How to stock a kitchen so dinner is always possible
A well-stocked kitchen is not a large one. It is a small set of ingredients that recombine, chosen so that no single missing item stops you cooking.
The test is simple: could you make dinner tonight without shopping? In a properly stocked kitchen the answer is yes at least five nights out of seven, and it takes about thirty ingredients to get there.
The thirty
These are chosen for combination rather than for any one dish. Every one of them appears in at least ten meals.
- Aromatics: onion, garlic, ginger, green chillies, lemon
- Grains: rice, atta, besan, rava, poha, pasta, noodles, bread
- Pulses: toor dal, moong dal, chana dal, rajma or chickpeas
- Dairy: curd, milk, butter, ghee, paneer, cheese
- Freezer: peas, sweetcorn, bread
- Tins: chopped tomatoes, coconut milk, chickpeas
- Bottles: soy sauce, vinegar, ketchup, oil
- Protein: eggs, always
The spice shelf, which is smaller than you think
Ten spices cover almost everything in this collection. Buying twenty-five and using six is the normal pattern, and the fifteen unused ones go stale and get thrown away.
Whole spices keep their oils for a year or more. Ground spices lose them in three to six months, which is why a two-year-old jar of coriander powder tastes of nothing and makes people conclude they do not like coriander.
Buy small quantities more often. A spice jar you finish is a spice jar that was fresh.
- Turmeric, cumin seeds, coriander powder, red chilli powder, garam masala
- Mustard seeds, curry leaves, hing, black pepper, bay leaves
- Optional but earn their space: kasuri methi, amchur, fennel, cardamom
What lasts how long
Most food waste comes from not knowing this, and from refrigerating things that keep better outside.
- A year or more: rice, dals, whole spices, tinned goods, flour in a sealed jar
- Months: besan, rava, poha, pasta, oil, nuts (fridge them in summer)
- Weeks: onions, potatoes, garlic in a dark cupboard, never the fridge
- Three weeks: eggs, unwashed, in the fridge
- Days: fresh herbs, greens, tomatoes, anything cut
Storage that actually changes the outcome
Onions and potatoes stored together make each other sprout, which almost every kitchen does anyway. Separate them and both keep twice as long.
Coriander lasts a week if you stand it in a glass of water in the fridge with a bag over the top, and two days if you leave it in the bag it came in. Curry leaves freeze perfectly and are useless dried.
Flour, besan and rava should live in airtight jars rather than their packets, both because of moisture and because pantry moths get into paper. Ginger freezes whole and grates straight from frozen, which is easier than grating it fresh.
The shopping pattern
Buy the pantry monthly and the fresh things twice a week. That splits the decision: the big shop is a list you barely think about, and the small shop is whatever looks good.
Do not shop from recipes. Shopping for a specific dish is how you end up with three-quarters of a bunch of dill and a jar of something used once. Buy the same core repeatedly and let the recipes come out of what is there, which is the direction this site is built to work in anyway.