NYTimes has an excellent article on outfitting your kitchen with all the tools you need for $200-300.
A No-Frills Kitchen Still Cooks
The secret is to find a restaurant supply store and buy utilitarian tools, not fancy copper pots. If I only had $300, all my kitchen would have is an All-Clad (Cook’s Illustrated Magazine’s top rated) 3-liter saucepan, and my Shun Santuku knife. Crap, I already went over the budget.
And I cannot cook many things since I didn’t budget for a spoon. Before I would get a spoon, I would seriously consider this Shun Ken Onion Paring knife. And then order dinner out with my proceeds of BetterThanaWoodenNickel.
Crazy enough, some of my best cooking was in a third-world kitchen where I used a converted hubcap as my wok and had a throwing knife as my only good knife. I will try to find some pictures.
In conclusion, I see the point of the NYTimes’ approach, however for some of us, it is not about the product coming out of the kitchen. It is about the glow of the copper pans after the food has been eaten. For some yuppies who can’t go full hog on All-Clad and Shun, I recommend buying the “tools” at a restaurant supply store, beating the crap out of them, and then telling everyone you were given these pots after leaving Batali’s kitchen where you were apprenticing to write your “Heat” book. And then order out.
