All The Kitchen Essentials You Need — For Just $310 (2024)

updated May 1, 2019

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Have you ever started from scratch in a new kitchen? Perhaps you were leaving for college, or disentangling one household from another. Maybe you were outfitting a second home, or helping a young friend or family member set up with their own kitchen for the very first time.

Is it possible to equip a kitchen for robust daily cooking on a relatively small budget? We say yes. If you are starting from scratch, without a spatula to your name, here’s your checklist of essential equipment — and all for around $300.

Setting a Budget for Kitchen Essentials

Wait, you may say — $300 sounds like a lot of money! To most of us, $300 is not pocket change. (And we’re actually talking about $310!) It could represent half of your monthly rent, or the cost of your textbooks for a semester.

But keep in mind you can easily spend nearly that much for a single set of cookware or knives (heck, for a single pan or knife), and we’re not just outfitting you with a set of pans, but with everything you need to take an empty kitchen from useless to delicious.

The Goal of This List

Our goal was a list of essential equipment for daily cooking, aimed towards the beginner cook.

What’s Not on the List

We designed this for a new cook who’s just learning the basics, and we think it would help someone just starting out to cook a wide range of dishes. But as cooks gain experience, they form opinions about the tools that work best for them. So of course, if there’s something not on this list that you couldn’t live without, customize away!

A few things we didn’t include:

More Ways to Save Money

Could you buy this list of 20 essentials for less money? Most likely. But we didn’t want this to be a gimmick, full of dollar-store finds and really cheap cookware sets. Having said that, you can probably find items here for cheaper locally. Places to try:

Essential Cookware & Tools for a First Kitchen

Pots & Pans

We only included four pans on our list, and this may be controversial. Where’s the cast iron skillet? Where’s the bargain set of pots and nonstick frying pans (with utensils thrown in)? We skipped all of those for just two pots and two pans.

Sauté Pan with a Lid

A deep sauté pan is the most multipurpose pan. It does everything a more shallow frying pan can do, but it’s also deep enough for soups and sauces. It’s wide enough to cook pancakes or burgers. You can fry an egg and make a piece of toast. It’s deep enough to braise meat, steam vegetables, and simmer beans. It’s worth spending a modest amount on a solid, well-made pan, and this Cuisinart pick is by all accounts a bargain.

Dutch Oven

Use a Dutch oven as your big pot, and you gain a lot of extras. A Dutch oven can do many things, both on the stove and in the oven. You can boil pasta and cook rice, brown meat, and steam or boil vegetables. But it also can go in the oven and be used for gratins, lasagna, casseroles, and more. You could save a little money by buying a stainless steel pot instead, but this AmazonBasics piece is still a great buy.

Sheet Pan

The best sheet pans are made for commercial kitchens and won’t warp even after long use. (Note: The pan linked below fits in standard ovens; if you have a smaller oven, double-check the proportions and if necessary buy a quarter sheet pan instead.)

9×13-Inch Baking Pan

If you want to make a casserole or a birthday cake, you need a 9×13-inch baking pan — maybe the most called-for pan size of all time. This one is good value and comes with a cover for storing leftovers.

Pots & Pans Total: $129

Knives

Knives — the most important tool in the cook’s arsenal! We stuck to the basics, here. No grater, zester, or peeler — that’s what the paring knife is for. (And remember: Vegetable skins are good for you!)

Chef’s Knife

We’ve talked about this knife before. It’s super comfortable to use (and teaches grip technique to beginner cooks) and a great value.

Paring Knife

Knives Total: $36

Prep Tools

Between your bowl and the colander to drain pasta and the measuring cups — there are a lot of little things that affect your day-to-day cooking. It’s important to look for quality even in these little tools because you use them so frequently.

Mixing Bowl

I use my big metal mixing bowls at least twice a day: to toss a lunch salad, to make biscuit dough, to whip up a cake, to marinate meat. Absolutely essential.

Colander

For washing vegetables and greens, and draining pasta.

Cutting Board

We still stand by wood as our cutting board material of choice, and this heavy, oversized board from J.K. Adams is well-wearing and long-lasting if cared for.

Measuring Cups & Spoons

Here’s a great find: stainless steel measuring cups and spoons together in one economical package.

Liquid Measuring Cup

You can’t cook without one of these! It’s also good for watering plants and heating milk or water in the microwave.

Prep Tools Total: $73

Utensils

Utensils are like extensions of the cook’s hands, and we have just a few essentials.

Tongs

If I could only have one utensil, it would be tongs. You can do almost anything with them — even stir soup, in a pinch! And my best tongs are the cheapest. Don’t spend more than $5.

Wood Spoon

Wood spoons are a matter of preference, but I’ve found that I reach for angled spoons like this one most frequently, as it gets into all angles of the pan.

Whisk

Some might quibble about the whisk. Yes, you can live without it, but if you want whipped cream or fluffy pancakes or even just really good scrambled eggs, a whisk is the best. I have this one and love it.

Spatula

Here’s a small splurge on our list: the best spatula of all time. The GIR spatula is more expensive than some other options but it’s so well-made. And because it’s silicone it won’t melt, so you can use it in hot pans and for flipping meat in the oven.

Can Opener

Every kitchen needs one.

Meat Thermometer

Here’s a pick we included specifically because this is a list for first-time kitchen folks. Experienced cooks might not bother to take the temperature of a chicken breast or pork chop, knowing from long experience how to tell when meat is done. But a newer cook may find the peace of mind (and properly done meat) worth the tiny investment.

Utensils Total: $52

Kitchen Linens

Last but not least, kitchen linens make up an important part of the daily kitchen experience. Leave the pretty tea towels for other shopping trips; these two picks are designed to work hard.

Towels

Not just for drying dishes (although they should be able to do that well). Towels are used for covering bread dough, sweeping flour off a countertop, and as makeshift trivets and hot pads. I have these towels and they’re durable, absorbent, and large.

Potholders

Another pick that’s especially important for the new cook. Battle-hardened cooks might be more cavalier about their fingertips and pull sheets pans out of the oven with the tip of their towel. But new cooks (and clumsy cooks, like me!) should be more careful. These potholders are good value and highly rated by Cook’s Illustrated.

Kitchen Linens Total: $20

Grand Total: $310

All right, your turn! What would you add (or subtract)? How did you stock your first kitchen?

Quick List for Shopping

All prices were accurate at the time of publication.

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