![]() Other flavored oils like toasted sesame oil can be great for finishing dishes. A fancy, flavorful EVOO for finishing dishes is certainly a nice touch but by no means necessary. Any grocery store variety with a mild flavor will do for all your sautéing and roasting needs. But when you're cooking, don't worry about reaching for the fancy stuff. OilsĮxtra-virgin olive oil is an ingredient in, well, nearly every savory recipe. Keep them in a cool, dry place, ideally in opaque containers with airtight lids to maintain freshness and flavor. Though spices theoretically last for one to two years, we'd recommend using them sooner, as they lose flavor over time. When it comes to spices, the more the merrier. These spices can go into numerous dishes and can also cross over into other cuisines. Have a thing for Indian food? Fill your cart with coriander, curry powder, garam masala, and turmeric. ![]() Do you like to eat (or cook) a lot of Mexican food? Make sure to stock up on cumin, chili powder, and oregano. When selecting spices to stock your pantry, consider your preferences. Plus they're a great way to jazz up dishes you've made over and over again. Having a variety of them at your disposal makes cooking interesting meals infinitely easier. Spices help transform whole ingredients into dynamic, flavorful dishes. (Look for Tellicherry black pepper, a common and super flavorful peppercorn grown in India.) Spices Trust me when I say, you will never go back to pre-ground pepper once you make the transition. ![]() PepperĪ few good cranks of freshly ground pepper can totally transform a dish, so if you can, buy your peppercorns whole and invest in a pepper mill. If salt is, for whatever reason, not available to you, there are other ingredients that can step in like soy sauce and briny jarred and canned foods. Its salty crunch is a great way to finish savory or sweet recipes-like these Nutella stuffed cookies. Much less mandatory, but a great bonus ingredient if you can swing it: flaky sea salt. That way you'll always know how much salt is the right amount of salt. It takes time to get comfortable salting with a particular brand, and purchasing the same one provides consistency. Choose the brand that's easiest for you to find, and stick to it. Kosher salt is the preferred salt for seasoning and cooking thanks to its large crystals, which make it easy to control the amount of sodium in your dish. It's a flavor enhancer and a necessary component to pretty much any sweet or savory recipe. I would argue that salt is one of the most, if not the most, essential cooking ingredient. Our answer? In short, yes! With a pantry of swappable staples, some creativity, and your senses as your guide (common included), you can make a crazy good meal with a recipe as a suggestion-not a rule book. You might ask yourself, "can I make this, without that?". But if you fall short of an ingredient (or five) or you're missing what seems like a key appliance, things can get a bit murky. Not for nothing: Recipes supply all the necessary information like ingredients, measurements, cook times, temperatures, and even serving suggestions. Living in a city that relies on takeout and delivery, I know there is no shortage of people who would sooner fly to the moon than turn on their ovens.īut here's a message to these people: I believe in you! You can do it! I'm serious! Stop rolling your eyes! Cooking takes preparation, practice, and some common sense, but it's far from impossible-and now's not the time to get caught up in perfection.īeginner cooks tend to look at recipes as tomes not to be tweaked. ![]() We're all cooking a lot right now, some for pleasure and catharsis and some because, well, it's the only choice.įor the latter who didn't enter quarantine a professional bread-baker or expert dinner-maker, there can be a learning curve. In this stranger-than-fiction world we've found ourselves in-where grocery runs are infrequent and 24/7 take-out isn't really financially feasible-it was inevitable. I'm willing to bet you've spent more time in your kitchen lately than you have in a looong time. ![]()
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