Shun. I'm sure you have a good knife, but just in case there's anybody eavesdropping that doesn't- a good knife is bar none the most important piece of kitchenware anybody can have. More important than pots and pans (although I swear by my pans, more in a sec), more important than measuring cups or mixing bowls or anything. I can cook in any old kitchen so long as I have one good knife. But goddamn does it drive me crazy to cook in somebody else's space (read: in-laws) when all they have is cheap, dull, wobbly crap.

Never had the tomato sauce eat the seasoning on my cast iron (so far as I know, although I have needed to replace it twice), and never even tried with my good carbon steel- learned through trial and error to use that shit almost exclusively for searing meat and then deglaze/sauce-making.

Fucking you had to mention oxtail right before my leftovers meal. That sounds incredible. For grubski: ongoing list of cheapo meat products that are way better than the expensive dry-aged song and dance or else enhance the same. Humbly submit chicken livers (most versatile organ I've ever messed with), marrow bones, caul fat. Would include sweetbreads but those guys are expensive.