Cooking is an activity surrounded by a lot of people trying to sell you shit you don’t need. Even at the bottom of this blog post, there are Amazon links that pay me money if you click on them and buy something. It’s crazy! Every year companies come out with new things that are somehow better than their old thing. It might be identical except the colour is different and the price went up. It is a trap that is easy to fall in to. So, what are some things that you don’t need? Let’s take a look.

The one that I probably get asked about the most is salt. I know this seems like an odd thing but I get asked about it all the time. You don’t need fancy salt. I always recommend kosher salt or sea salt. Stay away from iodized table salt because it has a harsh flavour. It also dissolves more slowly and unevenly in food leading to over seasoning. Other than that it’s pretty much all marketing.

If you search Amazon for salt there are over 70 000 results. 70 000! There is black salt, sea salt from every modern and prehistoric ocean on the planet, smoked salts, flavored salts, etc. Then you have all of those in coarse, medium and fine flakes. You have cooking salts and finishing salts. I could pretty much go on forever. Here is what you need…salt. Just buy salt. There is very little noticeable difference between any of these in terms of flavours excluding infused salts. It’s all really just marketing and people trying to sell you shit you don’t need.

The other thing I get asked most about is knives. I’ve met home cooks who have a different knife for every task and they don’t even know why. Here is the exact number of knives an average person needs, one maybe two.

One good chef’s knife and one good paring knife is all you will ever need. To be clear, when I say good I do not mean expensive. You don’t need to buy a $500 Japanese chef knife to cook at home. You just need something that is solid, has a bit of weight, and that will hold an edge. That’s all. You can get that for $40 at any kitchen supply store. It may not be pretty, but it will do the job and last a lifetime.

What you should invest in is a good sharpening tool. I recommend something like this. It really takes the guesswork out of sharpening. You don’t really need to worry about angles or anything like that and you can have a sharp knife in seconds. As I’m sure you’ve heard, a sharp knife is a safe knife.

There are a million other things that we could cover here. Things like single-purpose tools. Other than a knife sharpener there shouldn’t really be anything in your kitchen that has only one use. You don’t need a tool to pull the hull off of a strawberry.

I would venture to guess that you also don’t need this weird pineapple thing.

There are so many things that we can spend money on, and so many things that we do spend money on that are useless. But for some reason, we generally don’t want to spend money on food. We want sales, discounts, the best deals. My argument is this, buy the essential tools that you need and nothing else. Spend money on good, high-quality ingredients. That’s all.