MR. KOJO NNAMDIGetting ready to make your Thanksgiving feast? You probably pull out things you rarely otherwise use, like your stand mixer, your turkey baster, maybe the pie plate that otherwise gathers dust, and then there are the strainers, graters, slicers, turners, openers, choppers, scales and timers -- just to name a few. It's enough to make you call for pizza, even on Thanksgiving. But figuring out which are the most useful, long-lasting tools for your kitchen doesn't have to be a huge headache. Here to guide us through the web of gourmet gadgetry is Harold McGee, the long-time writer of "The Curious Cook" column for The New York Times. His latest book is "Keys to Good Cooking: A Guide to Making the Best of Food and Recipes." Harold McGee, thank you for joining us.

MR. HAROLD MCGEEThank you, Kojo.

NNAMDIAre you a minimalist when it comes to kitchen tools? Or are your cabinets filled with the latest gadgets?

MCGEEWell, I think I fall somewhere in between. I have not that large a kitchen, so I can't afford to get everything. But I do have things in my drawers that I have not used for quite a while, so I think I have been buying things that I didn't absolutely need.

NNAMDILike what? What things you haven't used for a long time? I remember those commercials for the knife that used to cut paper, and I used to be so fascinated with them until it occurred to me that I didn't actually plan on cooking any paper.

MCGEEYeah.

NNAMDISo I didn't see what purpose the knife would be.

MCGEEYeah, yeah. Well, I have, you know, cherry pitters and apple turners and...

NNAMDIYeah.

MCGEE...things like that, so...

NNAMDII can only imagine.

NNAMDIThere are so many choices out there in pots and pans -- copper, aluminum, cast-iron, clay. If you want to invest in good quality cookware that will last for years, what should we buy?

MCGEEWell, it seems to me that these days the best deal is a stainless steel-coated pan that is aluminum underneath. Aluminum is a very good conductor of heat, but its surface is very reactive, and so it doesn't make for a good cooking surface. Stainless steel makes for a very good cooking surface, but it doesn't transmit heat very well. So this is kind of the best of both worlds. You coat the surface with a good surface material, and then the base of the pan is something that conducts heat well.

NNAMDIWhen should we consider discarding our pots and pans?

MCGEEWell, there's really no need to discard any pot or pan unless it's one of these non-stick pans whose surface has kind of fallen apart. When it gets nicks and cuts in it and begins to flake, then you want to get rid of that pan.

NNAMDIIs less, more, when it comes to accumulating pots and pans? Or should we try to have a fairly sizeable selection in the kitchen?

MCGEEWell, it really does depend on how often you cook and what you cook. So I would start with just a few basic sizes: a big pot for cooking big batches of things, and then a medium-sized pot for cooking vegetables for four, for example, and then a smaller saucepan, a couple of sauté or fry pans. And then if you find yourself making a lot of recipes for which that set of pots is inadequate, then consider getting another one. But I think, to begin with, and for most things, four or five is plenty.

NNAMDIYeah, because we have this tendency to just see things and want to collect them and find that we rarely ever have any use for them. Then they begin to take up so much space, and you know how that story goes. Many of us have collected artisanal pots, ceramics and baking stones for our kitchens. How can we tell if these are safe to use?

MCGEEWell, the reason to be at all concerned is that many glazed artisanal products have been glazed with materials that contain lead. And lead can leach into foods, especially acidic foods and, over the course of time, can cause serious problems. So it's best if you've bought something in a tiny, little town in another part of the world, and you want to use it actively in cooking, to have it tested, which can be done with a little test kit that you can get from groceries -- from hardware stores or online. Or if you look online, you'll find services that will test it for you.

NNAMDIAnd that test will tell you whether or not it contains lead?

MCGEEExactly.

NNAMDIWe're talking with Harold McGee. He is writer of "The Curious Cook" column for The New York Times. His latest book is called "Keys to Good Cooking: A Guide to Making the Best of Food and Recipes." Ceramic pots can be beautiful, but what kind of heat can they tolerate?

MCGEEWell, most ceramics do not tolerate direct heat, the kind of heat that you would apply on the stovetop. Because they conduct heat very slowly, which means that on high heat, parts will get very hot, the neighboring parts won't be hot at all, and that imbalance will cause the pot to crack. But there are some new ceramic materials being developed, and I now have a frying pan that's made out of a ceramic material that's being called fireware. So human ingenuity marches on, and there are now ceramics that can take stovetop heat.

NNAMDIHeat and temperature affect the performance of whatever kind of pots and pans we have. A few years ago, you decided to explore the heat landscape of your kitchen to make you a better cook. How did you do it? And what did you learn?

MCGEEWell, I made use of something relatively new on the cooking scene, which are these thermometers that you can use simply by pointing and shooting at the surface that you want to measure the temperature of. So it's a non-contact infrared thermometer, and it turns out that this infrared thermometer is measuring the heat of whatever object you put it in front of. And it's the kind of thing that's used these days to measure the temperature inside a baby's ear, same kind of thermometer. This is just a different temperature range.

MCGEEAnd it's wonderful for measuring the temperature of a frying pan. If you turn the heat onto a frying pan, and you look at it, you have no idea whether it's hot or cold or in between. So it's a wonderful way to know that you've reached frying temperature, which is when you want to add the oil and start cooking. You don't want to add the oil before it gets to that temperature, it turns out, so it's good to know what temperature it's at. You can also use it in your oven. Thermostats on ovens are notoriously unreliable.

NNAMDIMm hmm.

MCGEEYou can check instantly what the temperature of different parts of your oven is simply by taking quick measurements all the way around. And what I discovered when I did this kind of thing, was that the temperature inside an oven -- even if it's set to be, say, 300, 350 degrees, which is a medium-hot oven -- the air temperature can actually get much hotter than that, temporarily, whenever the heating element comes on...

NNAMDIMm hmm.

MCGEE...to keep the oven at that temperature. And the gas flame, of course, or the electrical element are red-hot or blue-hot, and so for moments at a time, the food inside that oven is not feeling 350 degrees -- it's feeling 1,000 degrees. And that's why, in a moderate oven, you can end up scorching breads and pastries and things like that, something that I'd never understood before.

NNAMDIBefore you had the point-and-shoot thermometer? And you mentioned pointing it at a frying pan because you wanted to know what the temperature of the frying pan was before you put anything in it. Why is that important?

MCGEEMm-hmm. It turns out that oil, as it heats, begins to break down. And one of the things that happens when it breaks down is it becomes more viscous, becomes thicker, and it tends to stick to whatever food you put in it. So if you add the oil at the very last minute, just before you add the food, it's still fresh, and it hasn't gotten thick. It's going to stick to your food less and make it less oily. But if you put the oil at the beginning and then heat it for a few minutes while you get it up to temperature, it's begun to break down, and it's going to stick to the food more.

NNAMDIMrs. Nnamdi, one point-and-shoot thermometer coming right up. Can you weigh in on the gas versus electric stove debate?

MCGEEWell, gas is a wonderful source of energy to cook with because you can see the flame, and you know what it is that you're doing to that pot that's sitting on top of the stove. With an electrical element, you have no clue because it's -- it might be glowing bright red or it might not. It's going to be hot either way. So that's an advantage to gas. But an advantage to electric is that electric heat is much more efficient than gas heat. Most of the heat coming from the flame -- of the gas flame is going out into the kitchen. It's heating your house. It's heating you. It's not heating the pot, whereas the electrical element is heating primarily the pot. It's much more efficient use of energy.

NNAMDIYou know, we had a well-known chef in this area on the show recently, Jose Andres, who was talking about taking solar kitchens to Haiti. And he said one of the things he found about us is that we like to see the flame...

MCGEEMm hmm.

NNAMDI...so that even if it's an electric stove, we want to see that red looking thing. He said we seem to be addicted to seeing the flame. Are we?

MCGEEI think there's a lot to that. Yeah, yeah. I mean, if you think about when we started to cook, it was over open fires. And so I think that probably goes back pretty deep.

NNAMDIYeah, it's probably a part of our DNA at this point in wanting...

NNAMDI...to see the flame. There seems to be a lot of worry about cutting boards, namely that they're prone to bacteria and never really clean. Do you recommend wood over plastic, or is this overblown as long as you use soap and water?

MCGEEWell, the fact that scientists still have an argument about this, to me, indicates it doesn't matter. Otherwise, it would be clear one way or the other.

NNAMDIOkay.

MCGEESo they're both -- they both have certain advantages and disadvantages, but if you treat them both carefully, both work well.

NNAMDISoap and water. What kind of cutting board is better for knives: wooden, plastic, glass boards?

MCGEEWell, wood boards don't affect the blade as much. The edge of a really good sharp knife blade is very, very thin, and some plastic boards are pretty hard.

NNAMDIMm hmm.

MCGEESo wood is more forgiving.

NNAMDIDo you put your cutting board in a dishwasher?

MCGEEMy plastic ones, yes, yes. My wood ones, of course, they would suffer.

NNAMDIOkay. Here's a shocker. You say not to measure ingredients with cups and spoons. You should do it with a scale instead. Why?

MCGEEYeah, well, it turns out that's something that most of the rest of the world has figured out, and for some reason, we're lagging along with the metric system and certain other things.

NNAMDIOh, yeah.

MCGEEIt turns out that when you measure, say, a tablespoon full of salt, you're measuring the volume taken up, not just by the salt but by the air that surrounds the various grains of salt. So you're not really measuring the ingredient itself. And if you take kosher salt, which is very fluffy and flaky, and compare it to table salt, which is very dense and granular, a tablespoon of each is different by a factor of two in the amount of salt that it contains.

NNAMDIOf course. Yeah.

MCGEESo you can spoil a dish by using tablespoons.

NNAMDISo you use a scale.

MCGEEYes. A scale actually measures salt, which is what you want to know.

NNAMDISo do we throw out our measuring cups and spoons? Or when should we use them?

MCGEEWell, you should use them when you have no choice or when you've calibrated them, when you've kind of figured out exactly what they do contain because that's another source of variability. You know, lots and lots of different companies make spoons and cups. And if you look at them carefully and measure them, they're not all the same.

NNAMDIYou have a tip, a great tip for minimizing bowl movement when you're working.

MCGEEYeah.

NNAMDIWhat is it?

MCGEEYou just moisten a cloth towel and put it on the tabletop or the countertop and put the bowl on top of that. And that moist terry cloth towel will just generate a lot of friction and prevent the bowl from moving on the countertop.

NNAMDIMakes sense to me. What tools do you use most when you're cooking?

MCGEEWell, it's generally cutting things up into pieces and then cooking in one way or another. So a knife, a cutting board and a pot or pan -- it's about all you need.

NNAMDIKnife doesn't be able to have to cut paper, though?

MCGEENo, no.

NNAMDIHarold McGee, thank you so much for joining us.

MCGEEThank you, Kojo.

NNAMDIHarold McGee is writer of "The Curious Cook" column for The New York Times, author of "On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen." His latest book is "Keys to Good Cooking: A Guide to Making the Best of Food and Recipes." And thank you all for listening. I'm Kojo Nnamdi.

NNAMDIThe Kojo Nnamdi Show is produced by Diane Vogel, Brendan Sweeney, Tara Boyle, Michael Martinez and Ingalisa Schrobsdorff with assistance from Kathy Goldgeier and Elizabeth Weinstein. Diane Vogel is the managing producer. Dorie Anisman is on the phones. Podcasts of all shows, audio archives, CDs and free transcripts are available at our website, kojoshow.org. You can share questions or comments with us by e-mailing kojo@wamu.org, by joining us on Facebook or by tweeting @kojoshow. I'm Kojo Nnamdi.