Thoughts On Kitchen Equipment

I don't know what it is about blogging, but it seems to come naturally to me only when I'm thinking about technology. Maybe it's a habit, because it's the only thing I ever really blogged about. It did help me realise I don't really have like a backlog of my thoughts on some of my other hobbies.

I mean, I guess there's reddit, and I do have some posts up on WatchCrunch detailing my watch collecting journey, but no deep thoughts per say. Perhaps, is this because I can't go as deep into my brainspace for thoughts on kitchen equipment as I can on technology? I guess we'll find out.

This past week, I've been thinking a lot about my kitchen tools, as I do every few months. Not necessarily in a "I need to shake things up" kind of way, more-so in the "I should really be using my tools differently" kind of way.

I can't remember exactly when I started getting into finer kitchen equipment, but it was probably around mid-2023 when I started watching more and more cooking content. I've always liked to be in the kitchen and cook, but like most home cooks, I never put much thought into the equipment I used. I used whatever knife we had at home, and whatever nonstick pan was in the drawer.

As I started cooking more and more, I noticed a few things. On the prep side, I noticed that a simple task like slicing a chicken breast into strips was not only a lot more time consuming, but a lot more frustrating than it looked like when I saw youtubers do it. That's probably when the rabbit hole deep dives started.

Looking at my Tokopedia history (interestingly, a great place for me to learn about the stages of my life), I picked up my first 'real knife' on 22 July 2023. Now, I can't remember if pans or knives first sparked my intrigue in improving my kitchen setup, but if I had to guess, I'd say it was the knives. My first big-boy pan was a carbon steel skillet, and I can't find it in my purchase history, while the oldest reference of it I can find on Google Photos seems to be from December 2023.

Ok, back to knives. It wasn't a big fancy knife, it was some cheap (under 250k IDR) santoku from a company called Joil. It wasn't even a true santoku, it's a western knife in a japanese knife shape. I loved (and still kinda love) that thing. I have nicer knives now, thanks to a trip to Japan where I embraced myself in the knife-making culture, but that santoku will always hold a special place in my heart.

While I had been cooking for a while, using that knife, which was nicer than any existing knife we had at home, was the spark that ignited the whole thing for me. It showed me that even prep can be fun. From there it all just snowballed. All the youtube deep dives, pantry organisation, labeling leftovers with masking tape on deli containers. Hmm, come to think of it, this is probably when I started watching The Bear.

I do this weird thing now whenever I'm in a friend or relatives house, I try to see what kind of kitchen equipment they use. Not to judge, just out of curiosity. From what I can gather, 95% of the people I know fall into the same category that I was in before. Just using whatever is there. Non stick pans, dull cheap knives, plastic chopping boards that have all the scratches on them. Seems to be the most common thing, and the thing is, most people are just happy with what they already have, because it gets the job done. I love that for them.

I have no idea what the point of this blog post is, I should probably have just done a "Kitchen Tools I can't live without" or some shit. Probably the next one then.