I went over to John's apartment the other day to make dinner for him. I went to the market to buy all the ingredients, and even went so far as to buy basic pantry items like oil and vinegar because John lives the bachelor life, and I was pretty sure that the only edible things in his kitchen were ketchup and beer.
Though John has a little more than just ketchup and beer (he also has hot sauce), I was a smart cookie to buy basic ingredients like olive oil and red wine vinegar for salad dressing. However, I was NOT smart enough to think that a bachelor's kitchen would have basic equipment with which to cook. I made a Greek salad with a butter knife. Tearing the Romaine lettuce was fine, but do you know how hard it is to slice onions and chop tomatoes with a butter knife?!?!
After I got over all my swearing and cursing when tomatoes squirted their slimy seeds all over the counter top (no cutting board) and I had a pile of chopped onions that ranged in size from minced to large dice, I decided to make a list of the most basic things John needs for his kitchen. If you have nothing but ketchup and beer in the fridge, at the very least, you must have these three tools to make...ketchup beer soup:
1. Good, sharp knife. It doesn't have to be a $1500 knife hand-crafted by a Samurai in Japan, but a good knife should be sharp enough to cut normal foods without excess pressure. Okay, pretty much anything is better than a butter knife.
2. Can opener. I know this sounds stupid, but the thing is, it doesn't have to be a fancy electric can opener. A manual can opener is good enough, and a bonus - some of them have a small bottle-opening implement at the end of the handle for your beer.
3. Medium-sized pot. If you only want to have ONE stove-top item, it should be a medium-sized pot. A pot can also pretend to be a frying pan if it's absolutely necessary. It might be tough to get your butter knife down in the pot to flip your omelette, but you can do it. However, the converse is not true. A frying pan can never pretend to be a pot. Unless of course, you plan to boil your soup a half cup at a time.
A knife, a can opener, and a pot. That should do it. Obviously, there are a few other things that could be added to this list, but I am talking about the bare minimum here. You can always toast bread in your pot on the stove.
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