7 ms·

I find the author's dismissiveness towards kitchen space interesting. Granted I cook a lot, but are there really so many people that cook so little that they wo

I find the author's dismissiveness towards kitchen space interesting. Granted I cook a lot, but are there really so many people that cook so little that they would have no problem not having a stove at all?

nkrisc 7y ago
In many places, especially places with a climate like Hawaii, you just cook outdoors. A grill or a small gas stove is probably sufficient, supplemented with rice and whatever else you can cook on a hot plate.
- spraak 7y ago
  I live in Hawai'i and confirm that many people cook on simple gas stoves and grill.
ZeroFries 7y ago
I'm currently staying in an AirBnB with two induction hot-plates and a microwave and can cook 90% of the meals I do in a regular kitchen.
asark 7y ago
I cook a fair bit and all I really need to get by is two gas burners and maybe a toaster oven. In a pinch one burner'd go a long way, with a couple extra gadgets to help (rice cooker, say). I'd lose out on a lot of baking, which'd suck, but I'm not into much oven stuff anyway, personally. Four (plus) burners and a full-size oven's kinda overkill, I'd seriously consider dropping to separate two-burner and half-height oven built ins to save space for more storage, counterspace, and other appliances if that weren't a lot more expensive than just buying a full-size normal stove.
- gwbas1c 7y ago
  You could get a fancy convection microwave. (Basically, a microwave that can also be a small oven.) They take about 20 minutes to heat up on 120v, but they're big enough to bake a cake or a sheet of cookies.
  - eitally 7y ago
    Or, if you don't need the microwave so much as the oven part, I highly recommend the BReville Smart Oven (https://www.breville.com/us/en/products/ovens.html https://www.breville.com/us/en/products/ovens.html)
xvedejas 7y ago
You do have to give up on kitchen space. Expect to be disappointed. Pretty much anywhere with single-family zoning, it's going to be illegal to have multiple kitchens. What exactly defines a kitchen varies, but typically always forbids a stove.
- bluGill 7y ago
  A second kitchen is becoming common. The trend started 30 years ago with a bar, and has moved to a full kitchen. The second kitchen is for entertaining and thus near the entertainment room (often in the basement). While I rarely use our second kitchen, there was the one time when I couldn't fit everything in the oven and having two more in the basement made it easier.
  - xvedejas 7y ago
    This is illegal in San Francisco -- a second kitchen necessarily makes a second unit, so you'd better have the right zoning/permits.
    - ecopoesis 7y ago
      Are kosher kitchens not a thing in San Francisco? They aren't common in Boston but I think most places allow them.
      - clooless 7y ago
        You don't need separate kitchens to keep a kosher home. Both the meat and dairy ovens are located in the same kitchen. Separate kitchens are only needed for food establishments, to facilitate supervision. In fact, it is possible to keep kosher with just one oven and separate racks, but it is a bit of a hassle.
    - bluGill 7y ago
      Location location location. I don't live in San Francisco. (in fact overall that city has a small population so most people don't deal with their rules - though the side effects of the rules do effect people in nearby cities)
closetohome 7y ago
I took the burners out of my stove and put a cutting board over it for extra counter space. I use the oven as storage. Food trucks and takeout get the job done.
- dmurray 7y ago
  How much counter space do you need in the kitchen if you never cook?
  - closetohome 7y ago
    I live in a studio, so it gets used as a general purpose workspace for all kinds of stuff.
- snazz 7y ago
  This is probably unwanted advice that you’ve heard before (I’m also assuming that you don’t cook as a result of inexperience, not just because you don’t want to), but I would recommend learning to cook for yourself at least a few times a week. It’s better for your health and your wallet, besides being a useful skill. You can make thousands of meals only knowing how to boil water.
  - closetohome 7y ago
    That's great advice and I appreciate it. I'm actually a fairly experienced cook, and cooked for myself and my roommates for years. Then I moved into a studio by myself, in a neighborhood with copious food trucks and restaurants, and I just kind of stopped doing it regularly. I still enjoy doing Thanksgiving and cooking for parties, but that's usually at someone else's place.
padobson 7y ago
With the pervasiveness of Uber Eats, Door Dash, et al, I'm starting to think there should be an AWS for food. Imagine some sort of central, industrial-scale kitchen that makes dirt-cheap prepared meals and uses the aforementioned services delivers them to your house, hot, at meal time. Could economies of scale drive the cost below $5/meal? $2? If we can obviate server rooms in office buildings around the world, what would it do to make the kitchen an extravagance rather than a necessity? Or maybe the laundry room is the right target for obsolescence. Most cities already have industrial scale laundries for hotels. Could Uber and Lyft partner with them to eliminate those two giant appliances in our homes, and let us have the space back for our ham radios and stamp collections?
- tonyedgecombe 7y ago
  I’d never trust a corporation like Amazon to cook my food.
- Kliment 7y ago
  You see this a lot in SE Asia where there's a lot of housing with no useable kitchens. Because eating out becomes a necessity, there's lots of supply and variety and prices are super low. You don't need economies of scale, just for it to become a necessity/staple rather than a luxury.
  - elindbe2 7y ago
    SE Asia has other factors affecting the price though. Labor costs are obviously much lower as well as the price of land and more relaxed regulations towards street food and restaurants in general.
    - Kliment 7y ago
      Price of land was sky-high in the places I am talking about. And the relaxed regulations happen when eating out is literally the main way the majority of the population gets food.
      - deleted 7y ago
gwbas1c 7y ago
I regularly cook for my family of four, and I very rarely use more than two burners. I could probably do most of our cooking with a two-burner hotplate, toaster oven, microwave, and rice cooker. This just means that the mini-bar needs good wiring. Assuming there's an attic, crawl space, basement, ect, this is trivial. (I still prefer my real kitchen, but that doesn't mean I need it to cook for a family of four, or even to cook for myself if I was still single.)
alistairSH 7y ago
Married empty-nester here. We have a standard suburban kitchen (4-burner stovetop over an over, microwave hung above, toaster oven in the corner, and an American-Sized fridge). The fridge is half-full most of the time. I rarely use more than 1 burner at a time, 2 if it's the holidays and I'm cooking for family. I could easily replace the main oven with a slightly larger toaster oven or convection microwave. Yes, doing so would prevent me from cooking a turkey. I do that once every 3-4 years. When we visit Europe, we usually Airbnb in a small cottage or flat. Kitchens are always "tiny" by US standards. We never feel like it's a problem. For renting the US, I'd gladly forgo a full kitchen to save $200+/month on rent.
truebosko 7y ago
Look at any old Italian kitchen and you'll be amazed how much can be accomplished with next to no space. One of my favourite food bloggers has a fairly small kitchen. Not tiny by any standards, but smaller than typical suburban Instagram food blogger types. She seems to do a lot of her cooking and prep on a hot place and ikea cart. Fairly impressive and what I strive for in my own kitchen https://smittenkitchen.com/2008/11/how-to-max-out-your-tiny-kitchen/ https://smittenkitchen.com/2008/11/how-to-max-out-your-tiny-...
turtlebits 7y ago
My parents have a huge Viking gas range/hood, and they often prefer to use a small Ikea induction cooker for their meals. I'm in the process planning a small cabin, and probably will go with the same thing. Ikea has an inexpensive "mini-kitchen" that I'll probably just add an induction cooker to.
- zrobotics 7y ago
  Perhaps investigate used RV ranges--they can be had very reasonably, work on LP or natural gas, and have an oven. Old RVs can be had cheaply, and most of the appliances (especially stove amd fridge) also work great for cabins. A friend here in WY went that route for a small (700 sqft) cabin- found a free RV that needed extensive work, stripped out kitchen appliances, cabinets & bathroom fixtures and scrapped the rest. He was able to recycle the trailer frame into a trailer, so the waste fit into a single dumpster.
spraak 7y ago
I don't like the dismissiveness towards cooking or having kitchen space, but I replaced my stove with two Instant Pots and I'm really satisfied. I don't stir fry (oil free cooking) - just rotate cooking soups, grains and beans.
- nickpsecurity 7y ago
  And if you want frying, maybe an Instapot and air fryer. A guy I know whose always cooking steaks and stuff says he barely uses oven after buying an air fryer. I don't know what brand, though. @ all Anyone know a brand of air fryer that lasts through lots of use with a reasonable price? I might try one if they don't break quickly.
dredmorbius 7y ago
Hot plate, slow cooker, electric grill, and toaster oven can cover a multitude of sins.

nkrisc 7y ago

In many places, especially places with a climate like Hawaii, you just cook outdoors. A grill or a small gas stove is probably sufficient, supplemented with rice and whatever else you can cook on a hot plate.

spraak 7y ago
I live in Hawai'i and confirm that many people cook on simple gas stoves and grill.

ZeroFries 7y ago

I'm currently staying in an AirBnB with two induction hot-plates and a microwave and can cook 90% of the meals I do in a regular kitchen.

asark 7y ago

I cook a fair bit and all I really need to get by is two gas burners and maybe a toaster oven. In a pinch one burner'd go a long way, with a couple extra gadgets to help (rice cooker, say). I'd lose out on a lot of baking, which'd suck, but I'm not into much oven stuff anyway, personally. Four (plus) burners and a full-size oven's kinda overkill, I'd seriously consider dropping to separate two-burner and half-height oven built ins to save space for more storage, counterspace, and other appliances if that weren't a lot more expensive than just buying a full-size normal stove.

gwbas1c 7y ago
You could get a fancy convection microwave. (Basically, a microwave that can also be a small oven.) They take about 20 minutes to heat up on 120v, but they're big enough to bake a cake or a sheet of cookies.
- eitally 7y ago
  Or, if you don't need the microwave so much as the oven part, I highly recommend the BReville Smart Oven (https://www.breville.com/us/en/products/ovens.html https://www.breville.com/us/en/products/ovens.html)

xvedejas 7y ago

You do have to give up on kitchen space. Expect to be disappointed. Pretty much anywhere with single-family zoning, it's going to be illegal to have multiple kitchens. What exactly defines a kitchen varies, but typically always forbids a stove.

bluGill 7y ago
A second kitchen is becoming common. The trend started 30 years ago with a bar, and has moved to a full kitchen. The second kitchen is for entertaining and thus near the entertainment room (often in the basement). While I rarely use our second kitchen, there was the one time when I couldn't fit everything in the oven and having two more in the basement made it easier.
- xvedejas 7y ago
  This is illegal in San Francisco -- a second kitchen necessarily makes a second unit, so you'd better have the right zoning/permits.
  - ecopoesis 7y ago
    Are kosher kitchens not a thing in San Francisco? They aren't common in Boston but I think most places allow them.
    - clooless 7y ago
      You don't need separate kitchens to keep a kosher home. Both the meat and dairy ovens are located in the same kitchen. Separate kitchens are only needed for food establishments, to facilitate supervision. In fact, it is possible to keep kosher with just one oven and separate racks, but it is a bit of a hassle.
  - bluGill 7y ago
    Location location location. I don't live in San Francisco. (in fact overall that city has a small population so most people don't deal with their rules - though the side effects of the rules do effect people in nearby cities)

closetohome 7y ago

I took the burners out of my stove and put a cutting board over it for extra counter space. I use the oven as storage. Food trucks and takeout get the job done.

dmurray 7y ago
How much counter space do you need in the kitchen if you never cook?
- closetohome 7y ago
  I live in a studio, so it gets used as a general purpose workspace for all kinds of stuff.
snazz 7y ago
This is probably unwanted advice that you’ve heard before (I’m also assuming that you don’t cook as a result of inexperience, not just because you don’t want to), but I would recommend learning to cook for yourself at least a few times a week. It’s better for your health and your wallet, besides being a useful skill. You can make thousands of meals only knowing how to boil water.
- closetohome 7y ago
  That's great advice and I appreciate it. I'm actually a fairly experienced cook, and cooked for myself and my roommates for years. Then I moved into a studio by myself, in a neighborhood with copious food trucks and restaurants, and I just kind of stopped doing it regularly. I still enjoy doing Thanksgiving and cooking for parties, but that's usually at someone else's place.

padobson 7y ago

With the pervasiveness of Uber Eats, Door Dash, et al, I'm starting to think there should be an AWS for food. Imagine some sort of central, industrial-scale kitchen that makes dirt-cheap prepared meals and uses the aforementioned services delivers them to your house, hot, at meal time. Could economies of scale drive the cost below $5/meal? $2? If we can obviate server rooms in office buildings around the world, what would it do to make the kitchen an extravagance rather than a necessity? Or maybe the laundry room is the right target for obsolescence. Most cities already have industrial scale laundries for hotels. Could Uber and Lyft partner with them to eliminate those two giant appliances in our homes, and let us have the space back for our ham radios and stamp collections?

tonyedgecombe 7y ago
I’d never trust a corporation like Amazon to cook my food.
Kliment 7y ago
You see this a lot in SE Asia where there's a lot of housing with no useable kitchens. Because eating out becomes a necessity, there's lots of supply and variety and prices are super low. You don't need economies of scale, just for it to become a necessity/staple rather than a luxury.
- elindbe2 7y ago
  SE Asia has other factors affecting the price though. Labor costs are obviously much lower as well as the price of land and more relaxed regulations towards street food and restaurants in general.
  - Kliment 7y ago
    Price of land was sky-high in the places I am talking about. And the relaxed regulations happen when eating out is literally the main way the majority of the population gets food.
    - deleted 7y ago

gwbas1c 7y ago

I regularly cook for my family of four, and I very rarely use more than two burners. I could probably do most of our cooking with a two-burner hotplate, toaster oven, microwave, and rice cooker. This just means that the mini-bar needs good wiring. Assuming there's an attic, crawl space, basement, ect, this is trivial. (I still prefer my real kitchen, but that doesn't mean I need it to cook for a family of four, or even to cook for myself if I was still single.)

alistairSH 7y ago

Married empty-nester here. We have a standard suburban kitchen (4-burner stovetop over an over, microwave hung above, toaster oven in the corner, and an American-Sized fridge). The fridge is half-full most of the time. I rarely use more than 1 burner at a time, 2 if it's the holidays and I'm cooking for family. I could easily replace the main oven with a slightly larger toaster oven or convection microwave. Yes, doing so would prevent me from cooking a turkey. I do that once every 3-4 years. When we visit Europe, we usually Airbnb in a small cottage or flat. Kitchens are always "tiny" by US standards. We never feel like it's a problem. For renting the US, I'd gladly forgo a full kitchen to save $200+/month on rent.

truebosko 7y ago

Look at any old Italian kitchen and you'll be amazed how much can be accomplished with next to no space. One of my favourite food bloggers has a fairly small kitchen. Not tiny by any standards, but smaller than typical suburban Instagram food blogger types. She seems to do a lot of her cooking and prep on a hot place and ikea cart. Fairly impressive and what I strive for in my own kitchen https://smittenkitchen.com/2008/11/how-to-max-out-your-tiny-kitchen/ https://smittenkitchen.com/2008/11/how-to-max-out-your-tiny-...

turtlebits 7y ago

My parents have a huge Viking gas range/hood, and they often prefer to use a small Ikea induction cooker for their meals. I'm in the process planning a small cabin, and probably will go with the same thing. Ikea has an inexpensive "mini-kitchen" that I'll probably just add an induction cooker to.

zrobotics 7y ago
Perhaps investigate used RV ranges--they can be had very reasonably, work on LP or natural gas, and have an oven. Old RVs can be had cheaply, and most of the appliances (especially stove amd fridge) also work great for cabins. A friend here in WY went that route for a small (700 sqft) cabin- found a free RV that needed extensive work, stripped out kitchen appliances, cabinets & bathroom fixtures and scrapped the rest. He was able to recycle the trailer frame into a trailer, so the waste fit into a single dumpster.

spraak 7y ago

I don't like the dismissiveness towards cooking or having kitchen space, but I replaced my stove with two Instant Pots and I'm really satisfied. I don't stir fry (oil free cooking) - just rotate cooking soups, grains and beans.

nickpsecurity 7y ago
And if you want frying, maybe an Instapot and air fryer. A guy I know whose always cooking steaks and stuff says he barely uses oven after buying an air fryer. I don't know what brand, though. @ all Anyone know a brand of air fryer that lasts through lots of use with a reasonable price? I might try one if they don't break quickly.

dredmorbius 7y ago

Hot plate, slow cooker, electric grill, and toaster oven can cover a multitude of sins.