The ideal equipment journey?

Probably prompted by the post about sieves and the fact that I'm pretty much starting a home kitchen from scratch after moving, I thought I'd find out what the most useful bits of equipment were.

The results are here: http://notionparallax.co.uk/2016/chefsteps-the-ideal-equipment-journey

The quick summary is that there are 300ish bits of unique kit, but you seem to be able to get by very nicely on 50 or so.

If that's actually true, I have no idea, I need to think about it a bit more. Hard set theory at 3am is tricky.

There are a lot of smart people here, so if anyone knows a way to tackle it then I'm all ears!

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Comments

tshewman

The first thing I would add to the list that I didn't see is a second refrigerator. Doesn't have to be new. But it makes things much easier when planning for real life and cooking ambitions at the same time. :-)

Jack_Mayer_85396

Really good call on the extra fridge! Also maybe a dedicated freezer and ice machine ...

Ben_Doherty_37902

I'd love an extra fridge! In fact, there's a lot of stuff I'd love.

Where in the list do you think an extra fridge would go in terms of recipes made possible?

This is a bit of a geeky exercise in making a suggested best order to get new toys in if all you wanted to make were ChefSteps recipes.

tshewman

Any recipe requiring a brine and in particular the long brines.

fisher23

@Ben_Doherty_37902 Wow, love your spreadsheet. Do you have one for ingredients?

Amos_Schorr_168815

Lots of things in your spreadsheet aren't actually cooking equipment. Like "sustainability" or "and sourcing" or "easy way to shuck a bunch of oysters" or a number of other things. And I noticed you have some duplicates, like "silica packets" and "food grade silica packets."

Ben_Doherty_37902

Not yet, but I was thinking of doing one. It'd allow you to work out how to stock a pantry.

You could modify the scrape pretty easily, but direct database access would be much faster!

Ben_Doherty_37902

The spreadsheet just shows what's on the website. I also made a bit of an error making it record as a comma separated list; lots of things have commas in them e.g. pressure cooker, 8 quart.

I need to go through and take these sorts of things out, thanks for spotting them!

Ben_Doherty_37902

I've gone through the list with fresh eyes and taken out a few rogue lines. It's now 292 things. There are definite overlaps, but I've left them in for accuracy. If this was a shopping list you might chose to buy a scale that was good for weighing flour and coffee or that you need one for both.

I've made the spreadsheet visible here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1tf2GLSQexYe3346Gj7arfgbUxX9-3apWmRWRvjPzkYg/edit?usp=sharing

You can add comments directly to it if you spot something.

fisher23

My thoughts exactly.

Ben_Doherty_37902

I had a bit of a weekend nerd out, turns out that with the current setup I have I can make:

Donut Glaze
Light & Fluffy Pancakes
ChefSteps Christmas Tree 001
Cocoa Water
Butchery Tuna
Simple Syrup
Beer Batter
Perfect Citrus Supreme
equilibrium-brining

If I were to get one more thing, it'd be a sous vide setup: (The number is the number of extra recipes I could make if I had that thing.)

Sous vide setup, 12
Blender, 8
Pressure cooker, 5
Syringe, 3
Microwave, 2
Strainer, 2
Coffee grinder, 2
Ramekins, 2
Thermocouple thermometer, 2
Cocktail shaker, 2
Spice grinder, 2
KitchenAid food processor, 2
Liquid nitrogen, 2
High-precision digital scale, 2

Luckily I've got a bunch of stuff being shipped, so I can update the have list soon.

I'll do this again for ingredients one of these days.

Ben_Doherty_37902

@John_Fisher_218893 I did one for ingredients. The files are all in here: https://github.com/notionparallax/ChefstepsEquipment

There is still some processing to do, but the Google doc that I am using to work out what I can make with the equipment that I have is working very nicely at the moment. You could change it over to ingredients with very little effort.

fisher23

Ben Thank you. Outstanding!

Ben_Doherty_37902

I made a duplicate Google doc for ingredients. You can get to it here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1rUe0L7bw_dRj8bGbxYAdqFHzPXo2asME47SqNly05lM/edit?usp=sharing .

Here's the to 30 ingredients (by how often they show up in recipes). It puts some perspective on people talking about strange ingredients given that the only vaguely strange things in there are xanthan gum and msg!

234 Water

194 Sugar

148 Butter

114 Black pepper

100 Milk

68 Olive oil

62 Lemon juice

58 Garlic

56 Ice water

48 Xanthan gum

46 Egg

44 Granulated sugar

42 Thyme

38 Olive oil, extra virgin

38 Bread flour

34 Sweet onion

34 MSG

34 Baking soda

34 Kosher salt

34 Brown sugar

28 Canola oil

26 Champagne vinegar

24 Clove

24 Parsley

24 Baking powder

24 Fructose

22 Tomato paste

22 Oil

22 Chives

22 Shallots

22 Ice

MSG is in 34 recipes, but Monosodium glutamate is in a further 10. That sort of thing shows up with Insta Cure No. 1, Prague Powder No. 1 and Pink salt. (And a few other things that could be folded into the same thing.)

@John_Fisher_218893 you should be good to go now!