Well Stocked: The CWD Pantry Guide

Revisiting what you should have on hand, all the time.

One of the early CWD posts, way back before anyone was reading¹ was a pantry guide. You can read the original post here, but, since it’s been over two years since that post first went out, I figured it’s probably time to refresh things².

Looking through what I posted way back when, I don’t think a lot has really changed. One thing I have found myself honing in on, however, is the importance of quality ingredients³. In my old age, I’d rather spend a little more on a really terrific ingredient, on something local, on something produced on a smaller scale, on something a little more elevated than to just grab something generic off the shelf.

There’s no right or wrong way to cook, nor right or wrong ingredients to use, but I truly think it’s worth splurging on stuff you truly care about. For me, it’s stuff like butter, like olive oil, like Parmigiano Reggiano cheese⁴, like great vinegar, great grits, great eggs. We cook with those ingredients all the time and notice the difference in taste. On the other hand, if you never make carbonara⁵, where the simplicity of meal means the quality of ingredients is noticeably important, you might be able to get away with Parmesan cheese and standard eggs. I can’t make these decisions for you — you need to find out on your own what works for you in the kitchen.

Once you’ve got your well stocked pantry, you’ll never be at a loss for finding something to eat. Even if you forget to go shopping for weeks, a few cans of tuna, beans, rice, pasta, and chicken stock will go a long way!

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Dry Goods

• Pasta. Of all sorts. We’ll typically have a few pounds of basic spaghetti or linguini, farfalle, orecchiette, penne + a bag or two of specialty pasta⁶.

• Grains. Having rice, quinoa, farro, or otherwise around allows you to pad out a meal fairly quickly — and you can always stirfry the leftovers.

• Grits. It’s own category. These come together quickly, are super versatile, and delicious. These from Marsh Hen Mills are the best I’ve tried.

• Beans. A few cans of black beans, pinto beans, navy beans, chickpeas, or whatever you have on hand can add some proverbial meat to those grains, fill our a chili⁷, or you can cook them down with butter and white wine for a delightful pasta sauce. If you’re serious about beans, you can get dried ones as well — but we don’t eat them enough to get that extravagant.

• Canned tuna. Make sure you get it packed in olive oil. Having this on hand makes lunch easy — mix a can of tuna with some mayo, salt, pepper, mustard, and a dash of pickle juice and you have the base for a great tuna salad sandwich or tuna melt. Mind Fish is good, sustainable, and available on Amazon.

• Canned tomatoes. Having a few cans of diced or whole tomatoes around will allow you to make tomato soup, braise meat, make sauces, and generally be happier.

• Peanut butter. I typically just eat this by the spoonful, but also good on sandwiches and in smoothies. Can also mix this with some sriracha, garlic, and pasta water to make a quick peanut sauce. This coconut peanut butter from Hawaii is phenomenal (but expensive).

• Mixed nuts. Dealer’s choice here, but for what it’s worth, I like cashews. You eat these by the handful, or add them to stir frys, salads, or grain bowls.

• Chicken stock. Useful for quick starting a soup, for risotto, for cooking grains in, for rehydrating mushrooms, or for braising meats. Chicken seems to be the most versatile, but beef or vegetable aren’t terrible to have on hand either. If you’re smart, you’ll save the bones from everything you cook and make your own, but that does require a little forethought.

• Red and white wine. For cooking and for drinking. It doesn’t need to be fancy if you’re only using it for cooking, but I’m not a wine guy — use your own judgement.

Oils, Sauces, and Condiments

• Olive oil. This is a must have. Use it for cooking (obviously), in dressings, marinades, or rub a little in your hair to keep it up, slick. Extra Virgin is really what you want to be using, cold pressed, and as fresh as possible. Wild Groves makes some terrific California grown olive oil, Dancing Goat is a Massachusetts company which imports from Greece, and Frankie’s 457 is a super solid Italian option you can grab at Whole Foods. High quality olive oil is more expensive than others, but you can really taste the difference.

• Ghee or Tallow. This is for higher heat cooking (though you certainly can use olive oil or even butter for this if you’re careful). Previously I recommended canola oil for this, but we’ve recently started trying to avoid “seed oils,” since there’s some fairly strong evidence that they’re not super great for you⁸. I like Epic, but I may try Carter Country Meat’s option when I need to reload.

• Vinegars. I love vinegar. I’ll take a shot of apple cider vinegar just to wake me up in the morning. But you should also probably have some red wine vinegar, rice vinegar, maybe a sherry or white wine vinegar, or any other vinegar that gets your juices going. Great for dressings, marinades, over veggies, in sauces, whatever. I’ve recently been digging Acid League and American Vinegar Works

• Spices. At the least, you should have red pepper flakes, garlic powder, onion powder, paprika, and a dried herb like oregano or rosemary. From there, expand based on what you like to cook. I love Camp Mix and nearly anything from Meat Church — but this is probably a choose your own adventure. We’ve been using Surf Salt lately, too, which is nice.

• Salt. Obviously. This is one of the most crucial things to have in your kitchen. You’ll want probably a table salt and a kosher salt, but who’s counting? Redmond makes a good salt that is supposedly free of plastics, higher in minerals, and of a higher quality, if you’re concerned about that sort of thing.

• Pepper. Get a pepper mill and freshly crack your own.

Fridge

• Eggs. Always good to have these on hand and they last a surprisingly long time in the refrigerator. I prefer to get mine locally if possible — we have a neighbor with ducks — but eggs from pastured chickens are readily available at most grocery stores these days⁹. Eggs open you up for fried rice, frittatas, scrambled eggs, carbonara, cornbread, and basically anything you need to bake.

• Parmigiano Reggiano cheese. Don’t skimp, buy whole blocks and grate your own. This goes on 75% of the food we eat. If you are avoiding raw dairy, SarVecchio Parmesan is a decent substitute.

• Butter. Lots of it, preferably Kate’s.

• Mustard. Preferably of the dijon variety, but anything besides yellow mustard is great for dressings, marinades, or burgers.

• Greek or Icelandic yogurt. You can use this on almost anything. For breakfast with fixings, in place of sour cream for nachos or pierogis, in place of mayo in tuna salad, or for desert with peanut butter and chocolate chips. I like Stonyfield Grassfed and Icelandic Provisions for Greek and Icelandic, respectively.

• Mayo. Just nice to have around. I like Primal Kitchen’s, but Hellman’s does just fine in moderation.

• Hot sauce. As many varieties as you’d like, but at the very least, a traditional pepper sauce (like Cholula or Tabasco), a sriracha, and a wild card cover most of your basis. Red Clay Hot Sauce has recently taken a top spot for me.

• BBQ sauce. But this might just be because we eat a lot of meat.

• Soy sauce. For kicking up stirfrys, for marinades, with sushi.

Freezer

• Frozen raviolis or pierogis. We also keep a few packs of Valicenti raviolis (truffled mushroom is *fire emoji*) and Jaju pierogis in the fridge. Quick, easy, and delicious. Of course, any brand will really do.

• Frozen herbs. Kind of nice to have “fresh” herbs on hand.

• Frozen fruit. For, ya know, smoothies.

Fruits and Vegetables

• Onions. For things that require onions (or shallots in a pinch).

• Garlic. For flavor.

• Lemons and limes. For flavor and for smoothies.

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There you have it. If you keep most of those things on hand, you can ship together a quick meal and survive a week without grocery shopping. Just make sure to replenish as you use things — otherwise, you may get a weeknight hankering for a tuna melt and find yourself at a loss. That would be traumatic, huh?

1. Literally — I wrote this newsletter for a few months without even telling anyone, just shouting into the ether. What an idiot I was!

2. And this is the type of content that people love… it’s like catnip for engagement!

3. I wrote about this when contemplating tuna melts, believe it or not.

4. The King of Cheese!

5. Seriously, you never make carbonara?

6. It’s also quite a lot of fun to make your own pasta every once and awhile — maybe we’ll talk about that some day.

7. Unless you adhere to the Texas chili philosophy — in which beans are not allowed.

8. This article, if long and maybe scientifically inconclusive, is interesting. That being said, you don’t necessarily need to have hard proof something is bad for you to avoid it. As far as I can tell, you don’t lose anything by avoiding seed oils, and maybe you gain some incremental health benefits.

9. I like Vital Farms Regenerative Eggs, though they are expensive.