Home & Lifestyle, Food

Bonus Chapter: Kitchen Essentials

Wolfgang Puck

Lesson time 10:23 min

Wolfgang ends his MasterClass with a bonus lesson on his recommended kitchen tools and appliances. He’ll show you that with just a few key essentials, you’ll be ready to start cooking.

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Topics include: Bonus: Kitchen Essentials

Preview

If you want to have a good time in the kitchen, you need the right tools, you need the right appliances. And then, it's fun in the kitchen. So let me show you what I use in my kitchen. Now, you can go and have thousands of things in your kitchen, but nobody has the space. So I'm going to show you the kitchen essentials. So let's start with simple things, like you need some good cutting boards. I like wooden cutting boards the best. So, different sizes. I'm so used in the restaurant using big cutting boards. So you can get the size you like. Then, obviously, a good set of knives is important. So get them in a block so you can keep them on top of your counter. So that makes it really easy. You can see this is a chef's knife. Probably for a knife at home, this is big enough. But then you have all different sizes, like a paring knife, for example. You need a bread knife or a serrated knife, boning knife. You need a knife sharpener. Now, you can get any kind of knife sharpener, like this one is a professional one. You use it just like that. See? So if your knife is a little dull, use your sharpener. And I have one more here. All right. So a good set of knives is essential. Then, we need a meat fork maybe. I love to work with tongs. And here is a little hammer. What you want to do if you want to make a veal scallopini or a chicken scallopini or just flatten out some meat, a little hammer like that is really good. I use a spider very often because if I blanche something, if I boil something-- blanching means something boiling for a short time-- you can just take it out of the hot water. This, if you don't want to get your fingers all smelling like garlic, get a little garlic press. That helps you a lot if you love garlic. Now we need wooden spoons, all kinds of metal spoons, spatulas, little slicers, mandolines, graters. So you need quite a few things, but not too many, either. A whisk is really important, maybe two, a small one and a large one. A few kind of ladles, bigger ones, smaller ones. And when I cook in my kitchen, I always use soup spoons to taste, soup spoons to sauce something. So that's really an important part. Now, I love pepper. So I always use a pepper mill so I can put fresh ground pepper on everything. Don't buy the pepper which is already ground, get yourself a pepper mill, electric one, or you can get a regular wooden one. For salt, I use kosher salt or I use sea salt or fleur de sel. Depends for what. Kosher salt if I boil a lot in water, for example, and sea salt if I make a tomato salad or any kind of salad. I'll put a little fleur de sel on a steak at the end. It really makes it taste so much better. Now, especially if you're a baker, you need measuring cups. You need measuring spoons. That's really important. And a lot of recipes give ...

About the Instructor

Legend has it Wolfgang Puck came up with his famous smoked salmon pizza when his restaurant ran out of bagels—and ended up changing the way America cooks. In his MasterClass, the five-time James Beard Award-winning chef behind more than 100 restaurants brings you into his kitchen. You’ll learn not only how to master starters, mains, sides, and cocktails, but also how to take risks to create memorable recipes of your own.

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Wolfgang Puck

In 16 lessons, learn exclusive recipes and cooking techniques from the chef behind Spago and CUT.

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