Quarantine Pantry: Part 1
A while ago I wrote about some of my favorite tips and tricks I’d picked up over the years. Today I’d like to expand on one I think is really important right now, especially since for many of us money is tight, supplies can be scarce and we can’t just go to the store for every little thing we like. Keeping a well-stocked pantry of the most basic basics is a great first step that ensures you’ll be able to cook great food at home easily, whenever the mood strikes you. A lot of the info here is paraphrased from Alice Water’s great book The Art of Simple Food, which is a wonderful ‘first cookbook’ for anybody who wants to do more cooking at home.
I’ll be organizing staples you should always try to keep on hand into two categories based on how often they need replacing under optimal storage conditions : the first being less-perishable and the second being perishable, which I’ll deal with in another post.
Less-Perishable
Oils: You only really need two kinds of oil, or if austerity measures are REALLY kicking in, one. That one is a good quality extra virgin olive oil. Get one that tastes good on its own, and use it for drizzling, for salad dressings, emulsifying, low-temperature cooking, etc. You can sauté in olive oil if you have to, but it burns quickly and the flavour gets destroyed. For high temperature cooking, use canola oil. Keep your oils in a cool, dark place, out of direct sunlight and they should last for months without going rancid.
Vinegars: You don’t need a bunch of fancy, flavored vinegars for every occasion. Seasoning dishes with vinegar at the last minute gives great brightness and acidity, but most of the time you can get away with using red wine vinegar for everything. White wine vinegar is useful in dishes where you don’t want the colour of red, rice wine vinegar is nice for sushi rice and tastes great on cucumbers and plain, white distilled vinegar is useful if you want to make some quick pickles. Once again, keep them out of direct sunlight in a cool, dark place and they’ll last for months.
Salt: Salt is one of the most important things to learn how to use properly if you want your food to taste better. Every professional kitchen worth its “salt” I’ve ever been in uses Diamond Crystal Kosher Salt, and I use it at home, too. As long as you’re using good quality kosher salt, pinching it instead of shaking it, and staying away from iodized table salt, you’re already halfway there. Salt lasts five-ever (that’s one more than forever), so stock up if you can. Also, the super expensive pink Himalayan stuff? That’s snake oil, friends.
Whole Spices: If you have a dedicated spice grinder, get whole spices and grind as you need. They stay fresher and taste better. The ones I like to keep around are black peppercorns, fennel seeds, red chili flakes, coriander seed, cumin seed, nutmeg, cinnamon, cloves and cardamom. Powdered spices I like to keep are chili powder, paprika, turmeric and celery salt in case I want a Caesar.
Dried Pasta: As I said a long time ago, I love good quality dried pasta. Keep a few shapes on hand for variety. One long one, like spaghettini, a short one, like penne and a broad one such as pappardelle gives you a range of different dishes to create.
Rice: Keep rice on hand, especially if you have a rice cooker! My go to is a big bag of Basmati, especially if you can find one with a zipper top. If you like the idea of making risotto, keep a pack or two of short grain Arborio or Carnaroli around, as usual kept out of direct sunlight.
Polenta/Cornmeal: If you’re only going to have one, I’d recommend a finer ground polenta, because it comes out naturally smoother when cooked. If you have a coarse cornmeal, you can use it for polenta by blitzing it in a blender to create a finer powder. Polenta is a great starch to go with many meals, and cornmeal can also give you cornbread, so keep one or both on hand. Consider storing them in the fridge, as they’re more suspect to spoiling than wheat flours.
Beans/Legumes: Dried or canned, the bean is getting lots of attention these days. Listen, do dried beans, soaked overnight and reconstituted, cooked low and slow with aromatics and care taste better than canned? Sure, they do. But I’m lazy and I like the convenience of canned beans for cooking on a whim. The choice is yours. I usually have red kidney beans for chili and chickpeas for channa masala, and sometimes lentils are nice, too.
Canned Tomatoes: Whole canned Roma tomatoes are some of the best things ever. They’re easy to use, keep well and for 90% of the year, they’re better to cook with than the acidic, inconsistent grocery store tomatoes you’ll find. Soups, sauces, braises and ragus all love canned tomatoes.
Anchovies: If you can find them salt-packed for a reasonable price, that’s great. If not, oil packed anchovies are super usable and add a hit of umami flavour to many dishes. Purée them finely and cook them slowly to have them melt into whatever you need them to.
Jarred Capers and Olives: Once again, these briny little helpers will help many a bland dish pick up some great flavours. If you’re lazy like me, you’ll get pitted olives and you’ll never rinse your capers, because who can be bothered?
Flours: Always, always, always unbleached. It makes a difference in taste and works better, especially in breads made with natural yeasts like sourdough. If you can only get one kind, unbleached all-purpose is what you want. Now, if you’re ONLY going to be making bread, then unbleached white bread flour is a good choice. If you think you’re going to make a lot of cakes, then I guess get some cake flour, but I never use it. And if sourdough is your aim, you’ll want something like a whole wheat flour, a rye flour or some other hard heritage wheat like Red Fife, as well. Keep them out of direct sunlight and sniff them once in a while. If they smell bad, they ARE bad.
Sugar: Granulated white sugar may not be the best thing for you, but it’s the standard when making desserts, and I can’t be bothered to learn the alternatives. If you want, keep some brown sugar on hand too, but if you’re like me, you’ll forget to take measures and it’ll always just turn into one big, hard clump.
Baking Powder and Soda: If you do a lot of baking get a brand of these that does not contain sodium aluminum sulfite and replace them once a year.
Wine: Good wine goes with good food, especially in hearty one-pot meals or for deglazing pans. You don’t have to break the bank, but at the same time, if you wouldn’t drink it, don’t cook with it. Remember, nothing pairs better with a dish than the remnants of the bottle that it was cooked with.
And there you have it. Your shelf stable pantry, ready and waiting to be utilized for some great dishes. I’ll follow up tomorrow with the more perishable side of the pantry, but hopefully you can already think of some great dishes to make with these staples!
