Feeding Yourself at Home Pt. 2: Our Stocked Kitchen

The ingredients we always keep on hand

In part 1 of this series, I shared that the key to cooking good meals at home is having the right ingredients on hand to make what you want to make. No one wants to get to 5pm on Tuesday only to discover you’re missing a key ingredient to whatever meal you want to make that evening. I also shared in part 1 that we typically cook three types of cuisines: Japanese, Tex-Mex, and Southern. What you usually make is going to heavily influence what you keep in your pantry and fridge.

Feeding Yourself at Home Pt. 1

The items linked below are affiliate links. If you make a purchase using the link I may earn a commission for those items. I share the items that are a little more speciality items and also share where we buy the others. I searched for where to find these items for the best cost. In most cases, they are from Walmart, Target, or Amazon - all of which I typically shop at for groceries.

Pantry items we always have on hand

• Beans (canned and dried black beans, green beans, canned and dried pinto beans)

• Broths (beef and chicken) We usually stock up on these from Costco.

• Cornmeal

• Corn starch

• Dark chocolate chips

• Fish sauce

• Flour (all-purpose flour, bread flour, cake flour)

• Hot sauce. We usually keep Louisiana and taco sauce stocked.

• Jams. Big Bonne Maman fans.

• Marinara sauce. Literally whatever is in stock at Costco. I’ll share how we spruce it up in another post!

• Mayonnaise (specifically Duke’s and Kewpie)

• Miso paste

• Mustards (dijon, spicy brown, whole grain mustard, yellow mustard)

• Oils (avocado oil, coconut oil, extra virgin olive oil, sesame oil) We get all of these from Costco except for sesame oil.

• Pasta (angel hair, penne, rotini, spaghetti)

• Peanut butter. Crunchy and creamy

• Rice

• Sake

• Soy sauce

• Sweeteners (brown sugar, granulated sugar, honey, maple syrup)

• Tomatoes (canned diced tomatoes, Rotel, tomato paste, tomato sauce, whole tomatoes) All from Costco

• Vanilla extract. Also from Costco

• Vinegar (apple cider vinegar, balsamic, vinegar, red wine vinegar, rice vinegar, white vinegar)

• Worcestershire sauce

• Yeast

Dried spices

We have a ton of dried spices in our pantry that we have collected over the years. The majority of our dried spices came in those giant bottles from Costco to help cut down on cost. Storing them isn’t the best but we use them all the time so it makes sense to us. There are no aesthetic little jars with matching labels happening here.

Our unspoken rule of spices is that if we don’t like it, we don’t use it. For example, we do not like rosemary. No recipe is going to convince us that we need to use rosemary. I’ve never eaten something and wished it had rosemary in it. So we don’t stock rosemary. But here’s the core of what we do keep stocked:

• Basil

• Bay leaves

• Black pepper

• Cayenne pepper

• Chili powder

• Cinnamon

• Cumin

• Garlic powder

• Red pepper flakes

• Onion powder

• Oregano

• Paprika

• Salt (flaky sea salt, Kosher salt, sea salt)

• Thyme

Fresh ingredients we always have on hand

• Apples

• Broccoli

• Carrots

• Celery

• Cheeses (parmesan, sharp cheddar). We typically buy blocks of cheese to cut or shred instead of pre-cut cheeses.

• Eggs

• Garlic

• Ginger

• Lemons and limes

• Potatoes (sweet potatoes, Russett potatoes, Yukon gold potatoes)

• Strawberries

• Sour cream

• Onions (green onion, red onion, yellow onion)

• Yogurt (plain full-fat yogurt)

• Zucchini

In Part 2B of this series, I’ll share the items we use weekly, if not daily, to cook our meals. I prefer to keep a nice, small amount of cookware, utensils, and dishes.

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