Keeping your shelves stocked with certain staples makes cooking a great dinner on the fly easy. If all you have to do is buy a protein , some veggies and come home to a house filled with international goodies and flavors, your imagination and palate are your only limitations. Most condiments and oils, vinegars have a pretty decent shelf life and if you live alone or with one other person, your fridge has space to spare. We have a chest freezer and small “college” fridge in the basement which gives us more than enough room to play with, but we are bit on the excessive side.
Having all the extra’s makes Italian/Mexican/French or American Bistro meals an easy dinner. You buy some chicken, you have a lemon, look, some capers, chicken stock, butter, little fresh parsley right outside your door,,my, my….. “chicken picatta” at your finger tips. Put a date on your spices and condiments and make sure you rotate your stock, but with simple planning you can keep a well stocked larder and make any recipe from any book, including your own at any time. Here is a partial list of some of the things that live in my fridge at all times.
1) Sambal….Asian chili paste
2) Capers
3) Olives of all colors
4) Soy sauce
5) Sesame oil
6) Hot chili oil
7) Red and green curry paste
8) Hoisin sauce
9) A multitude of mustards
10) Hot sauce(s)
11) BBQ sauce, or three
12) A buttermilk based salad dressing
13) Pickles
14) Lemon/lime
15) Onion red and white
16) Mayo
17) Anchovies/anchovie paste
18) Sun dried tomato paste
19) Harissa
20) Pickled herring, just kidding, wanted to see if you were paying attention
The dry good are just as important, however here is where dating and packaging becomes a little more important. Things tend to lost on the shelve or forgotten, pushed aside or fallen behind. Plastic air tight containers are good, as well zip lock baggies. Here are some of the things rolling around our kitchen cabinet. I am going to discount the obvious,, sugar, flour, salt, if you don’t already have these things you may well have starved to death already and will not find this list helpful at all.
1) Blue corn flour
2) Canned tomato products…paste, whole, chopped
3) Red wine vinegar
4) Rice wine vinegar
5) Balsamic vinegar
6) Cider vinegar
7) High grade virgin Olive Oil..for finishing salads/sauces
8) Peanut Oil (burns at a higher temp than other oils)
9) Vegetable oil
10) Crisco
11) Instant grits
12) Panko crumbs
13) Raisins, golden/black
14) Kidney beans/chic peas/navy beans, canned for a quick salad or soup addative
15) Dried pinto/black beans
16) Assorted rice’s, brown/white/wild…couscous
17) Dried chili peppers
18) Sardines
19) Assorted stocks, chicken/beef/fish
20) Hormel chili, every once in a while I just don’t have the energy to do anything
Along with this goes the spice crowd, which can have anything you are fond of, or needed 1 tsp of for some obscure recipe you were trying and the bottle went back on the shelf, never to be opened again. If you can’t remember what you used the spice/herb for, toss it. If it seems like it was not that long ago, try to use it for something, add it an old favorite, or invent a new one. I usually have curry powders, chili powders, garlic powder, onion powder, stay away from garlic salt/onion salt, better to add your own salt.
As for salt I like sea salt and kosher, but do keep “table” salt around for salting water or melting the ice at the kitchen door in the winter. Fennel seeds, caraway, nutmeg, ginger powder, Chinese five spice, garam masala, vanilla bean, mustard powder, smoked paprika and anything else you come across and find yourself needing. I do keep some dried herbs, but try to use fresh, or my own dried herbs from the gardens abundance of the summer months.
It all sounds like a lot of work, but if you spend one day late in the summer turning all your basil into pesto, tying and drying your herbs, making chutney out of your hot peppers, you’ll have winter filled with stuff you made and do not have to buy. Tastes great and might even give you a warm fuzzy feeling inside. The same goes for making stocks. Store and save your chicken bones in the freezer, when you have enough, make a batch of stock and freeze it in small portions, or fill ice cube trays, freeze and pop out little sauce additives, sometimes all a good sauce needs is a little stock, or demi glaze.
If you are making a batch of cookies, make two, take one and roll it up in a log, wax paper it, freeze. Then the next time you are having a late night cookie crisis you can cut a few slices and have warm fresh cookies with your milk. I love making lasagna but always have a hard time eating the entire thing, so frozen portions end up in plastic bags right next to the meatballs and meat loaf. If you keep a list of what is in your freezer posted on the door you will find it easier to remember and use what is in there. You can essentially make your frozen dinners, putting Stouffers out of business.
I always have chips and salsa, hummus and crackers, olives and pickled jalapenos at hand for that snack on the fly, or impromptu Baseball snack, you never know when a game may go extra innings. Olives, cheese and an apple served with crackers may come in handy when you forget to turn the oven on after you have already out the roast in. So eat, enjoy and experiment, the foods in your fridge and on your shelf may maker strange yet welcome bedfellows.
Having all the extra’s makes Italian/Mexican/French or American Bistro meals an easy dinner. You buy some chicken, you have a lemon, look, some capers, chicken stock, butter, little fresh parsley right outside your door,,my, my….. “chicken picatta” at your finger tips. Put a date on your spices and condiments and make sure you rotate your stock, but with simple planning you can keep a well stocked larder and make any recipe from any book, including your own at any time. Here is a partial list of some of the things that live in my fridge at all times.
1) Sambal….Asian chili paste
2) Capers
3) Olives of all colors
4) Soy sauce
5) Sesame oil
6) Hot chili oil
7) Red and green curry paste
8) Hoisin sauce
9) A multitude of mustards
10) Hot sauce(s)
11) BBQ sauce, or three
12) A buttermilk based salad dressing
13) Pickles
14) Lemon/lime
15) Onion red and white
16) Mayo
17) Anchovies/anchovie paste
18) Sun dried tomato paste
19) Harissa
20) Pickled herring, just kidding, wanted to see if you were paying attention
The dry good are just as important, however here is where dating and packaging becomes a little more important. Things tend to lost on the shelve or forgotten, pushed aside or fallen behind. Plastic air tight containers are good, as well zip lock baggies. Here are some of the things rolling around our kitchen cabinet. I am going to discount the obvious,, sugar, flour, salt, if you don’t already have these things you may well have starved to death already and will not find this list helpful at all.
1) Blue corn flour
2) Canned tomato products…paste, whole, chopped
3) Red wine vinegar
4) Rice wine vinegar
5) Balsamic vinegar
6) Cider vinegar
7) High grade virgin Olive Oil..for finishing salads/sauces
8) Peanut Oil (burns at a higher temp than other oils)
9) Vegetable oil
10) Crisco
11) Instant grits
12) Panko crumbs
13) Raisins, golden/black
14) Kidney beans/chic peas/navy beans, canned for a quick salad or soup addative
15) Dried pinto/black beans
16) Assorted rice’s, brown/white/wild…couscous
17) Dried chili peppers
18) Sardines
19) Assorted stocks, chicken/beef/fish
20) Hormel chili, every once in a while I just don’t have the energy to do anything
Along with this goes the spice crowd, which can have anything you are fond of, or needed 1 tsp of for some obscure recipe you were trying and the bottle went back on the shelf, never to be opened again. If you can’t remember what you used the spice/herb for, toss it. If it seems like it was not that long ago, try to use it for something, add it an old favorite, or invent a new one. I usually have curry powders, chili powders, garlic powder, onion powder, stay away from garlic salt/onion salt, better to add your own salt.
As for salt I like sea salt and kosher, but do keep “table” salt around for salting water or melting the ice at the kitchen door in the winter. Fennel seeds, caraway, nutmeg, ginger powder, Chinese five spice, garam masala, vanilla bean, mustard powder, smoked paprika and anything else you come across and find yourself needing. I do keep some dried herbs, but try to use fresh, or my own dried herbs from the gardens abundance of the summer months.
It all sounds like a lot of work, but if you spend one day late in the summer turning all your basil into pesto, tying and drying your herbs, making chutney out of your hot peppers, you’ll have winter filled with stuff you made and do not have to buy. Tastes great and might even give you a warm fuzzy feeling inside. The same goes for making stocks. Store and save your chicken bones in the freezer, when you have enough, make a batch of stock and freeze it in small portions, or fill ice cube trays, freeze and pop out little sauce additives, sometimes all a good sauce needs is a little stock, or demi glaze.
If you are making a batch of cookies, make two, take one and roll it up in a log, wax paper it, freeze. Then the next time you are having a late night cookie crisis you can cut a few slices and have warm fresh cookies with your milk. I love making lasagna but always have a hard time eating the entire thing, so frozen portions end up in plastic bags right next to the meatballs and meat loaf. If you keep a list of what is in your freezer posted on the door you will find it easier to remember and use what is in there. You can essentially make your frozen dinners, putting Stouffers out of business.
I always have chips and salsa, hummus and crackers, olives and pickled jalapenos at hand for that snack on the fly, or impromptu Baseball snack, you never know when a game may go extra innings. Olives, cheese and an apple served with crackers may come in handy when you forget to turn the oven on after you have already out the roast in. So eat, enjoy and experiment, the foods in your fridge and on your shelf may maker strange yet welcome bedfellows.
Just one more note, if you come across these chips and you like spice and flavor, buy these and get the big bag, hide it from your friends and have yourself a party.
Spicy thai chips, ummmm....another brilliant entry, this is really good stuff. I wish I could get motivated to be as motivated as you!
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