 Hey everybody I'm Lance Coyke and in this video I want to give you kind of a minimalist guide to kitchenware This is the the absolute minimum amount of things that I think you should buy if you want to cook healthy But not have too much clutter around your house So the first thing that I wanted to talk about was a non-stick pan I get a pretty big one because I cook a lot of food The these things are great because you don't need a whole lot of oil to keep the food from sticking and they're a lot Easier to clean they're not great because they don't last very long even when you take care of them It's very important to do two things when you're using them one is to not Use too much heat Too much heat starts to loosen the the non-stick particles off of the the pan and then you start to get this damage that lasts forever These pans usually only stay pretty good for about six months And then the other thing you need to not do is don't put anything steel on it because that stuff is much Harder than the Teflon or that the non-stick coating that's on it So it damages it it'll pull it right off you if you're like if you like put a knife and you cut something directly on it It the pan is totally ruined It just it really snowballs after that and that that cut really opens up more wounds afterwards So first thing non-stick pan second thing We're gonna take care of that non-stick pan is some sort of plastic or soft spoon You could do a wooden thing too, but I I feel like the plastic ones I really like for something like eggs, which I make every day This one's nice because it's gonna be softer than the Teflon here or the non I don't know if it's actually Teflon the non-stick coating. So you're just gonna I'm gonna use my low heat I'm gonna stir my eggs a bunch. I'm gonna take it off the heat stir them some more And I can use this a lot on this pan, but still not damage it So this is great and it works well even for some other pans That she might use for example I this one's kind of not a must-have But super useful if you need to do something a little bit smaller like this is a great size for Rice for you know one to even four people for a meal Or you could cook beans or something in it. This is a great size, especially good if it comes with the lid So a pot a small pot Super important a big skillet is also super important now You can get the rimmed up one like this or you could get more of a traditional skillet where it's a little bit wider I tend to like this more Solely because it catches some of the splash. So I'm usually cooking with high heat on a steel Super hard just like that other pot. They're steel They're not gonna warp too hard if I don't overheat them And if I don't cool them with water as soon as I'm done cooking with them Okay, so if I'm gonna take care of my skillets or my pots. I need to make sure that I'm not Forcing them through extremes of heat. They've got to have time to resettle into their original shape So just make sure that you're not pouring water at all or cold water Especially onto this as soon as you're done cooking if it's got a lot of stuff that's caked on you can do that a little bit You can put a little bit on there And then you can put it back on the pan or on the stove here Heat it all up and it'll start to loosen those particles. It'll even create some kind of like a soup That might taste good. I guess I've never tried it, but it looks kind of gross You're gonna you sit it there and then you can just let it cool down with that water in there That'll loosen the particles up make cleaning a lot easier. Also, you can watch my cleaning video where I scrub this pan so Those those are like like great super useful the last super useful pots pans category is a big pot If you're gonna make something like a chili or a soup you just you need the volume somehow This is a good size. You're not gonna cook for 70 people Something like this like this is not a great stock pot necessarily because it's not huge It's hard to get some of it, you know like a chicken carcass in here, but it works And this is more of an all-purpose like if I'm only gonna buy one giant pot. It's gonna be something like this about this size It's the same lid it's a standard size for the stove and it's the same lid that works for my skillet So standard large stuff Then if we're oven cooking you can put one of the beauty thing beautiful things like I can sear Some meat on here and then I could sear the other side and I don't want to overcook it I don't want to get super tough, but I need the I don't want to you know burn the outsides I want a nice sear nice cook a nice flavor, but I don't want to burn it So what do I do if I still need to cook it? Well, I just I cook something on here I get the sear and then I throw it in the oven then the oven will Kind of slowly heat that allows the heat to kind of draw to the inside and fully cook whatever you're trying to eat Speaking of oven, we've got a nice sheet pan here I like I mean if you're only gonna if you're being super minimalist You're only gonna buy one and I would probably buy the big one so you could do a lot of vegetable volume in bulk These are pretty cheap though, and you might even just get two in the package So that can be super useful if you're especially if you're trying to like prep food for the week Super useful roasting vegetables Last thing that I have over here not the last thing in general A cutting board now it's got to be wood or plastic because we're gonna talk about our knives here in a second But we want to keep them sharp We want to take care of them if you cut on marble or glass the marbling It's just like the non-stick pan right the marble or the glass is harder than the fragile edge of the knife And so it really dulls the knife and it can even like chip it away So if you're gonna if you're gonna be super minimalist about this You're only gonna buy one real chef's knife, and we're gonna have to take care of it So this is step number one of taking care of it. This would probably be my my pick for you We have this oxo. I think it's good grips Cutting board as well. This one's super good. It's very light It's plastic if you don't mind the plastic look or whatever then that works We have this other one that you can see behind here. That's wood It's super thick super heavy and kind of hard to clean It's great if I'm doing really high volume work, but if I'm only gonna have one cutting board You're gonna want it to be this size. So this is about I Don't know 17 inches. I think diagonally Maybe it's 11 by 17. I'm not totally sure next Shears let's say shears so some sort of scissors that you dedicate to food products and snip and stuff You just you don't want to cross contaminate your you know your Letters that you're sending or opening or whatever. So having a dedicated pair is great These are super expensive, but they're like the best thing that I've ever purchased So if you're trying to be frugal about it, don't get this but these are shun Kitchen shears and they came in a set. I should show you the other one There's another this is smaller a little bit more You know the fine-tuned to work. This is good for herb stuff. There's a little herb Drainer thing there, but the big pair is gonna do the bulk of your work And it's even got this little boning crunch thing if you are not Not insane and you don't want to spend it's even got a screwdriver on the back and here like a flat head screwdriver How crazy is that if you're not insane and you don't spend 130 dollars on kitchen shears of one I don't blame you at all. Just get some generic kitchen shears. Okay Doesn't have to be too crazy next now Let's say the knives for last so Cooking utensil thing so I mentioned the This plastic spoon this is good for not damaging stuff this skillet thing has a plastic rim That's also good if I need to you know a skillet to flip stuff This is this is actually pretty good because it's not gonna damage your pans even not just the non-stick ones But the steel ones they can be damaged too, and they're just not gonna last as long so you want to take care of them Other things wood is softer so I can use this as well now the issue with these things is one this one It's got this this rim of the plastic and food gets stuck in there. It's really hard to clean I don't use this very often But if I just avoid having a skillet, so if you don't or What is this called? I just avoid having a flipper. Whatever they call this Spatula there we go So I don't really use a spatula very often if you feel you need one get one like this though. I Use the spoon the most the plastic spoon the most But if I need to brown meat this spoon will just collapse because it's super plastic and it bends So it doesn't work for something like that. It's great for my eggs But if I need to put some umph Into my pan or into my food at this wooden one that works super well They're not gonna last forever, but it's holding up pretty well even though it's you know been exposed to all the heat I haven't burnt it too bad and all the liquids, you know, they kind of get in there You can put some oil on this to kind of keep it together. I do that with a cutting board That's a good way to keep your cutting board lasting a pretty long time And then last let's talk about knives, so you really only need one knife I'm gonna talk about four different knives that I've tried Let's do this So first you need you don't need a small one if you're careful But something like this is super great to have this was like $5 on Amazon. It's a victorinox knife They make some really sharp metal It feels kind of cheap and but you know it is cheap and it performs super well So I would just get if you only need one tiny knife even you know you and your spouse can share a knife Like that's that's pretty minimalist. You could get one like this We also got a set of four of these are like steak knives from victorinox. I think they were about $25 and they're a bunch of different colors, which is super fun They don't look you know, they don't look like the nicest knives in the world, but they are sharp and they're serrated So it can help you get through some tougher stuff Problem with serrated stuff is it doesn't sharpen very well So for high-use primary knives like it once this is dole, you're probably just gonna throw it away Which is why we've got this big boy over here, but let's first talk about this So I need one major. This is kind of like the biggest thing. I need one major knife for preparing vegetables Generally, it's gonna be something like this. You could do a Santoku style too, which is a little bit more rectangular But I like the chef's knife because I can rock when I'm cutting and I can pull when I'm cutting I don't have to just do this kind of chopping motion and then I don't push the blade so hard into the cutting board Blade stays sharp a little bit longer. This is a victorinox brand again. I think this was like 30 bucks. Maybe This is super sharp and works really well if you're gonna buy so again our whole idea here Minimalist if you're gonna buy only one knife you need it to be sharp It sounds dangerous to have a sharp knife because then it can cut right through your finger But it's actually safer because once you learn how to use the knife now when it's sharp You can rely on it to do what you're expecting it to do instead of getting caught on something and then slipping off Which is what happened because I let my My brain wander and I let my knife get dull. So keep them sharp And then you won't cut your nail So the victorinox one is a huge Recommendation I'll put that in the description below along with the other stuff that I can find here If you are not trying to be frugal and you want a knife that's gonna last forever I would get something like this. So I like the shun style the SHUN this is the shun classic eight inch chef's knife I had a seven inch one that I tried and I gave it to my parents and then I bought a new one Or I had them by me. They went This works super well eight inches a really good size if you're a giant you can get the ten If you're pretty petite you might actually like the seven inch more I know my mom likes a seven inch more actually big things are Again, it's this hardness scale So we're cutting on a wood or a plastic board and that's still gonna round over the edge It's not gonna be super sharp and so you'll see people with these sticks of steel. They're honing steels They'll recommend that you get one of those to keep the the blade Oriented towards where you're cutting so it it doesn't actually sharpen it because when you sharpen stuff It takes the steel away, but what it does is it just hones the blade so that you know When you sharpen something it makes this little triangle shape and when you use it it starts to bend over It doesn't cut direct straight through stuff quite as well So the honing steel just keeps it into that nice point. It does make it sharper It is worth probably getting if you're gonna invest in the knife like this that nice about a hundred dollars the Honing steel is something similar So what it's got is it's got this little cutout on the base at the base of the handle here and all you do is you line up the dull part of the blade the top part of the blade onto the This cutout part of the base of the steel and then I just try to keep it there And I'm pulling the blade along that Once you can maintain that angle. This is telling you hey we sharpen our knives at this angle This is the angle that you want your the tip of the blade to be pointing towards right, so Just do something like that doesn't need a whole lot of pressure Hard part for me is going the other way. So I have to flip this over do the same thing on the other side This is like the awkward way to do it if you're super good You do it nice and fast and then you'll notice on the steel It's got this rough edges, and then it's got these soft edges So this is to get your angle if I need more honing from the steel I will then get my angle and then I'll rotate to a rough edge, and then I'll pull it along And this just helps keep the knife Nice and sharp from day-to-day use. I like to do it before Before I'm gonna use it at night You know for prep and dinner or whatever And then don't be afraid to get it sharpened like when you when you get it sharpened It takes some of the steel away so that you're using up some of the life of it, but it's gonna last forever So if you want to make the investment, I would say do the shun You I mean you really don't need another knife The chef's knife works super well, and then you just get these tiny ones for personal use Like you know on your plate or whatever right so there's a good example something like this I got these because I'm not afraid to throw them away. They're super cheap And I know that I'm gonna be cutting on our glass plates our ceramic plates So it's gonna dull this knife I don't I'm not gonna pass this around and I'm not gonna pre-cut everybody's food every time So I'm gonna just use something cheap, and we just we use it, and then we try to be nice about it The other way to keep your knives nice and sharp is if you can you put the tip down and then you pull through the food instead of pushing down and compressing the blade onto the cutting surface, and then I you'll see I store it in this cardboard thing they Sir Latab Sharpen this knife for me, and then they put it in this and I was just like well It seems like a good idea to keep it in there The other thing that I have is just a shelf here for the knife So everything has a home, and it all knows where to go That's our our bare minimum though Like if it it's gonna be a couple hundred bucks depending on what you do What you get pots and pans like if you get a whole set of stuff That's where you're spending most of your money So if you can get just the pieces it might make sense Or if you know you might just spend 50 more bucks and get a bunch of other pots that well You know it'll come with a steamer or whatever and that will make things easier on you So do your own pricing price price stuff out But this is the stuff that I like this is the stuff that I use pretty much every day And this is the stuff that I'd recommend if you want to get as little as possible But still start to cook your own food and take control of your health Thanks for watching if you learned something hit the like button and subscribe to be notified when I release new videos if you need something else to watch I've got a mobility circuit Playlist that's got a bunch of follow-along videos where we just go through some exercises that kind of loosen your body up or You know if you want more cooking type stuff check out that playlist