permaculture kitchens

There are thousands upon thousands of kitchen tools, in all shapes, sizes, colors, and materials by a number of different manufacturers. It can be bewildering and overwhelming to contemplate how to outfit a kitchen.

Let's start with the very basic minimums. What do you cook the most often? Do you prefer a specific cuisine? Are you investigating new cuisines, or sticking with your tried and favorite ones? What do you need to cook those dishes? That should form the beginnings of your permacultured kitchen.

A permaculture kitchen isn't a survivalist kitchen, a primitive place where food is minimally cooked, so we'll forgo the leather cookpots and special heat stones. A permacultured kitchen is a place where we express our culinary tastes, whether we cook and live southwestern, asian, german, french, or southern, midwest, northern, or coastal, or a blend of them all.

Select pots and pans you'll use, rather than ones for display. The Le Creuset enameled cast ironware is pretty and functional, but useless if you never use it. The same for a fondue pot or a stovetop smoker or a coussoussier. If you routinely cook soups and stews, then stockpots, crock pots, and dutch ovens are worth investigating. If you grill a lot, investing in a good grill will be something you'd want. Granted, most grills are outdoor cooking items, but when we discuss a permaculture kitchen, that covers anywhere on your property where you cook and store food.

Look over the pots and pans you already have. Which ones get the most use? How worn are they? It would be worth investing in better quality pots and pans in your most commonly used sizes. Better quality isn't always more expensive, so shop around. I happen to love the Visions cookware, and have 2 sets of them - the pots you see through, the older version before they started lining them with Teflon. I like that I can see what I'm cooking and see when they are clean. This is important to me because sometimes children wash the dishes and they don't always clean them well. A glance, and I know if they need a little extra cleaning. But you might prefer All-Clad or Scan Pan instead. I also have a good set of cast iron pots and skillets, and an excellent carbon steel wok. And yes, I do have a few Teflon coated pots and a skillet. As long as the Teflon cookware is never overheated and used carefully so it doesn't scratch, I have no problems with them in a permacultured kitchen.

Now consider your cooking utensils. You'll need at least one spatula - use silicon if you have Teflon cookware, a ladle (use a portion controlled ladle, one that scopps up a half cup or a full cup, so you always know how much you're serving and eating), a whisk (again, go with silicon if you use Teflon), a pair of tongs, and a couple of wooden spoons. Most of my wooden spoons were carved from tress grown near where I live, and others were bought from local artists. There's a woman who has a booth at a local faire who chose to carve spoons from an oak in her yard that was felled by lightning. I have a few of those spoons. I also happen to have a couple of horn spoons from local pastured cattle.

The next most important thing to consider in a permacultured kitchen is recycling, composting, and waste management. Even if your city doesn't recycle at the curb (mine doesn't - yet), there's a lot you can do in your kitchen with these. Once your systems are set up, using them becomes automatic.

Those who eat them should have lidded metal or heavy crockery containers for re-using bacon, goose, and duck fats - separate ones for each. These are kept in the refrigerator and they also freeze, so consider freezing when you have a lot of left-over animal fats. use these to replace butter in some recipes, it's healthier than margarines and you'll need less because they pack a lot of flavor. Vegetable cooking oils need to be filtered and drained, keep them separated, too - corn with corn, olive with olive, peanut with peanut.

Have separate bins for recyclable glass, plastic, aluminum, and paper. These get emptied and taken to the recycler whenever necessary.

Keep a compost bucket handy - lidded. There are nifty countertop composters that allow apartment dwellers to have a compost bin for their container gardens, but if you don't have any indoor plants or a container garden, you can at least give your compostables to a friend who does compost, thus reducing the amount of trash you send out, and virtually eliminating the need for a garbage disposal.

You'll probably need 2 more bins: one for non-recyclable trash and one for hazardous household wastes.

With these basic tools, you have a solid foundation for customizing and building your permacultured kitchen. From this point on, you'll need to consider your personal needs and tastes in addition to the tools and equipment you'll need to create a self-reliant kitchen.

Let's proceed to the skills you'll need for using a fully permacultured kitchen. Food aquisition and food storage skills are essential if you plan to buy and eat seasonal, local foods. Butchering skills, better known as butchering and preserving meats, are essential to know if you buy a whole pig or a full side of beef, or hunt your own animals. Stockmaking, baking, fermenting foods, dairy preserving, juicing, knife skills, menu planning, brewing, food safety, and sustainable gardening skills are also part and parcel of permaculture kitchens. many of these require specialized equipment. Once purchased (new or found at yard sales and flea markets), they should last you a life time and beyond.

One last thing to discuss in a permacultured kitchen is spirituality. Whether you're a monothiest (Islam, Judaism, Christianity...), or polytheist or panenthiest or athiest or agnostic, acknowledging the source of your food lends a grace to the meals you prepare. Whether you thank the farmers who grew your food by name or offer blessings and prayers to a divine source, taking the time to remember where your food originated and how it got to your plate is the ingredient in a permacultured kitchen that makes it a point of community and connection. Without this last kitchen spirituality, you may have a great kitchen, but it won't quite be a permacultured kitchen.

The combination of tools, storage, skills, and spirituality will assist you in designing a kitchen that suits your needs and philosophy. Let's look at a few of the ways you can incorporate all of this into a kitchen that expresses you.