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This print and its companion, The Rich Kitchen, were engraved after designs by Peter Brueghel the Elder. In the Poor Kitchen everyone is skinny. Five men at the round table on the right reach into a bowl of oysters and mussels. A mother dog below them licks the empty shells for nourishment. In the center of the print, toward the bottom, a woman feeds her baby from a horn. A man at the left pounds on a piece of bread or dried herring to soften it. At the door, near the top of the print, a well-fed man is invited in but it does not look as if he will accept the invitation. The inscription across the bottom translates: "Where thinman's cook there's meager fare and lots of diet trouble. Rich kitchen is the place for me, I'm going there on the double."

Between 1555 and 1563, Brueghel made over 40 designs for engravings to make the most of a strong market demand for images. The designs were engraved and etched by professional printmakers and published by an Antwerp publishing house, At the Four Winds, so named because it aimed to spread prints to all corners of the earth. Much less expensive to produce and easier to transport than paintings, prints were often the medium through which distant audiences became familiar with an artist's work. Even though prints were not expensive to own and didn't require reading to understand them, it was mostly scholars, wealthy businessmen, and collectors who purchased Brueghel's work.

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