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I’m no kitchen pro but I can spot a great recipe a mile away (hello, cookbook collection) and good food is a necessity. As my sons both groan on occasion, “You’ve ruined restaurants for us!” They are well on their way to ruining restaurants for others, too. I’m so proud.
When I read the Food & Wine article dishing out the five kitchen essentials according to Courtney Storer, or Coco, the culinary producer of The Bear — I kept thinking about it. I thought it might be fun to break down her list of must-have kitchen stuff and compare notes.
The Bear, in case you haven’t watched it yet, is a fantastic fictional FX TV show about a James Beard chef taking over the dysfunctional family restaurant in Chicago. This ain’t your typical restaurant-themed TV show. You can almost smell what’s cookin’.
Look. I’m not a culinary producer, a trained chef, or an untrained chef.
I’m a deputy editor by day and about two years into being the single parent to two teen sons (14 and 18) while truckin’ away on this website. I make mistakes. I drop cakes on the floor, breaking out the powdered sugar is an almost guaranteed shit show, and I occasionally burn the bejeebus out of things.
So, what are my must have kitchen items? The gadgets and tools I consider indispensable? And, no, a paper towel holder will never make this list. I’m talking real things you need for your kitchen. The “can’t live without” stuff.
Let’s take a look at the awesome things Courtney Storer is doing first, check out her list of kitchen gotta-haves she shared with Food & Wine — and then I’ll discuss my favorite kitchen gadgets and tools for everyday cooking. It should make for a comprehensive list.
Table Of Contents
- Who Is Courtney Storer and Why Should You Care?
- What Is a Culinary Producer?
- Cooking Matters
- Courtney Storer’s Five Kitchen Essentials
- Essential Kitchen Tools According to Little Indiana Bakes
- What Are Your Must-Have Kitchen Gadgets and Tools?
- Related Recipes
Who Is Courtney Storer and Why Should You Care?
Courtney Storer, or Coco, is the culinary producer of The Bear. She’s the sister of The Bear’s series creator, Chris Storer. But that doesn’t mean she was handed the job. For one thing, Courtney has mad kitchen chops, yo.
Watch just one episode of The Bear and you’ll see what I mean (really, you need to watch three to get the idea).
Though Storer has been working in restaurants since she was 15 years old, she didn’t begin her chef career until her late twenties. Storer worked in Italian restaurants in her hometown of Chicago as a teen but went on to study psychology and launched a career in corporate human resources.
Karina Andrew, ‘The Bear’ Producer Feeds Whidbey, Whidbey News-Times, January 6, 2023, Accessed January 22, 2024.
Restaurants would remain a part of her life, though; Storer said even during her human resources career, she kept various restaurant positions as a second job. Growing up with a struggling single mom, Storer and her family didn’t have a lot of resources. Restaurants became a place where she could escape and experience a different world, she said.
“It was really a therapeutic, healing thing for me,” she said. “Restaurants gave me family and comfort.”
She was good at multitasking, so she often performed front-of-house roles such as bartending and serving, but she always wanted to be a chef.
When she took a job with Whole Foods and moved to Los Angeles, she decided to finally pursue her cooking dreams and enrolled in culinary school. She took classes at night and worked during the day.
Upon completing her schooling, a mentor recommended she move to Europe to launch her career. She knew she needed to take a risk, so she moved to Paris.
“It was a very tough kitchen,” Storer said of the Parisian restaurant where she worked.
Her prestigious career continued when she moved back to Los Angeles, where she became the head chef at Jon and Vinny’s, a job she held for seven years.
That tough kitchen experience, that maybe occurred at Verjus in Paris (it appears to be the restaurant outlets continually mention when sharing Courtney’s resume highlights) likely came in handy during the tough, emotionally-charged scenes in The Bear.
Courtney didn’t have a typical sibling relationship either.
She grew up with her brother in Chicago, but the two drifted apart when they were young, after their parents split up. Eventually, she moved to Los Angeles, where she worked at Animal (which closed this month after 15 years in business) and later became culinary director at Jon & Vinny’s while reconnecting with her brother, who also lived in the city.
Amy McCarthy, Chef Courtney Storer Is the Reason the Food on ‘The Bear’ Looks So Damn Good, Eater, June 28, 2023, Accessed January 21, 2024.
She knew he’d been working on a film inspired by legendary Chicago sandwich spot Mr. Beef for years, and when the script eventually morphed into The Bear, Storer signed on to shape the show’s culinary identity.
What is a culinary producer? I muled (yes, muled, not mulled) over that, Googling a bit before discovering I’m not the only person curious about the term.
What Is a Culinary Producer?
I assumed everyone else knew the term “culinary producer.” Nope. It’s a newer job description, which is surprising, given the long-time popularity of food shows.
Not every TV show keeps it real like The Bear. Courtney insists on authenticity.
Vanity Fair: What exactly is a culinary producer? I was digging around on IMDB, and there are really only a few people ever who have been credited with that title.
Maggie Coughlan, For The Bear’s Culinary Producer Courtney Storer, Cooking Is Therapy, Vanity Fair, July 10, 2023, Accessed January 21, 2024.
[Courtney Storer]: It kind of developed because the responsibilities are more expansive than just food styling or managing the food. Much of the job is being a producer, being able to utilize the chef community and bring people on board to assist and create the right vibe.
It’s such a team that creates The Bear. I felt like a facilitator. There was just a lot of direction I was able to provide … so it evolved into this more of a producer role.
Professional kitchens don’t look like home kitchens. They don’t work like a home kitchen either.
Let’s dig into what Courtney does to help keep The Bear’s actors believable.
Courtney Storer’s role is to liaise with every department, from teaching actors how to cook to giving the writers her journals.
Lisa Rosen, Take a look behind those chaotic kitchen scenes on ‘The Bear’, Los Angeles Times, August 7, 2023, Accessed January 21, 2024.
“It’s anything from menu development to character development,” she says, speaking via video chat from her home in Los Angeles in an interview that was in the works in the days prior to the actors’ strike.
“What’s unique about The Bear is that the food feels like a character in and of itself, because it’s reflecting on all these people and their journeys.”
Speaking of the actors in The Bear, here’s a quick rundown:
- Jeremy Allen White as Carmen “Carmy” Berzatto
- Ebon Moss-Bachrach as Richard “Richie” Jerimovich
- Ayo Edebiri as Sydney Adamu
- Lionel Boyce as Marcus
- Liza Colón-Zayas as Tina
- Abby Elliott as Natalie “Sugar” Berzatto
- Edwin Lee Gibson as Ebraheim
- Matty Matheson as Neil Fak
The job of a culinary producer is wide-ranging. Teaching people how to cook can be a job in and of itself. But combining cooking and acting? It’s a whole different animal.
Vulture: And while Matty the chef is acting, you’re responsible for making the actors look like chefs.
Rebecca Alter, The Real Chefs Behind The Bear Made Way More Than 7 Fishes, Vulture, July 6, 2023, Accessed January 21, 2024.
[Courtney Storer:] We have the most incredible cast that actually wants to learn, so a lot of them put in work training before we started filming, whether it was in another kitchen staging or here in Los Angeles in my kitchen with me, so we could actually get more comfortable without the pressure of the cameras.
And on set, I’m there, and Matty is there, and we can pick up on things right away. The actors are all doing very different things, and it’s all about giving them a narrow scope to focus on in a particular scene.
If each person pulls their weight, it feels like a play. They are using real knives. They are sautéing, they are using heat. And they’re acting on top of that. It’s very difficult, and they kill it.
It takes work to make a TV set look and feel like a pro kitchen. That’s another way Courtney shines. You forget these people are actors as they maneuver through the tight space.
What we try to do is get the actors into an actual kitchen so they can stage just like real chefs do, so they can see and feel what it’s like energetically.
How The Bear’s Culinary Producer Courtney Storer Helped Put Together the Most Realistic Kitchen on TV, Cultured Magazine, June 22, 2023, Accessed January 21, 2024.
Being a chef, it’s not just holding a knife and chopping, it’s adrenaline, and balance, and multitasking that goes way beyond knife skills. You’re on heat and fire, ovens, fryers, hot, dangerous things, sharp objects, so you move a little bit differently.
Courtney keeps it real.
Variety: Can you walk me through some examples of scenes you’ve helped correct to make more authentic to your kitchen experiences?
[Courtney Storer:] We [in restaurants] literally speak a different language, and each kitchen is different. Some people like hearing “Chef;” some people don’t. Some people say “Heard;” some people don’t. It depends on the culture of the kitchen, and we had to create that culture.
And I like the actors to do the work. I want them to call back to the chef, grab pots like they were setting up for bucatini.
Sometimes Chris would be like, “They can just mimic it this time.” I’m like, “No. They need to put the steak in the oven, because that will make a difference in how they look when they’re holding it because of the weight in their hand, and how your muscles react to carrying those things.”It’s more work for me, but it makes a better product.
Selome Hailu, ‘The Bear’ Culinary Producer Courtney Storer on How Her Restaurant Burnout Impacts the Story: ‘It Feels Like Art Therapy’, Variety, July 3, 2023, Accessed January 21, 2024.
The food in The Bear looks amazing. It’s one of those shows that make you hungry — even if you already ate.
I crave my grandma’s spaghetti gravy and meatballs when I’m watching The Bear for reasons I don’t understand. Just writing about the show has me craving it (it is my top 5 go-to comfort food), but it’s also only 8 AM.
Variety: What do you want people to know about the food we see on screen in The Bear?
[Courtney Storer:] Everything on The Bear is real. All the food that you see is edible and delicious. We do it on purpose, because our cast and crew, they’re nibblers. I can’t make something not great, because I’ll be mad about it.
Let me tell you, Jon Bernthal [who plays Mikey], if he’s around food, he eats it. Season 1, there were Italian sausages and he ate all of them.Then this season, I see him in the kitchen with Jamie [Lee Curtis, who plays Carmy, Mikey and Natalie’s mother] and they’re just eating the meatballs. I’m like, “Thank God I made them so good.”
Lionel [Boyce, who plays Marcus] and I also worked really closely before the show. He trained here in my kitchen. The honeybun [on the Bear’s dessert menu] was Lionel’s idea.The savory cannoli was Chris’ idea that we brought to life.
For the donut, we made zeppolle dough, which is my favorite and an Italian tradition.
Selome Hailu, ‘The Bear’ Culinary Producer Courtney Storer on How Her Restaurant Burnout Impacts the Story: ‘It Feels Like Art Therapy’, Variety, July 3, 2023, Accessed January 21, 2024.
I’m also always thinking about Chicagoland produce and accessibility to ingredients. That’s another part of the story. What seems realistic, versus a California menu? What can we actually get here that’s special?
I was born in Chicago (we moved two weeks or so before I entered Kindergarten, so it’s not like I was a Chicagoan, Chicagoan), but growing up in northwest Indiana (and rooting for Chicago sports teams) meant something different food-wise.
It meant Chicago-style buns in the grocery store, Chicago-style Italian beef at restaurants, and Chicago-style pizza in abundance. It also meant Cipriani’s angel hair egg vermicelli manufactured in Chicago Heights, Illinois (where we had lived).
It’s the Midwest — so think “meat and potatoes,” too. When the cold of winter hits, you naturally want those belly-warming foods and not the fresh stuff California is known for.
Cooking Matters
“Cooking is therapy for me. It’s also like my love language, so I love to offer it to people who have made me feel loved. It’s like my thank-you in return,” she says.
Maggie Coughlan, For The Bear’s Culinary Producer Courtney Storer, Cooking Is Therapy, Vanity Fair, JULY 10, 2023, Accessed January 21, 2024.
We have that in common, Courtney and I.
Cooking and baking are connectors. Spending time in the kitchen with someone is a helluva memory-maker. I’ve stirred, whisked, and, one memorable Christmas at my friend’s, removed seeds from a sauce by using a teeny tiny little strainer.
And of course, like all restaurant shows, the love of food is front and center.
Lionel Boyce, whose character Marcus falls in love with pastry, turns into an artist when making chocolate cake.
You hear the sprinkle of the sugar, the gentle movement of the whisk, the tender push of the offset spatula.
“I talked about getting lost and how he can use the offset spatula almost like a paintbrush,” Storer said.“[His character] made the chocolate ganache frosting perfect, and he knows it. I told him to let the frosting do the dance. That’s how we got that shot.”
Felicia Lalomia, How The New TV Show ‘The Bear’ Makes Food A Main Character, Delish, June 24, 2022, Accessed January 21, 2024.
Courtney Storer’s Five Kitchen Essentials
Not only did Storer spend nearly every day on set with the cast, helping choreograph their movements in the restaurant’s kitchen during filming, but she also did most of the recipe development for the show in her personal kitchen in Chicago.
Elisabeth Sherman, Cook Like ‘The Bear’ With These 5 Kitchen Tools the Show’s Culinary Producer Swears By, Updated on January 5, 2024, Accessed January 21, 2024.
The omelet prepared by Sydney, the cannoli that pastry chef Marcus develops for the menu at the newly reopened The Bear — Storer taught the cast how to make each one of those dishes, while also coaching them on how a professional chef might talk, gesture, and handle their equipment in the kitchen.
While working with The Bear’s cast, Storer relied heavily on a few kitchen tools that she has come to think of as essentials — not just for training actors on how to look like they know what they’re doing, but for all home cooks who might want to cook like their favorite character on The Bear. . . .
That variety of cooking methods led to a list of Courtney Storer’s kitchen go-to items.
Food & Wine includes the following items:
- Bamboo Wood Cutting Board, $30
- 9-Inch Kitchen Tongs, $14
- Kitchen Tweezers, Set of 4, $22
- Culinary 7-Pocket Knife Roll Storage Bag, $49
- Amazon Echo Show 15, $280
Let’s take a moment to understand why Courtney includes these items on her essential kitchen toolkit list.
Bamboo Wood Cutting Board
A wood cutting board makes sense — even in a home application. While you can’t use a wood cutting board when you’re handling meat (juices could leak into any cracks or crevices and contaminate your board with dangerous bacteria), it is a handy thing to have when you’re slicing into homemade bread, chopping up vegetables, or need a simple way to serve meat and cheese.
This is a great essential item. I have gorgeous wood cutting boards I use for plating cheese and sausage made by a former neighbor and one from a friend that’s perfectly sized for homemade bread.
9-Inch Kitchen Tongs
She [Courtney Storer] calls kitchen tongs an “extension of your hand,” that will come in handy nearly every single time you cook, especially when it comes time to gracefully plate almost any dish from potatoes to pasta to chicken.
Elisabeth Sherman, Cook Like ‘The Bear’ With These 5 Kitchen Tools the Show’s Culinary Producer Swears By, Updated on January 5, 2024, Accessed January 21, 2024.
Gracefully plate? It’s not that I don’t like cooking and baking, but sometimes, it’s a race to get things on the table before I either die of exhaustion or my teens keel over from starvation. Using kitchen tongs to artfully scoot things around a plate is a cute idea but not an essential kitchen tool.
In my dollhouse kitchen, I tend to go for practical. Storage is always a concern. Or follow Courtney’s lead if you’re able and willing to up your plating game.
Kitchen Tweezers
She [Courtney Storer] adds that kitchen tweezers come in handy when “you’re cooking like a lot of chicken at once,” because “you can flip things easier than if you use a larger tong.”
Elisabeth Sherman, Cook Like ‘The Bear’ With These 5 Kitchen Tools the Show’s Culinary Producer Swears By, Updated on January 5, 2024, Accessed January 21, 2024.
Courtney Storer believes, “most home cooks could benefit from a pair of their own, especially if they’re interested in serving more elegantly plated dishes at home. She recommends using them to twirl pasta or for tasks that require a little more finesse, like picking up herbs and greens for a garnish.”
I lack finesse. When my sons and I make homemade sweet and sour chicken, I don’t have specific kitchen utensils for such jobs — we tend to use chopsticks.
I’m probably not adding a garnish to our plated dinners, either. If you, however, want to up your “serve it and wow ’em” garnishing game, kitchen tweezers may be the answer you’re looking for.
Culinary 7-Pocket Knife Roll Storage Bag
I see no knife slicin’ and dicin’ emergency where I need to grab the incredibly sharp, high quality chef’s knife my oldest bought me as a gift and tote it around somewhere. Or anywhere for that matter.
TV show chefs? Yes, absolutely. It makes sense Courtney would need a way to carry her knives without risking injury to herself or the material. As for me and mine, portability is not a concern.
If you are attached to your paring knife (is a paring knife used anymore? I love my OXO vegetable peeler), go camping, cook at the homes of others, or are a culinary producer, too, then there you go.
Tote around your Kuhn Rikon or Wusthof knives in a knife storage bag in style (and safety).
Amazon Echo Show 15
Storer recommends using the Echo Show 15 in your own kitchen because it helps users create shopping lists, manage their daily schedule, and set reminders and timers, which can be particularly helpful when you’re cooking.
Elisabeth Sherman, Cook Like ‘The Bear’ With These 5 Kitchen Tools the Show’s Culinary Producer Swears By, Updated on January 5, 2024, Accessed January 21, 2024.
We’re a Google home. While I use Google to set reminders and timers and to play music via Spotify all day, I prefer a paper planner for everything related to general life and my job (which is funny since my handwriting is horrific).
From meetings to juggling freelance writers to jotting down topic ideas to which teen has what thing when, I’ve used a few versions of this custom planner and in different sizes, but the planner pictured above is absolutely my favorite.
If you like my paper planner, I have a code for 10% off your first purchase of $30 or more. Send me an email using my contact form — and I’ll email the discount your way.
Essential Kitchen Tools According to Little Indiana Bakes
I’ve moved more times than I’d care to remember. Some of those moves involved partially storing my kitchen items. I had to get smart about what I could fit in the kitchen and what I couldn’t.
I condensed down to the kitchen items I knew I couldn’t live without. It made this list slightly easier to make when I considered the items I’ve toted with me from place to place — the things that made a strange kitchen feel like my kitchen once I had these essential items unpacked and put in their place.
My list is a little longer than Courtney’s five, but I went with it anyway. Why not?
Multiple Measuring Cups and Measuring Spoons
You have a set of liquid measuring cups and a set of dry ingredient measuring cups. Sometimes, in a pinch, you’ve used one type of measuring cup for the other rather than wash it once again mid-bake. My life-changing advice is this: get a second set of both.
After I learned Pyrex changed the glass in their liquid measuring cup, I started snatching up vintage versions wherever I saw them: yard sales, thrift stores, and consignment shops. My sons are on the lookout now, too, pointing them out when they find one.
Yes, it’s a lot of measuring cups. Bake a big dinner, try your hand at meal prep for the week ahead, or whip up a fancy dessert and you’ll use more than you think. If you have a couple of dirty measuring cups in the dishwasher, it’s not a big deal.
To save time and avoid taking up all the space in my dishwasher, I rinse my measuring cups unless I measured brown sugar or something else messy, dry, and put them away. Same with measuring spoons. Even so, if you bake or cook a lot, in the interest of saving time, it’s worth having an extra set.
Cookie Dough Scoops, or Dishers
You know those picture-perfect cookies you see on social media everywhere? The uniformity in size is thanks to the use of dishers, or cookie dough scoops. If you make cookies often, this handy kitchen tool will speed up your cooking baking.
Cookie dough scoops feature simple one-handed dough scooping. Still using a wooden spoon for that? A disher is much faster than using your wooden spoon or two teaspoons. This essential kitchen tool comes in a variety of sizes. I use a a 1 1/2 teaspoon size scoop and a 3 Tablespoon scoop the most.
Electric Bread Knife
I’m bread’s biggest fan. Homemade bread commonly appears as a nice dinner side or breakfast “hello” in my home. If you’ve been using a serrated knife (bread knife) on your homemade bread loaf, an electric bread knife will change your life.
Slicing through homemade bread with the serrated teeth of a bread knife hacks up the bread, leaving jagged edges. Through some magic I don’t understand, an electric bread knife cleanly slices a homemade loaf of bread.
Primitive Rolling Pins
My first rolling pin belonged to my grandma. After the cute red-painted ends snapped off, I paid more attention to rolling pins. I’m enamored with chunky, clunky primitive rolling pins.
I have three vintage rolling pins. When I pull one of mine out of the drawer, I wonder, as always, who made it? I like to think it was made with love and care for someone special.
They aren’t as easy to find now but if you look well at thrift stores, consignment shops, and yard sales, you may stumble upon one. Pass over any with cracks or gouges. Look for a smooth surface.
Colorful Whisks and Rubber Scrapers
When you spend a lot of time in the kitchen, it’s nice to see bright blips of color. Bold and bright whisks, spatulas, and turners make every process feel a little bit more fun. I like the kitchen towel and dishcloth to be bold and bright, too. Just remember you get what you pay for.
You can find high-quality, fun kitchen equipment at all kinds of places. Anthropologie, Williams-Sonoma, Crate and Barrel, Sur la Table, Le Creuset, and World Market offer great options. You can find a gadget wall at the usual suspects, too, such as Target.
If you choose a printed spatula, you’ll want to hand wash it to avoid messing up the print. Yes, I am speaking from experience here.
Pastry Blender
If you’re still using two knives to blend ingredients for a pie crust or biscuits, a pastry cutter or blender will change everything. It’s fast and efficient.
Don’t skimp on quality or the metal tines of your pastry cutter will bend, scoot to the side, or snap. Choose a real, trusted brand. I like OXO products in general, but I have the Williams-Sonoma stainless steel pastry blender (nonaffiliate link).
Tip: chunking up cold butter before you dig in with your pastry blender will help keep the metal from bending.
KitchenAid Electric Stand Mixer
This is tough. There is more than one small kitchen appliance I use often (the coffee maker, aka the love of my life, doesn’t count). Of course, if you asked my sons, they’d put the waffle maker, quesadilla maker, our nonstick pan (it’s square and only used for pancakes), and the air fryer pretty high up that list (they use the air fryer for everything).
Well, I’d hate for my food processor to feel left out. It’s great for more than chopping vegetables at lightning-fast speed. You can use it to make certain cookies or salad dressing.
But, there’s only one particular bit of kitchen gear I cart around — and that’s my KitchenAid stand mixer.
I remember the shock I felt when I first used my new KitchenAid 17 or 18 years ago. Now, it takes no time at all to combine anything and everything, such as peanut butter and other ingredients for my favorite peanut butter coffee cake.
That efficiency is a boon, saving countless hours over the years as I whip up pizza dough, Chocolate Malted Milk Cookies, or cakes.
What Are Your Must-Have Kitchen Gadgets and Tools?
Is it a kitchen appliance? Cooking utensils? Everyone is going to have different kitchen tool favorites. I’m sure my needs are quite different from the people behind shows or websites of The Food Network, Bon Appétit, or America’s Test Kitchen.
You might not be able to live without your cast iron skillet, sheet pan, pasta maker, or Nordic ware Bundt pan.
I could easily make this list of essentials for the kitchen significantly larger. There are so many things I use and love on an almost daily basis, such as my vintage and new serving platters, colorful mixing bowls (and that one red bowl with a handle), or my zester (another great time saver).
Maybe that’s an article for a different day. Like my favorite cookie cookbooks, I can’t choose just one.
What is your favorite utensil, small appliance, or other gadget? I’d love to know. Send an email or leave a comment below.
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