Essential Gear for your Kitchen

Let’s get one thing out of the way: Modernist cooking doesn’t require a lab or a $2,000 gadget. With a few smart tools, you can bring a whole new level of precision, consistency, and creativity into your kitchen.

Some of the gear we rely on might not be in your current kitchen drawer—yet. Whipping siphons, blowtorches, immersion blenders, and digital scales might sound more “pro chef” than “weeknight dinner,” but they’re workhorses we use every day because they’re versatile, affordable, and (frankly) a lot of fun.

Take the whipping siphon. It makes stellar whipped cream but we also use it to carbonate soda, infuse fruit, marinate meat, and create light, flavorful foams. Add a fine sieve and a powerful blender, and suddenly you can create purees and textures that would impress any dinner guest.

Of all the tools we recommend, two are absolutely essential:

A reliable digital scale, for precise measurements that remove all guesswork.
An accurate digital thermometer, for cooking food to the exact doneness you want, every single time.

These tools might seem basic, but they’re fundamental to any kitchen.

Some other favorites include:

Pressure cooker—Cooks food quickly while locking in flavor and nutrients
Blowtorch—Quickly sears or caramelizes food with direct high heat
Whipping siphon—Creates foams, infusions, and carbonated drinks
Blender—Makes smooth purees, sauces, and emulsions
Immersion blender—Blends soups, sauces, and emulsions directly in pots
Food processor—Chops, slices, and processes thicker or drier foods
Microplane—Finely grates cheese, citrus, garlic, and more
Silicone mats—Nonstick, reusable liners for baking and cooking
Silicone molds—Easy-release molds for custards, gels, and chocolates

The best part is that you don’t need to spend a fortune. Many of these tools are now widely available at home goods or hardware stores—and you can achieve professional-level results without a pro-level budget.

Keep reading to get a more in-depth breakdown of these Modernist Cuisine favorites.

Modernist Cuisine at Home

It is always handy to have a cookbook that can guide you through every level of cooking. Modernist Cuisine at Home opens up a new world of culinary possibility for passionate and curious home cooks. Drawing on the same commitment to perfection that produced Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking, this award-winning, 456-page volume applies innovative techniques to classic home dishes. Filled with helpful scientific insights, mouthwatering recipes, gorgeous photography, and step-by-step guides, Modernist Cuisine at Home makes it easy to bring dining of the highest quality to your own dinner table.

Digital Scales

If you have been measuring ingredients only by the cup and teaspoon, now is a great time to buy a good scale and begin applying more precision to your recipe measurements. Digital gram scales are easy to find at cooking stores, and basic models are not expensive.

We recommend having two at your disposal:

General-purpose scale that accurately measures weights from one gram or less all the way to 1,000 grams or more
Precision scale that is accurate to a tenth or hundredth of a gram

A precision scale is crucial for measuring hydrocolloid thickening and gelling agents. These compounds are so powerful that a fraction of a gram can mean the difference between a sauce that is velvety and one that is gummy or slimy. A quality digital pocket scale does the job well (and at a fraction of the price of a lab scale).

Be sure to keep your scales clean, calibrate them regularly (check the manufacturer’s instructions), take care not to drop or jolt them, and always use them on a level surface.

Digital Thermometer

Small changes in temperature can make all the difference in cooking, so thermometers are a must. Unfortunately, many are not as accurate as you might think. The analog thermometer is all but useless at low temperatures, making them unusable for low sous vide temperatures. Sugar thermometers perform fine at high temperatures, but delicate glass can break, creating a disaster. Metal spike-and-dial meat thermometers are often slow to display temperature and often several degrees inaccurate.

Our top recommendation is the digital thermometer. If need be, a good thermometer can even serve in place of a fancy sous vide cooker! Our all-around favorite is the thermocouple thermometer (featured above), but a $10 instant-read thermometer is also fast, accurate, and easy to place just where you want it.

Pressure Cooker

A pressure cooker is a game changer for cooking food quickly while preserving flavor and nutrients. By sealing in steam and raising the pressure inside the pot, it allows water to boil at a higher temperature—meaning you can tenderize tough cuts of meat, cook beans without soaking, or develop deep flavors in stews and stocks in a fraction of the time. Modern electric pressure cookers often come with multiple safety features and cooking presets, making them even more user-friendly. If you’re looking to cut down on cooking time without sacrificing taste, this is one tool worth keeping on your countertop.

Some of our favorite ways to use a pressure cooker is to pressure-caramelize soups and to caramelize grains, vegetables, and fruits.

Learn more about pressure cookers here:

Whipping Siphon

Whipping siphons aren’t just for making whipped cream—they’re one of the most versatile tools in a Modernist kitchen. You can use them to carbonate drinks, speed up marination, infuse fruit with flavorful liquids, or add dramatic foams to a dish. They work by using gas cartridges (chargers) to pressurize the chamber: nitrous oxide is ideal for foams and infusions, while carbon dioxide is reserved for carbonation. Each cartridge holds about 8 grams of gas and is single-use. The key to success is understanding your ratios—typically 8 grams of gas per 400 grams of liquid. Learn more about whipping siphons here.

Immersion Blender

Immersion blenders are useful for many small blending tasks. We love them because they can blend directly in a bowl or pot while it is heating. They’re also very good for foaming fatty or starchy liquids and for making basic emulsions, such as mayonnaise and vinaigrette. You can find good immersion blenders that will fit within your budget; midrange models work just as well as the expensive professional versions.

Blender and Food Processor

Blenders and food processors are staples in most kitchens for good reason—they make quick work of chopping, pureeing, and emulsifying. High-speed blenders can break down food into particles so small (under 10 microns) that they feel luxuriously smooth on your tongue. Use them for fluid mixtures, soups, sauces, or smoothies. For chunkier tasks or doughs, a food processor’s wider blade is often the better choice.

Blowtorch

Think of the blowtorch as a handheld precision broiler. It blasts a direct flame at roughly 1900°F (1000°C), making it perfect for flash-searing sushi, caramelizing sugar on crème brûlée, or giving sous vide meats that crave-worthy crust. Unlike oven broilers, which rely on radiant heat, the blowtorch uses a jet of hot gas to transfer heat almost instantly. Just be cautious—if used improperly, it can leave a fuel-like flavor on your food. Always wait for a steady blue flame before torching and never point it at your food before ignition. You’ll find plenty of creative uses and guides for this tool in Modernist Cuisine at Home (see page 14). This cookbook also contains recipes for blowtorched caramelized bananas (page 377), using a blowtorch on steak (page 198), coffee crème brûlée (page 362), and more.

Microplane Grater

If there’s one tool chefs can’t live without, it’s the Microplane. More precise than a box grater and more versatile than a zester, this tool shaves hard cheeses, chocolate, and frozen meat into fine, fluffy piles. It’s also fantastic for making delicate citrus zest or grating fresh ginger, garlic, and onions into smooth pastes. Microplane and similar brands now offer graters in different coarseness levels for everything from spices to vegetables. Whether you’re finishing a dish or prepping ingredients, the Microplane brings finesse and flavor to your kitchen in one quick swipe.

Silicone Mats and Molds

Silicone mats are practical tools in a modern kitchen. These flexible, nonstick baking sheet liners come in a few varieties—like fiberglass-reinforced Silpat-style mats, silicone-coated parchment, and pure silicone sheets. They’re great for baking, pan-lining, or making delicate items like crisps or fruit leather. Pure silicone sheets can even be cut to custom shapes (just don’t cut into a Silpat’s fiberglass core). Silicone molds, on the other hand, are ideal for setting panna cottas, custards, or chocolates—anything that needs a gentle release. While they’re not great for browning, they shine when you want clean shapes and easy unmolding.

Injector

The injector is one of our favorite tools to use when cooking poultry. The traditional method of brining the bird helps boost moisture, tenderness, and flavor, but also makes it near impossible to crisp the skin. The solution to this conundrum is using the injector to inject the brine straight into the muscle tissue. This also allows you to double or triple the rate of diffusion, as can be seen in our slow-baked chicken recipe.

Other Helpful Tools

Meat tenderizer—Useful for tenderizing tough meat as well as for quickly perforating pastry or skin
Dehydrator—For preserving seasonal fruits and salted meats, making fruit and vegetable leathers and chips, dehydrating pork skin for frying
Long tweezers—Useful for creative plating and handling delicate ingredients
Paintbrush—Useful for applying even layers of oil for baking, sauces for glazing, and for creative plating if you want to impress
Coffee cold brewing kit—Not just for coffee, this tool can help make full-flavored extracts for use in cooking.

What about Sous Vide Equipment?

The gear for cooking sous vide can be as affordable as an adapted Crock-Pot or as foolproof (and expensive) as an industrial process controller. Water baths of various kinds are the most common tools for cooking sous vide—either noncirculating or circulating.

When we wrote Modernist Cuisine at Home over a decade ago, it was hard to find inexpensive immersion circulators, but thankfully that’s changed as sous vide cooking has become more mainstream. Circulating water baths have very accurate temperature control, which is why so many chefs use them to cook sous vide. There are a number of options for different budgets.

Countertop noncirculating water baths are less common to find than a circulating water bath. They rely on convection—the natural tendency of hotter fluids to rise and colder fluids to sink—to even out any temperature differences; however, they still develop hot and cold spots more easily.

Sous vide also requires food packaging. There are many different options to try, including:

Chamber-style vacuum bags
Edge-seal vacuum bags
Retort bags
Heat-shrink bags
Zip-top bags
Oven bags

You can find more information about sous vide equipment here.