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30 Must-have food items for your pantry

Somebody asked me once for advice on stocking their larder.  “What are the basic foodstuffs that any kitchen should have?”  I did what anyone would do and looked on Google.  To my frustration, the first four sites I looked at all contained perfectly reasonable lists of common ingredients that a decent cook might use in the course of a year.  There was nothing I didn’t agree with except that these lists ran to dozens, even hundreds of items, which was not I thought the point of the question.  A basic list should be just that, the basics.

After a little thought I came up with the following list.  It includes mainly things which any busy bachelor is likely to have at home already: bread, milk, eggs etc. plus a shortlist of dried or canned ingredients which can sit in your larder for months without doing any harm.

Thirty seemed like a nice round number, though I have cheated slightly by the inclusion of the general terms ‘herbs’ and ‘stock (bouillon) cubes’.  Ideally you would have different bouillon cubes or powder to make chicken, beef and vegetable stocks.  As for herbs, I listed the top ten most useful culinary herbs on this blog some time ago.  It really is worth growing your own and can be done in pots or a small window box and they require only minimal attention.

Don’t get too hung up on different types of pasta, rice or sugar.  Obviously it’s fun to experiment with different ingredients and sometimes authenticity demands a particular variety, but in an emergency they are more or less interchangeable.

Clearly there is a big cultural influence here.  I wonder what the list would look like in Italy or Russia or Brazil.  Perhaps someone will write and tell me.  There is also a large slice of personal preference involved. I seriously considered lemons, capsicums and chilies, all of which I use extensively.  I rejected them because they don't keep and are better bought fresh.

I list ‘cheese’ as a single ingredient.  In reality my fridge is almost never without several different cheeses including: cheddar, parmesan and mozzarella.  Similarly I list ‘butter’.  You need something in this space and frankly I think nothing compares with good old fashioned butter. But I myself have flip-flopped several times in my life depending on whether I was more worried by saturated fats in butter, or trans fats and the long list of E numbers found in most emulsified vegetable spreads.

Plain Flour	Eggs	Black Pepper
Corn Flour (Starch)	Bacon	Salt
Sugar	Cream	Paprika
Ground Almonds	Milk	Vanilla
Baking Powder	Cheese	Stock (bouillon) cubes
Dried Yeast	Butter	Mustard
Rice	Olive Oil	White Wine Vinegar
Pasta	Bread	Jam (raspberry)
Tinned Tomatoes	Onions	Potatoes
Frozen Peas	Garlic	Herbs

With only a few moments of pondering I have come up with a fairly long list of snacks, meals and desserts which could be created with nothing more than my list of basics.  Although visitors are often impressed by an apparent ability to conjure up something from what appears to be an empty kitchen, my main point is to demonstrate that these genuinely are the basics.

  

Fried eggs	Cheese and Potato Pie	Cookies
Scrambled eggs	Bacon, Cheese, Potato Bake	Scones
Poached eggs	Cheese Soufflé	Tattie Scones
Boiled eggs	Cheese Pudding	Shortbread
Egg Mayonnaise	Quiche Lorraine	Victoria Sponge
Omelettes	Savory Pancakes	Scotch Pancakes (Drop Scones)
Toast	Pizza Margarita	Meringues
French Toast	Pasta Sauces	Blancmange
Garlic Bread	-          Tomato	Rice Pudding
Sandwiches (egg, cheese, bacon)	-          Carbonara	Crepes
Chips (French fries)	-          Cheese	Bread and Butter Pudding
Crisps (potato chips)	-          Baked (al forno)	Queen of Puddings
Baked Potatoes with various fillings	Fried Rice	Crème Brulee
Hollandaise Sauce		Crème Caramel
Mayonnaise		Bakewell Tart
Custard		Steamed Jam Sponge

Realistically, in order to turn out an interesting, varied and healthy range of recipes, most people would want to add fish, meat, fresh fruit and vegetables, and any number of those hundred other items which I have rejected as not being basic enough.  And by that stage you are cooking!