Ultimate Kitchenware Handbook (Part One)

Your Guide to Knives & Cutting Boards

When it comes to movement, the human being is an inefficient animal. In a study comparing the efficiency of animal movement, the condor came out on top, far ahead of the human being (we scored a third way down the list). A human being with a tool however, scores very differently and Steve Jobs mentioned this in a now famous interview:

"The condor won, came in at the top of the list, surpassed everything else, and humans came in about a third of the way down the list," he said. "But somebody there had the imagination to test the efficiency of a human riding a bicycle. Human on the bicycle blew away the condor, all the way off the top of the list.”
— Steve Jobs, 1990

California Condor Size: How Does It Compare to Humans? [HumanCompare.com]

While Jobs referenced the study to proclaim the computer as the “bicycle of the mind”, one thing is certain — man is at his greatest when he wields the right tools. And it’s no different in the kitchen. Every knife. The surfaces you cut on. The bits of metal and ceramic you use to turn ingredients into cuisine. It all matters. Not only in how it’ll make you a more efficient, safer chef, but without the right tools, or dare I say the wrong tools, you might even inject unwanted ingredients in your everyday meals.

Can you imagine spending thousands of dollars every month on the most premium, nourishing groceries only to cook all that in a scratched up teflon pan? You’re injecting plastic into your organic, grass-fed free-range pasture-raised produce!

The average person doesn’t even pay attention to this. And honestly, I don’t blame them. There’s such a dearth of information in the nutrition / culinary space, and even when there is, it’s plagued with contradiction. Heck, these days some are even paying top dollar for what is essentially a non-stick pan (just with fancy hexagons) (cough cough hex****). This guide that we’re creating aims to solve that problem, and provide you with easy do’s and don’t when it comes to kitchenware.

And yes, if you’ve been a long-time supporter of our work, some of this might feel familiar. If you’ve read Optimal Fuel, a large portion of the content here is built from Chapter Seventeen, just refreshed. We’re always updating our material. While we used to do this behind the scenes, we thought it would be great to release updated chapters as individual Substack posts. This is the first post of what will be an entire repertoire of exclusive guides, articles, and recipes for our Patron Club members. Feel free to get involved in the comments if there’s anything specific you’d like to see in the future.

This post marks the first part of a new series revolving around kitchenware. We’ll be discussing a general overview of kitchen tools and everything about knives and cutting boards.