35 Pantry Essentials You Should Never Be Without

Homemade stock is best (save your beef or chicken bones), but the kind that comes in cans or cartons is surprisingly good for making soups and stews, adding flavor to rice or grain dishes, moistening casseroles, and more.

Even if you’re not a vegan or vegetarian, you might sometimes want to make a soup or other dish whose flavor isn’t overpowered with the taste of beef or chicken.

It’s always good to have a few cans of your favorite soup (tomato, mushroom, whatever) on hand for a quick informal meal — but also for use in casseroles and other dishes.

The world’s most popular grain by far, rice makes a perfect easy side dish and is a popular ingredient for casseroles and even desserts — most of all rice pudding. (Brown rice is more nutritious than white and can fulfill all the same functions.)

Whether it’s Italian risotto rice (like Aborio), Spanish paella rice, or Japanese sushi rice, short-grain rice adds another dimension to rice cookery, and has textural properties that ordinary white rice can’t match.

Everybody loves pasta, and it’s one of the foods with the longest shelf life. Keep at least two kinds in stock — long noodles like spaghetti or fettuccine and short shapes like farfalle, penne, or rigatoni. (In general, the shorter ones are better for chunky additions like sausage or mushrooms, the long noodles for smooth ones like pesto or tomato sauce.)

Another food that keeps almost forever, dried beans are easy to cook and a great source of non-animal protein. (The older the beans are, the longer they’ll take to cook.)

Flour is useful in the kitchen not just for the obvious reason (baking) but to thicken sauces or coat fish, veal, or chicken for frying, among other things.

Cook it into polenta as a side dish, add it to bread dough or pancake batter, dredge fish or chicken in it, scatter it under a pizza crust before baking…. Cornmeal has many uses.

It’s essential for many baking recipes, of course, but baking powder can be stirred into water to make a cleaning solution, added to dried beans as they cook to make them less gas-inducing, left open in the refrigerator or freezer as a deodorizer, etc.

Tomato paste enriches tomato sauce, of course, but adds texture and flavor to sauces, soups, and stews of all kinds.

Buy chopped tomatoes in cans, with or without basil, or purée the whole ones in a blender or food processor for instant tomato sauce for pasta or pizza or (diluted) for tomato soup. (San Marzano tomatoes from Italy are considered the ultimate example.)

Even if you don’t like anchovies, you’ll be surprised at the subtle non-fishy depth of flavor a bit of the paste adds to soups, stews, pâtés, and many other dishes — even those based on meat.

It’s not just for peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Peanut butter makes an instant snack spread on crackers, apple slices, or celery sticks, and also adds a delicious new dimension to such dishes as curries and marinades for chicken.

A great alternative sweetener (the Greeks stir it into yogurt), honey also has a number of surprising medicinal properties. Among other things, it helps soothe sore throats, tamps down acid reflux, even relieves burns.

The ultimate oil for the kitchen, extra-virgin olive oil is essential for salad dressings. It’s also a perfect cooking medium for many foods, a tasty seasoning for vegetables, and a good protective coating for pots and pans.

For deep-frying or for cooking foods that might be overpowered by the flavor of good olive oil, a more neutral oil — for instance, canola, corn, or peanut — is good to have.

This is the vinegar you’ll want for brining meats and poultry, pickling fruits and vegetables, making classic sauces like hollandaise or beurre blanc, and adding an attractive sharpness to soups and stews. In addition, it’s a great kitchen cleanser.

Trendy balsamic vinegar has pushed it aside in recent years, but sherry vinegar makes superb salad dressings and marinades, and is an unexpectedly delightful condiment to simply drizzle over roasted pork, chicken, or fish.

A must for many Asian recipes, soy sauce is also a good addition to marinades of many kinds, a flavorful ingredient for glazes, and a traditional condiment for simply cooked rice (and sushi).

It’s impossible to imagine pretzels, hot dogs, or ham sandwiches (among others) without mustard, but it’s also an ingredient of classic vinaigrette and adds punch to sauces for chicken or beef, glazes for baked ham or roast tenderloin, dips for raw vegetables, and much more.

The ultimate sandwich spread, mayo can also be used to make breading stick to fish or meat, add richness to casseroles, even keep chocolate cake or brownies moist.

French fries seem naked without it and ketchup has a place at the breakfast table and on burger night — but it’s also an important ingredient of cocktail sauce, barbecue sauce, various glazes, and more.

A few drops of this pungent condiment (involving anchovies, molasses, garlic, and other ingredients in a vinegar base) adds character to sauces and dressings of many kinds, and is essential for bloody marys.

Use bread crumbs, whether the conventional coarse kind or finer Japanese-style panko, for breading meat, fish, or fowl for frying or in stuffings for vegetables or chicken.

Salt is simply the single most important and widely useful ingredient in any kitchen.

While fine salt is best for cooking and baking, coarse salt is preferable for seasoning food once it’s ready to eat.

Salt’s longtime partner on dining tables, black pepper adds heat and pungent flavor to foods. Freshly ground peppercorns are best.

Fine-ground sugar is not only a necessity for most baking (even bread) and a sweet addition to breakfast cereal (including oatmeal), but is called for in many savory recipes.

Whenever a caramelized character is called for in dishes either sweet or salty, brown sugar is the way to go.

Added to stews and sauces as they cook, these leaves from the bay laurel tree contribute a subtle flavor.

If you like a bit of heat, these flakes are a nice addition to pizza and pasta.

Cayenne adds spice but also a pleasant, slightly smoky flavor to many dishes.

For color and flavor, this is one of the most useful spices in the kitchen.

You don’t have to cook Indian or Thai cuisine to find uses for this complex blend of spices. Hamburgers and meatballs, scrambled eggs or egg salad, potato salad, and fried rice are just a few of the foods it enhances.