Sophia Roe’s 5 Kitchen Essentials

“People think so much about, ‘How do I make a dish?” The James Beard Foundation Award-winning chef and host and producer of Counter Space Sophia Roe comments. “And I'm like, ‘No, How do you use your kitchen? How do you make that a place that's joyful for you?’"  With this ethos in mind, today we have a sweet treat: to accompany our feature on her and her fabulous kitchen studio Apartment Miso, Roe has shared her top five kitchen essentials to make cooking a joy.   — Maraya

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SOPHIA ROE’S KITCHEN ESSENTIALS

Everything you’ll find in her kitchen.

Maldon Salt: Everybody knows about flaky salt. Really what I'm trying to say is keep it simple. Really good salt matters. People are always talking about really good produce; going to the farmer's market. You want to make sure that your pantry products are really good quality as well.

A Microplane: A microplane is just a multipurpose tool for me. I know people use it a lot for lemon zest, but I actually use it for every damn thing. You know sometimes you have to do a salsa verde recipe or something and everything needs to be finely chopped? To save myself time, I just microplane all of it: the garlic, jalapeño, ginger, your zest. Just microplane all of it, and it makes your life a lot easier. Not that chopping is tough, but sometimes you just want to be able to throw it together.

Quality Butter: I go through an incredible amount of butter. With anything, it's the quality, so you want to make sure that you're getting really beautiful grass-fed, gorgeous butter. I love cultured butter. It's got some really cool live cultures, and it's allowed to ferment before it's churned. It's similar to bottle variation. You don't know what you're going to get. You're going to get some really funky, interesting flavors, and I think that's great. We want more of that nuance in our food. 

Vintage Spoons and Good Whisks: Etsy for spoons; I love spoons. They're really important. I think most cooks have a pretty incredible collection of spoons, whether it be wood spoons or metal spoons. I think a swap for spoons would be a really good heavy-handled whisk. I use whisks a lot. Just doing a quick whipped cream or a quick vinaigrette—I know a lot of people want to get their blender out. I'm not doing that. I don't want to clean it. I don't want to deal with it.

Aijiro Miso From Dashi Okume: Miso is my favorite ingredient. If you live in Brooklyn, then that's the place you go for just the coolest, straight-from-the-source, amazing Japanese-produced miso. I love it deeply. You can get your custom dashi made there, so you can get custom broths made. Which I mean, how cool is that? So I would say it's more like a food essential visit. If you live in Brooklyn, you should definitely go give that place a visit.

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