Subsistence cooking equipment

lynzpower

I have a set of plastic frying spatulas- a fork, small spoon and mini fishslice from Ikea I think it was 65p for the set.

Catseyes777

Ok, based on the pictures provided by zippychick, the fish slice is essential... I obviously didnt know what the real name was because that's actually what I use

PasturesNew

ceridwen wrote: »

...goes off wondering what proportion of households serve dinner by putting everything in dishes and need tablespoons to serve themselves and what proportion just "plate it up" - but I presume Bob and Shirley would just "plate it up"...

When I was younger and we'd all sit at/round a table to eat, the saucepans were just plonked onto the table and you helped yourself. Now we eat from plates on our laps, we serve ourselves straight from the saucepans which are put out on the kitchen top and draining board.

Once a year, for Xmas Dinner, we actually cook a full/proper meal, lay the table and use dishes to put the food onto the table in.... but they're not matching dishes, I use whatever I can find that fits.... quite often random soup bowls are used. For the gravy (as it's for four of us) I make it up in the measuring jug that I used to make the Yorkshire ... I keep the remnants of the Yorkshire mix in the measuring jug, add oxo and hot water, stir that around and it's served in the jug. After all, it's "just us" and we've never had a good/decent/proper/matching set of posh dishes. Some things are simply served on plates, using spare plates as the serving dishes.

PasturesNew

OK, reading through further ... serving spoons. The spoons you use to serve up with are whatever's left over from your general spoons set. We've never had "proper serving spoons", in fact, this is a new term to me. Spoons you serve with are simply spoons .... of any relevant size. Hey - and they don't even have to match anything or each other!

zippychick

Catseyes777 wrote: »

Ok, based on the pictures provided by zippychick, the fish slice is essential... I obviously didnt know what the real name was because that's actually what I use

Most people don't catseyes! I have no idea how I know its correct name

Serving spoons? Don't own any! .....

PasturesNew

angeltreats wrote: »

A chopping board is essential though. Really if they're going to cook everything from scratch they should probably have two, for meat and non-meat. I'd rather tear meat into bits with my teeth than put my lovely sharp knife anywhere near a hard granite worktop or china plate!

I've never had a chopping board, but then I've also never had a sharp knife (I'd cut something off if I were let loose with one). I use ONE knife in the kitchen: a 65p vegetable paring knife.... heck, it's not even sharp to be honest.

I chop (well, I chop nothing, but I do slice things) on plates, or I use the kitchen top and put down a piece of kitchen paper.

PasturesNew

The fish slice looks long/flat, when I say spatula I mean "thing to use when you're frying, to flick oil over your fried eggs, keep things on the move, turn things over". When I say spatula, I am thinking of something like this: http://www.hobotraveler.com/blogphotos/191-33-spatula-needed.jpg

I'd use it for:
- flicking fat over eggs
- getting eggs/etc out of a pan
- moving roasties around in an oven dish
- turning over oven chips
- serving up slices of hot pie
- straining vegetables when they're in a tiny saucepan

Maybe I've never known of a fish slice because we never had fish when I was growing up (except fish cakes and fish fingers).

ariarnia

I think one thing that this is telling you is that the final list could benefit from little pictures for B&S so they don't go out and buy the wrong thing...

Catseyes777

zippychick wrote: »

Most people don't catseyes! I have no idea how I know its correct name

Serving spoons? Don't own any! .....

I actually call 'it' a spatula!!!!!!!!!!! :rotfl::rotfl:

Some family members have serving spoons but they are just used for special occasions.

ceridwen

Right - the fish slice stays put on the essentials list.

I think I should probably have either one or other on the essentials list out of a traybake tin or roasting dish - but not both (the other one could go on the optional list).

I tend to think personally that a traybake tin would be more useful for most people: - for traybakes/for any other type of cake (instead of a caketin)/for an extra baking sheet/for roasting vegetables.

I would think that a roasting tin would really only be used pretty much for roasting a joint of meat - something the vegetarians would never do and Bob & Shirley could rarely afford to do (think they have one chicken a month currently down on their menulist - and I'm wondering whether that chicken would fit into a traybake tin?). Think Shirley would be using her traybake tin quite frequently each month - but that roasting tin just once??? It maybe depends a bit on how old Shirley's cooker is too? My first cooker came complete with roasting tin - but the one I bought recently didnt. So - if Shirley has an older type of cooker it may be that she has a roasting tin in there anyway? It maybe as well that the reason my new cooker hasnt got one is because the manufacturers feel people dont really use them much any more? (On the other hand - it could be because my new cooker is foreign - so from a country where they dont even think of having roast dinners anyway..:cool:).