Cooking with almost no equipment

Cookery writing assumes a kitchen. A great many people do not have one, or share one, or have two rings and no oven.

Here is what is genuinely required.

The minimum

One large pan with a lid. Preferably a wide, deep one that can sauté, boil, simmer and fry.

One sharp knife. Sharp matters more than expensive. A blunt knife is the main reason people find cooking tedious.

A chopping board.

A wooden spoon and a spatula.

A sieve or colander.

A tin opener.

A bowl.

That is enough to cook essentially everything in this article.

The additions worth having

In rough order of usefulness.

A second pan, so you can cook two things.

A kettle, which speeds up anything requiring boiling water.

A baking tray, if you have an oven.

A stick blender, which turns any pot into a soup and makes sauces, and which is cheap and small.

A box grater.

A pressure cooker, if you cook dried legumes regularly, which is a genuine transformation.

Cooking with two rings and no oven

Almost everything can be done on the hob.

Anything braised, stewed or simmered — which covers dal, curry, chilli, bean stews, soups, pasta sauce.

Anything fried — tofu, vegetables, grains, flatbreads.

Grains, obviously.

Roasted vegetables, approximately. A covered pan on a low heat produces something between roasted and braised — sweeter than boiled, softer than roasted. Then the lid off at the end and the heat up to brown.

Not identical to oven roasting and considerably better than boiling.

Flatbreads, which are made in a dry pan and which are among the easiest things to make from scratch — flour, water, salt.

A one-pan meal: aromatics, then vegetables, then legumes, then liquid, lid on, and grains or bread on the side.

Cooking with a kettle and a microwave only

Hostels, offices and some student accommodation.

The kettle handles: oats, couscous, bulgur, instant noodles, dried soup, rehydrating textured soy protein, and anything that needs boiling water poured on and covered.

The microwave handles: rice, vegetables, reheating, and — genuinely — steaming, in a covered bowl with a splash of water.

A workable meal: couscous soaked in stock from the kettle, tinned chickpeas, a tin of tomatoes heated in the microwave with spices, olive oil and lemon.

Not exciting and it is real food, made in ten minutes, in a room with no cooker.

The shared kitchen problem

Distinct challenges: no storage, no equipment you can rely on, and limited time at the stove.

What helps:

A box of your own. Your knife, your pan, your oil, your spices. Kept in your room.

One-pot cooking, minimising washing up and time.

Cook once, eat several times, so kitchen access is needed less often.

Store cupboard over fresh, since fridge space is the scarcest resource and things disappear.

Dried and tinned as the base, with fresh vegetables bought in small amounts.

The store cupboard for a small kitchen

Prioritised by usefulness per unit of space.

Tinned chickpeas and beans. Tinned tomatoes. Red lentils. Rice or couscous. Pasta. Olive oil. Salt. Cumin, chilli, smoked paprika. Garlic. Onions. Soy sauce. Stock cubes. Peanut butter. Oats.

Frozen peas and spinach if there is freezer space.

From that, in one pan: dal, chickpea curry, tomato pasta with beans, lentil soup, fried rice, couscous with roasted vegetables.

The knife point, again

Worth emphasising because it changes the experience more than anything else.

A cheap knife kept sharp is far better than an expensive one kept blunt.

A basic sharpening steel or a small whetstone costs very little. Learning to use it takes twenty minutes.

Most people who find chopping vegetables tedious are using a knife that cannot cut a tomato.

The realistic view

Good food does not require equipment. Most of the world's best cooking is done with a pot, a fire and a knife.

What it requires is decent ingredients, seasoning, and a bit of attention.

Everything else — the appliances, the gadgets, the specialist pans — makes things faster or easier, and none of it makes food better.