Pantry Essentials for Meal Prep
Pantry items are some of the most important aspects of any given kitchen, but building one out can be a challenge, especially for first time cooks or tight budgets. Oils and seasoning? Where do you even start? But we’re here to help you put together a pantry that is scalable and prepared for a meal prep lifestyle.
Although building a pantry out might seem costly at first, in the long run you’ll find that you are investing in your future diet and health. As you learn more about cooking, you’ll start to execute recipes that are comparable to their costly restaurant contemporaries. This all starts with the never ending task of building your pantry.
Condiments
Hot sauce goes on everything, and so do a lot of other sauces and dips. Condiments are a great way of adding a fresh ingredient to a prepared meal. They add a liveliness that gets lost after sitting on a refrigerator shelf for days.
Not only that, but you can also get pretty creative with condiments, adding them directly to your meals as you cook them. Vinegars and pastes are used all the time, really adding the acidic pop that completes the holy trinity of flavor – salt, acid, and fat.
Dry Foods
Storing dry foods in bulk is an incredibly cost effective practice to get into. Not only does it continue the same spirit of meal prep by storing large quantities of ingredients beforehand, it also helps you experience the benefits of economies of scale.
When you buy ingredients in large amounts, the price per unit begins to drop because there is less packaging, less middlemen, and less shipping costs that add up into savings for us, the customer. Taking advantage of this strategy only compounds the initial savings created by meal prep.
Oils
Choosing the right oil can make or break a dish, but it’s pretty easy to get right too. Unfortunately, oil has the bad rap of being associated with fats that are generally misunderstood as the cause for weight gain. But unless you’re using trans fats, which are widely illegal now, or heavily cooking with high cholesterol animal lard, chances are you’re not going to need quadruple bypass surgery.
Pro tip, the primary purpose of oil in the kitchen is to prevent your food from sticking to the pan. That’s it. It just happens to be that a lot of oils impart a flavor and we can use that for more complex recipes. From there things only get more exciting as we explore infused oils and beyond, or even just neutral oil for easy cooking. We’ve covered it all for you.
Seasoning
History in a bottle. Every herb and spice tells a story, guiding us to recipes that open our eyes to new flavors. It’s exciting, but often one of the harder parts of cooking for many to grasp. But over time, with repetition and keen observation, you’ll start to see the patterns in how your food is seasoned.
Some of our earliest economic trade routes were created for spices. Wars have been fought over them. Yet, in today’s day and age they all sit neatly on your local grocery store shelf waiting to create flavorful experiences. Don’t know where to start? Don’t worry, we’re more than eager to show you how to add the best flavors to your meal prep.
Sweeteners
Who said meal prep had to be boring? There’s plenty of ways to make fun treats and desserts using sweeteners of all kinds. Homemade ice cream, frozen fruits, chocolate, and baked goods are all fun ways to sweeten up your meal prep.
Sweeteners are a great way to counterbalance too much acidity. When you’re cooking with fruits like tomatoes, pineapple, or citrus the sourness can be overwhelming. That’s where sugar, honey, and other sweeteners come into play, rounding out the sharp sour notes that might be peaking a little too high sometimes.