Kitchen Staples

I’ve been visiting with my parents and offered to cook some while there. Looking through their cabinets made me think about how we each have our own kitchen staples. You know, those items that we never want to run out of. Here are some of my kitchen staples:

Olive oil – I prefer cooking with olive oil unless it’s a recipe that requires a high smoke point oil (like roasting a chicken; olive oil would be terrible for that). It is also great for home remedies as I mentioned in yesterdays post.

Baking soda – Besides a baking necessity, baking soda cleans tough grease off the stove and from inside the oven. I think that entire blogs could be (and probably are) dedicated to the endless uses of baking soda.

Yeast – I make my own bread, so yeast is important to keep on hand.

Flour: All purpose, whole wheat, bread and cake – Yes, I keep an assortment of types of flour because they all have important purposes. Whole wheat and bread flour are both important for most of my bread recipes. All purpose flour is important for making sauces and gravies, and cake flour. Well, you never know when you need to bake a cake.

Coconut oil – It gives a sort of tropical flavor to dishes. It also has a lot of household purposes.

Salt, pepper, Italian seasoning – I put Italian seasoning in a lot of dishes. I just like it.

Honey – I use honey instead of sugar or to cut down the amount of sugar used in some of my bread recipes and sauces.

Vinegar – This is another food that has many uses in the kitchen as well as the rest of the house.

Shortening – Some recipes just require good old fashioned shortening. It’s just the way it is.

Sugar – Sugar is needed to activate the yeast.

1 can of super cheap spaghetti sauce – So, I realize this seems weird, but I always keep a can on hand. If I need to make a quick spaghetti, I start with the cheap canned sauce and add tons of stuff to it to make it taste like it isn’t super cheap canned spaghetti sauce. It’s an inexpensive base for making really yummy sauce.

So those are some of my pantry staples. What about you? What do you always have in your pantry that you wouldn’t want to run out of?