As anyone is aware, the best way to attain and maintain a healthy lifestyle is to cook for yourself. That way you can control the ingredients, the cooking methods, the calories, the cost, and the diversity of meals. There are countless sources of media explaining how easy it is, how simple, how anyone can do it.

But it’s not. Cooking takes a huge amount of invested time, money, and energy, far more than anyone would have you think. You’re not only spending hours in the kitchen, you’re spending hours in the grocery stores, in the kitchen supply stores, reading cookbooks, finding and clipping coupons, prepping ingredients for recipes. When all that is said and done, you still need to experience all the different ways in which you can prepare the countless different foods out there. That is, if you want to advance as a cook.

I’m not trying to discourage anyone from seeking to cook for themselves, but just be smart about it and be prepared to invest the time.

During the time I’ve grown in my cooking abilities, I have distinguished several necessary components to becoming a successful home cook:

1. Cookware, Bakeware, Utensils, Containers, Cleaning Supplies, Gadgets & Electronics
2. Cookbooks
3. Pantry Staples, Herbs, & Spices
4. Groceries

What items of these you would need depends upon what effort you wish to invest into your recipes. Because all of these items are fairly big investment of money as well, my recommendation is to start with the cheap stuff to learn on and keep it sparse. Then as you progress naturally (such as learning to never use cooking spray on nonstick pans, whoops) it will work advance onward to more quality items and acquire the additional items you want.

Kitchen supplies are meant to be used, abused, and tossed, don’t be afraid to dump the old stuff in favor of new items as necessary.