The $60 Kitchen

You do not need a kitchen full of equipment. You need nine things, and you can buy all of them for about sixty dollars at Target, Walmart, or a restaurant supply store. Everything on this site is written to work with exactly this list.

Buy these first

A 10 or 12 inch skillet, about $15. Get one with a lid if you can. Nonstick is easier to learn on and lasts about two years. Cast iron lasts forever and is heavier, hotter, and less forgiving. If you are picking one, get the nonstick now and the cast iron later.

A 4 to 6 quart pot, about $12. Pasta, soup, rice, boiling anything. Bigger is better than smaller. A pot that is too small boils over.

A quarter sheet pan, about $8. This is the most underrated eight dollars in a kitchen. Roasting vegetables on a sheet pan is the single easiest way to make food taste good. It fits in a toaster oven and in a tiny apartment oven.

One 8 inch chef's knife, about $12. One good knife beats a block of bad ones. You do not need a paring knife, a bread knife, or a santoku to start. See our page on cutting with one knife.

A plastic cutting board, about $6. Plastic, not wood, because it goes in the dishwasher and does not warp in a sink full of water. Get the biggest one that fits your counter.

A set of measuring cups and spoons, about $5. Every recipe here is in cups and spoons. Get the metal ones, the plastic ones crack.

A metal spatula and a wooden spoon, about $5 together. The wooden spoon will not scratch a nonstick pan and will not melt.

A colander, about $4. Or use the pot lid held slightly ajar. Honestly optional.

Two or three storage containers with lids, about $8. Glass if you can, plastic if you cannot. Leftovers are how you save money, and leftovers need somewhere to live.

Buy these second, when you have the money

• A second skillet, so you can cook two things at once
• Tongs, which make everything easier and nothing possible
• A box grater, if you get tired of paying extra for shredded cheese
• A can opener, if yours is the folding kind that came in a drawer

Do not buy these

A knife block set. You are paying for six knives you will never use and one you will. Buy the one.

A Vitamix or high end blender. $400 to $600. Nothing on this site requires one, and we tell you the workaround every time. If you decide later that you want to make smoothies daily, a $30 personal blender does that fine.

A stand mixer. $300 and takes up a full square foot of counter. Buy it when you start baking bread every week, not before.

A food processor. $80 and a pain to clean. A knife and ten minutes handles almost everything a food processor does at the volume you are cooking.

An air fryer. It is a small convection oven. If you already have an oven and a sheet pan, you have most of the function. If your apartment has a bad oven or no oven, then an air fryer is actually a reasonable first purchase.

Single purpose gadgets. Garlic press, avocado slicer, herb stripper, tofu press, egg separator. Every one of these is a drawer you will not have.

Where to buy it

Restaurant supply stores are the actual secret. They sell to the public in most cities, the pans are heavier than what you get at a big box store, and the prices are lower because there is no branding. Look up "restaurant supply" plus your city.

Otherwise: Target and Walmart for the basics, IKEA for cheap pots that are better than they should be, and thrift stores for pots, pans, and baking dishes. Thrift store cast iron is often free money. Anything rusty cleans up with steel wool and oil.