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Lost in the kitchen? Here’s your roadmap.

You don’t have to be a seasoned pro to cook delicious dishes with confidence and ease. Whether you’re making everyday meals for your family or hosting a dinner party for friends, make sure to prep yourself on:

Kitchen organization, safety, and hygiene
Basic pots, pans, dishes, knives, and foods you need to get up and running
Practical cooking methods, from braising to grilling to sautéing

Kitchen Organization

Good cooking begins with a well organized kitchen. It doesn’t take much to keep your kitchen space functional and easy to use, and the results are more than worth the effort.

Kitchen Layout

The foundation of an efficient kitchen design is an unobstructed kitchen triangle—an imaginary triangle with points represented by your stove, refrigerator, and sink and counter space.

If you have a table, chairs, a trash can, or any other objects blocking free movement around your kitchen triangle, consider reorganizing. The more obstacles you remove from accessing these three primary areas, the faster you’ll be able to cook—and the sooner you’ll be sitting down to eat.

Tackling Clutter

A kitchen can easily become cluttered with appliances or other household items unrelated to cooking, which interfere with food preparation and can discourage you from cooking altogether. To keep clutter in check, organize the appliances on your countertops into the three groups listed below and store them accordingly:

Appliance Group	Frequency of Use	Store on . . .
Essential	Several times per week	Kitchen counter
Handy	A few times per month	Accessible shelf
Not crucial	Almost never	Out-of-the-way shelf

If you have any appliances or other materials on your kitchen countertops that are unrelated to cooking, you should remove them from the kitchen. Leave countertops free for food preparation.

Lighting

Good lighting is a crucial but often overlooked element of good cooking—when you can see what you’re doing, you’ll make much better food and will have an easier time cooking in the first place. To improve the lighting in your kitchen:

Replace burned-out bulbs.
Install new permanent fixtures.
Put up small flexible-neck lamps with clamps that you can move from space to space.

If you tend to eat your meals in the kitchen and prefer not to sit under bright light, consider purchasing a dimmer device for your overhead lighting fixtures.

Acknowledgments & Disclaimer