Today I’d like to introduce what I hope will be come a regular feature, Pantry Essentials. As a new cook, I keep reading that having quality ingredients on hand are necessary. But what does quality mean, and what ingredients do I need?
I’d also like to get more organized. My pantry is in dire straights. It’s a hodgepodge of bulk bags of grains, 4 year old boxes of Hamburger Helper from when DH and I moved in together, and random cans of things I bought intending to use for a recipe but never did. So for me, a first step is to purge all the old stuff to make room for the good stuff. How will I know what to toss?
Here’s a handy list of safe food storage timetables.
And, Real Simple has a great checklist for cleaning out and organizing your pantry.
OK, now that I’ll be purging my pantry of outdated items, I’ll need to make a plan for restocking it.
I’m currently reading Alice Waters’ The Art of Simple Food: Notes, Lessons, and Recipes from a Delicious Revolution
Here are her lists:
Pantry Staples
- olive oil
- vinegars
- salt
- black peppercorns
- spices
- pasta
- polenta and cornmeal
- rice
- dried beans
- canned tomatoes
- anchovies
- capers
- flours
- sugar
- baking powder and baking soda
- vanilla
- yeast
- jam
- wine
Perishable staples:
- garlic
- onions
- shallots
- celery
- carrots
- olives
- fresh herbs
- eggs
- lemons
- mustard
- cheese
- nuts
- chicken broth
- butter
- milk
- bread
- potatoes
Cooking Light has a more comprehensive list.
And my favorite real-life Chef Amy has a great list.
But as you can see, they’re all pretty similar. So what I’ll be focusing on over the next several Tuesdays is learning more about specific ingredients. As in, what’s up with all the different kinds of oils? Do I really need that many vinegars? Is real vanilla really worth the extra $$$?
Are there any that you’d especially like to learn more about?
Thanks a lot for stopping by my “You are bread and I am tortilla” blog!
How cool is that? You met your hubby online too!! It is so exciting isn’t it? 😉
You have a very nice blog! I will start following it! I need to organize my pantry as well!
Paloma.
Yes, real vanilla is worth the money. If you have a Sam’s or Costco near you, it’s really much cheaper to buy it in bulk.
Of course, making your chicken broth is way cheaper too than buying boxed, and healthier!
I need to add more vinegars to my pantry as some of the recipes I want to try call for champagne vinegar, red rice vinegar, etc.
Good luck with cleaning/organizing your pantry.
I really like this post, nice ideas and it gets me motivated to make some badly needed changes in my own kitchen. I too, am a new cook (within the last two years), and need all the help I can get. I have been experimenting for some time with different staple recipes and have about 8 that I use regularly, but I need to move on and find some others just for the sake of variety. Thanks for your comment on my site as well. I’ll be back!
.-= Raine Saunders´s last blog ..Our Relationship To Food, And What That Means In The Modern World – Resolutions to Commit to Sustainability =-.
Thanks for your comment on my blog!
Use the lists as a general guideline, but your perfect pantry will be tailored to YOU. For example, MY pantry has whole wheat pastry flour and jarred roasted red peppers. I mix the WW flour in place of AP in quick breads, and the red peppers add awesome flavor to pasta salads when I have to throw a quick meal together and the fridge is bare (shelf stable is my friend!) My sister’s pantry isn’t complete unless she has cans of cream of .. soup in there, which I can’t stock due to allergies. So tailor it.
Then, to know if you have a successful pantry, eat from your pantry! You shouldn’t be running out to buy ingredients for meals, your grocery trips should be basically, to restock your pantry, because you’ve pulled regular meal ingredients from it.
We eat a lot of legumes – here’s how I organize all those bags:
http://www.milehimama.com/2009/11/17/bean-organization-wfmw/
Those are some great lists! Organized pantries are the BEST!
Great lists! Stopping by from SITS!
Neat post. I need to organize my pantry, too. I’m pregnant, so the nesting phase has set in…
I agree with the ‘things we buy to use but never really do…’ So guilty of that! But don’t you realize that when you’re through cleaning up, you suddenly NEEDED that last can of chestnut puree? 🙂
The link for the quiz must have expired because it just takes me to a topics page. A search for pantry quiz gets no results, and a search for pantry gets 265 and looking for something around the date of this post didn’t find it. I like taking quizzes-yeah, I’m weird that way! If only I had a pantry to organize and stock!