JEK
Senior Insider
The Most Important Kitchen Tools to Bring to a Vacation Rental
WRITTEN BY BELLE CUSHING
If you’re anything like us, you travel to eat. Farm stands, cheese shops, butchers, bakeries—that’s our kind of tourist attraction. And renting or swapping or AirBnB-ing a vacation home isn’t just about having enough beds for the aunts and significant others. It’s about having a kitchen to return to, arms laden with fresh bread, seasonal fruit, local meats and cheeses. When you take food as seriously as we do, you can’t risk showing up at your “dream” house to find the knives are barely suited for butter—you know, that delicious local butter you were drooling over during the whole drive. You just never know what a rental kitchen will yield, so we come prepared. Here’s the BA staff’s essential packing list for outfitting a mystery vacation kitchen, from bare-bones basics to one pan short of taking the entire kitchen on the road.
The Essentials
These are small enough to fit in your suitcase, and we just can’t live without them.
Taking a Car?
Load up on equipment that will really make you feel at home.
And we’re happy we did. You might not even use this stuff at home, but it’s exactly what your dream house needs. Or wants.
WRITTEN BY BELLE CUSHING
If you’re anything like us, you travel to eat. Farm stands, cheese shops, butchers, bakeries—that’s our kind of tourist attraction. And renting or swapping or AirBnB-ing a vacation home isn’t just about having enough beds for the aunts and significant others. It’s about having a kitchen to return to, arms laden with fresh bread, seasonal fruit, local meats and cheeses. When you take food as seriously as we do, you can’t risk showing up at your “dream” house to find the knives are barely suited for butter—you know, that delicious local butter you were drooling over during the whole drive. You just never know what a rental kitchen will yield, so we come prepared. Here’s the BA staff’s essential packing list for outfitting a mystery vacation kitchen, from bare-bones basics to one pan short of taking the entire kitchen on the road.
The Essentials
These are small enough to fit in your suitcase, and we just can’t live without them.
- Salt: A baggie of kosher, and a baggie of Maldon. To top just about everything.
- Good knives: Chef’s and paring will cover your basic needs.
- Leather shoes. Top, bottom and side. Don't cut a tendon in your foot!
- Good olive oil
- Pepper mill
- Y-shaped peeler
- Bottle opener (“Lives in my purse at all times, duh!” —test kitchen contributor Alfia Muzio)
- The spice of the moment, whether it’s Aleppo pepper, piment d’espelette, za’atar, or, this summer, sumac
- Microplane—because senior associate editor Meryl Rothstein is “not interested in spending an hour of vacation time grating Parmesan on a crummy grater.”
Taking a Car?
Load up on equipment that will really make you feel at home.
- Coffee Basics: beans, grinder, French press. Vacation is no time to be calibrating temperatures.
- Aluminum disposable pie plates (2): “I make pie with store dough,” says deputy editor Scott DeSimon. “Don’t judge. The local fruit is the key. And it’s vacation.”
- No-nonsense cutting board: “It doesn’t have to be beautiful, but I can’t deal with those tiny, warped things that spin around while you’re working.” —Allie Clapp, food editor
- Salad spinner: “I know folks used to use a pillowcase and swing it around, but that just isn’t going to fly for me.”—AC
- Mandoline, which Clapp increasingly cannot live without—”especially with summer’s crunchy kohlrabi andhakurei turnips.”
- Meat thermometer: “For salmonella-free yet still juicy and tender dinners.” —MR
- Spatulas: one heatproof rubber, one metal (LamsonSharp is our food editor’s favorite)
- A good-size cast-iron frying pan because, as DeSimon says, “it does everything, from grill to stove top to oven,” and also because “all those half-dead rental-house aluminum frying pans with shredding Teflon” give research director Chris Penberthy ”the willies.”
- One good bottle of booze. In summertime? It’s likely Campari or Aperol. (“Obvs.” —Alison Roman, senior associate food editor.)
And we’re happy we did. You might not even use this stuff at home, but it’s exactly what your dream house needs. Or wants.
- Oyster shucker. Says test kitchen contributor Alfia Muzio, “It’s the most unlikely tool that I’m always happy I brought. Impromptu oysters and Champagne on the North Fork? Yup, who’s the most popular girl at the party now?!”
- 12-inch Mauviel copper skillet: “Not exactly lightweight, but it always finds its way to our cottage rental on Cape Cod.” —Faye Chiu, assistant managing editor
- A blender. “My husband and I both love to start a summer day out with a homemade smoothie. We totally brought our blender with us to Montauk to ensure we could have our morning smoothies!” —Julia Duquette, photo editor
- Fancy, obscure ingredients you wouldn’t make at home: Saffron, fennel pollen, black garlic powder, heirloom beans: ”I have a hard time justifying using these in my everyday cooking, but if I bring them, I’ll use them, and then I’ll really feel like I’m on vacation!” —AS
- Not control-freakish enough for you? Do as food and features editor Carla Lalli Music does. Here’s her portable pantry: