Things I Always Keep in the Pantry Because Somebody Will Eventually Need Them

There are groceries I buy because I have a specific plan for them. If I’m making spaghetti this week, I buy what I need for spaghetti. If pork chops are on the menu, those ingredients go on the list. That’s normal grocery shopping. Then there are the things I buy because experience has taught me that somebody will eventually need them. I don’t know who. I don’t know when. I don’t necessarily know what we’re going to do with them. I just know that the minute I stop keeping them in the pantry, somebody will walk into the kitchen and ask for exactly that thing.

This is how I ended up with what I consider a reasonably prepared pantry. Not one of those enormous rooms with matching glass jars and beautiful labels where someone has apparently transferred every cracker they own into a different container. I admire those pantries. I really do. Mine is more practical. I want to be able to make dinner when I haven’t been to the grocery store. I want something available when somebody is hungry. I want to know that if I need to throw together a dessert, make soup, or feed somebody who wasn’t included in the original plan, there’s a good chance I can manage it. Mostly, I don’t want to hear, “We’re out of that.”

There Is Always Pasta

Pasta has gotten me through more last-minute dinners than I could possibly count. Spaghetti is the obvious one, but I usually have several shapes in the pantry. Penne, elbows, rotini, maybe egg noodles, and whatever else I bought because it was on sale. You can do almost anything with pasta. If I have a jar of sauce, dinner is practically handled.

No sauce? Butter, Parmesan, garlic, and a little pasta water will get us somewhere. Have chicken left over? Add it. A handful of vegetables that need to be used? Throw those in too. Macaroni can become macaroni and cheese, pasta salad, soup, or one of those casseroles where you start pulling things out of the refrigerator and hope for the best. Some of our best dinners have started with me standing in the kitchen at five o’clock thinking, “Well, I have pasta.” That’s enough to begin.

Canned Tomatoes Can Become Almost Anything

I don’t like running out of canned tomatoes. Diced tomatoes, crushed tomatoes, tomato sauce, and tomato paste all earn pantry space at my house. They go into spaghetti sauce, chili, soup, casseroles, and plenty of other things. Tomato paste is especially useful because so many recipes only need a tablespoon or two. I like the tubes for that reason, but I keep cans around too.

There is something reassuring about having tomatoes in the pantry. If I’ve got tomatoes, beans, broth, pasta, and some seasonings, we’re not going hungry. I may not know what dinner is yet, but the situation isn’t desperate.

I Keep More Than One Kind of Broth

Chicken broth is one of those ingredients I don’t think about until I need it. Then I need three cups. I use it constantly in soups, sauces, casseroles, rice, gravy, and all sorts of things that taste better when you use broth instead of plain water. I usually keep chicken broth and beef broth on hand.

The cartons are convenient, but bouillon is worth having too. It takes up almost no room and can rescue you when you thought there was another carton of broth in the pantry and discover somebody used it. I won’t name names. Mostly because sometimes that somebody was me.

Rice Has Saved Dinner Plenty of Times

Rice belongs in the same category as pasta. It’s inexpensive, keeps well, and can go in a dozen different directions depending on what else I have: chicken and rice, rice with gravy, fried rice, Spanish-style rice, rice in soup, or a casserole. Sometimes it’s just a bowl of buttery rice alongside whatever else I’ve managed to put together. If I have leftover meat and vegetables in the refrigerator, fried rice is one of my favorite ways to make them look like I had a plan all along. Nobody needs to know otherwise.

Somebody Is Going to Ask for Peanut Butter

Peanut butter is one of those foods that quietly sits in the pantry until suddenly everyone needs it. Sandwiches are obvious. It’s also useful for toast, crackers, cookies, sauces, and emergency spoonfuls eaten directly from the jar when you’re hungry but don’t actually want to make anything. We don’t need to pretend that last one doesn’t happen.

I keep jelly too. There are days when a peanut butter and jelly sandwich is lunch, and I am perfectly comfortable with that. Not every meal needs to be an event. Sometimes you’re hungry. Make a sandwich.

Flour and Sugar Aren’t Just for People Who Bake Constantly

I bake, so flour and sugar are obvious pantry staples for me, but even if you don’t bake often, they’re useful to have around. Flour thickens gravy and sauces. It’s used for breading chicken or pork chops. It goes into biscuits, pancakes, quick breads, cobblers, and all the things I suddenly decide to make after seeing fruit that needs to be used.

I keep granulated sugar and brown sugar. Powdered sugar usually has a place too because nothing is more irritating than deciding to make frosting and realizing you don’t have any. Brown sugar is particularly important once fall arrives. Apples start appearing and suddenly I’m putting brown sugar and cinnamon on everything. Nobody complains.

I Have an Entire Baking Section Whether I Planned One or Not

Once you start baking regularly, the ingredients multiply: baking soda, baking powder, vanilla, chocolate chips, cocoa powder, cornstarch, pecans, sprinkles that seemed necessary for something two years ago, half a bag of coconut, and a box of cake mix. There might even be another box of cake mix because I couldn’t remember whether I already had one. This is why checking the pantry before grocery shopping is important. Apparently I once believed we were facing a national shortage of baking soda because there have been times when I’ve found several boxes.

Still, I like keeping basic baking supplies available. Sometimes I decide I want cookies. Sometimes somebody needs a dessert for something. Sometimes there are bananas on the counter that have reached the stage where their future is either banana bread or the trash. I want options.

Canned Beans Are Staying

Beans are cheap, easy, and useful. Black beans, kidney beans, cannellini beans, chickpeas, and baked beans all show up in my pantry at various times. I can add them to soup, put them into chili, make a quick side dish, or add black beans to tacos or rice. Chickpeas can go into salads, and baked beans can show up next to hamburgers without requiring me to do much of anything. That last part is particularly appealing. A pantry staple should occasionally be willing to handle itself.

Crackers Are More Important Than They Seem

I don’t think about crackers much when we have them. Let the box get empty and suddenly everybody wants crackers. Crackers go with soup. They go with cheese. They work with peanut butter. They’re useful when somebody wants a small snack. And when someone isn’t feeling well and wants something plain, crackers are usually one of the first things we reach for. I usually keep more than one kind because people have opinions about crackers. Of course they do. We can’t possibly all agree on one cracker.

Canned Soup Still Has a Place in My Pantry

I know homemade soup is better. I make homemade soup. I also keep canned soup. Both things can be true. Sometimes somebody wants soup and I don’t want to spend an hour making it. Cream of chicken and cream of mushroom are useful for cooking too, especially for casseroles. There are plenty of recipes where one of those little cans is doing most of the heavy lifting. I know condensed soup casseroles aren’t fashionable in every corner of the food world. That’s fine. They can be unfashionable at my house while everybody gets seconds.

There Is Always Something for a Quick Dessert

This is one of my personal pantry rules. I like knowing I can produce something sweet without making a special trip to the store. That might mean brownie mix, cake mix, pudding, chocolate chips, a can of pie filling, graham crackers, or whatever happens to be there.

A boxed brownie mix is one of the greatest examples of preparedness I can think of. You need dessert. You have dessert. Add chocolate chips or pecans if you want people to think you did something special. I won’t tell them.

I Keep Potatoes and Onions Around Too

Technically, these may not live inside everyone’s pantry, but they belong in this conversation. I use onions constantly. If I’m cooking dinner, there’s a good chance an onion is involved somewhere. Potatoes are nearly as useful. You can bake them, mash them, roast them, fry them, put them into soup, turn them into a casserole, or serve them alongside whatever meat you’ve got. Give me potatoes, onions, a little butter, and some seasoning and we’re already headed toward something worth eating.

The problem with potatoes is remembering they’re there. You don’t want to discover one several weeks after it should have been discovered. If you’ve ever reached into a bag and encountered a potato that has begun exploring new forms of life, you understand. Check your potatoes.

Snacks Count as Pantry Staples

A pantry can’t be entirely made up of ingredients. People are going to want something they can actually eat right now. I keep some combination of chips, popcorn, nuts, granola bars, crackers, cookies, or whatever everyone is eating at the moment. The exact selection changes.

The certainty that someone will announce there is “nothing to eat” while standing in front of a pantry containing food does not. What they mean is there is nothing they feel like eating. Those are different problems. I can solve the first one. The second one is between you and the pantry.

Then There Are the Things I Keep Because Ma or Uncle R Might Need Them

When you’re responsible for more than your own meals, you start thinking differently about what’s in the house. I don’t only shop according to what sounds good to me. There are things I keep because Ma might want them. There are things Uncle R is used to having. There are easy foods for days when schedules go sideways or someone needs something quickly. That changes the way you stock a pantry.

You learn what disappears fastest. You learn which item will cause an immediate household crisis if you run out. You learn to buy the second one before the first one is completely gone. Sometimes I look at something in the grocery store and think, We probably have enough. Then experience speaks up. Put it in the cart.

The Backup Is What Saves You

I don’t believe in keeping twenty of everything. I don’t have the room, and I don’t want food sitting around until it expires. What I do like is having a backup of the things we use constantly. When I open the last jar of spaghetti sauce, sauce goes on the grocery list. When there’s one roll of paper towels left, we’re already late. When the backup coffee becomes the current coffee, buy coffee—especially coffee. There are household emergencies I am willing to face; running out of coffee first thing in the morning isn’t one of them.

Keeping a pantry stocked isn’t about preparing for some enormous disaster every time I go grocery shopping. Most of the time, I’m preparing for a much more predictable event: Tuesday. Someone will be hungry. I will have forgotten to thaw something. A recipe will need a can of tomatoes. Someone will finish the crackers without mentioning it. I’ll decide at eight o’clock at night that apple bread sounds good tomorrow.

That’s why the pantry has pasta and rice and broth and beans and flour and peanut butter and all the other things that don’t necessarily have a specific meal attached to them when I buy them. Eventually, somebody will need them. And when they do, I’d much rather open the pantry and say, “We’ve got some,” than put my shoes back on and head to the store.