the saffron comes from a flower. And they that the reason why saffron is so expensive is because because they because there are people that literally by hand take each thread of the saffron out of the flower. Oh my god, it's the most expensive spice in the world. But there's no substitute for saffron because you can't emulate the flavor. You can emulate the color.

It's a beautiful orangey yellow color like so you can use tumeric to flavor right to seasoned rice or to color rice, but it's never gonna have saffron flavor. How often do you sharpen your knives, Well, I sharpen them all the time. On a steel. But that's just really sort of bringing them back into alignment. So you can do it yourself on a on a on a stone, either a waterstone or you know, on a regular knife sharpening stone, or you can take it to a place

and they'll do it on a machine. Not The problem with this, okay, is that I want to say they ruin. They can ruin your knives, but they the machines are so powerful that at some point it starts to change the shape of your knife. Oh you know, because it starts getting because of the way that they sharpen them. They sharpen them so so well that it actually kind of starts chipping away at the metal. You know. So what do I need a stone? Yeah, you can do

it yourself. When you didn't go to YouTube and he'll tease you how to sharpen. Enough, I am not learning how to sharpen a knife off YouTube. That's so that freaked me out. I'm just gonna come over here, okay, I'll show you. And then then there's there. Then there's like the you know, the pasta section. So I have cans of whole tomatoes to make tomato sauce. Of course, I have tomato paste um. And then different kinds of pastas. You know, every shake, every every pasta, shapen size flavored

pasta's squidding pasta. There's a whole wheat pockery in there that Christina loves. We made that the other day with rock fish. It was so good. Um. And then dried fruits, currants, apricots, cranberries, great for salads. I don't feel like I ever noticed you having a lot of dried fruits around. Those are good for. Those are really good for, like chop sells delicious. I don't remember you having a lot of those when I was younger. Thing. Yeah, it's sort of like more

of my Mediterranean thing flavor. Yeah, Like you always have a lot of good candy ginger. I feel like too. You know, I don't have any candy ginger here, but I should get some. I like it's a snack. I feel like that's like something new that I've noticed that you've had in your pantry more recently. I'll tell you what I've had a lot in my pants recently. Are these these nut butters, you know, besides peanut butter and almond butter, like my new, my new I'm now in June.

The best I mean, you know what I do is that sometimes I I make a piece of toast and then I do half half the half the piece of toast peanut butter and half the other piece of toast pistachio butter, and then I dress a honey on top. All right, that sounds really good. Now I'm addicted to it. It's so good. There's a place in the Hollywood farmers market that has a really great quality one that I just I mean, I buy them. I buy like two

jars at a time. It's so good. Also, I think it's important to have like beans in the like there was something like there was some colleagues of mine, contemporaries, I should say, chefs who are like I don't use canned beans. I'm like, okay, so you be my guest. Spend four hours cooking white and a lot of times like the skin on him doesn't get tender for one reason or the other. And um, but I always have like cans of like Cantellini white beans in their black

beans chickpeas. It's great to make like a hummus at it. She always in mine, you know, like you know, Christina like makes making like this like this chickpeak curry thing that she loves to make. And you know, it's great to make soups with and things like that as well. They're always good to have around. They're cooked perfectly. You strain them out, you know, you straight out the juices in them, and then you know they're they're good to use.

I also have like, like um tetra boxes of like chicken broth and vegetable broth, good to have around a lot of times I make my own, but in a pinch, why not? You know, important important to do that this thing is sizzling. How high is it? I always cook on white. That is so scary you can turn it down, no, I mean you know what you're doing. Yeah, mostly all right, And then if if the tomato sauce gets a little thick, you get some Pa. You're learning, girl, you're learning. Let's

give our popular taste perfect. And so what I do is I just take I take the spaghetti, and I just bring a little bit of the sauce with it, I mean a little of the water with it. And then before I put it in the sauce, I just seasoned the pasta again with some salt and pepper. And now I start bathing in the sauce. Yeah, I'll just look the lesh. Yeah, you have to make sure that

the noodles cooking the sauce for a minute. It's gonna put splash of pasta water in the air, and I'm gonna put like a pat of butter to give it like a nice so the glaze and and it's very classic, especially in Southern Italian pasta dishes. Um to finish, it would look a little bit of butter and then as you know, the freshmer going when at the end, exactly

how does that look really good? Like a nice bright red with the capers and the olives running through a lot of good yeah, oh yeah, a little olive oil topped it off a little more herds right out of the pantry. Didn't even I didn't have to go to the store, Lucky me. Always Hungry is created by Bobby Flay and Sophie Flay. Our executive producer is Christopher Hasiotis. Always Hungry is produced, edited and mixed by Jonathan how Stressler.

Always Hungry is engineered by Sophie Flay. For more podcast from My Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Ray You app Apple podcast or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,