The usual beginner's pantry list is thirty items long and mostly wrong, because it is a list of everything rather than an order of purchase. Order is what matters when the cupboard is empty. A short pantry you cook from beats a long one you look at.
Here is the order we would actually buy in, and the reasoning, which matters more than the list.
Tier one: you cannot cook without these
- Salt. Not a spice, the foundation. Buy plain coarse or kosher-style salt in a quantity that feels excessive. Most flat food is under-salted, and salt is the cheapest thing in the kitchen.
- Whole black peppercorns and a mill. Pre-ground pepper is a different and worse ingredient. This is the one piece of equipment worth buying on day one.
- A neutral cooking oil and an olive oil. One for heat, one for flavour.
- An acid. A vinegar — cider or red wine — and lemons when you can. Acid is the second most common thing missing from a dull dish.
- Onions and garlic. They are not shelf-stable forever, but they are the base of most of what follows.
With those six things you can cook well, if plainly, forever. Everything after this is range, not capability.
Tier two: the dry goods that are actual meals
These are the reason a pantry exists. Bought by weight, they are the cheapest real food available, they keep for a year or more, and each one is the centre of a meal rather than a seasoning for one.
- Rice. One long-grain, and add a short-grain later if you want it.
- Lentils, two kinds. Red lentils, which collapse into a thick pot in twenty minutes, and brown or green lentils, which hold their shape for salads and stews.
- Dried beans, one kind to start. Pinto or black. Add chickpeas and white beans next.
- A pasta or a second grain. Pasta, or farro, barley or bulgur if you prefer the chew.
- Tinned tomatoes. The one processed staple worth a permanent slot.
Tier three: the six spices that unlock the most dishes
If you buy six, buy these. They cover the largest number of cuisines and they do not overlap.
- Cumin — earthy, musky, the backbone of chili, dal, taco filling and a great many rubs.
- Coriander seed — citrusy and warm, the thing that makes a spice mix taste finished.
- Sweet paprika — colour, body and mild fruit; not heat.
- A dried chili or chili flakes — heat, and fruit if you choose a named chili rather than generic flakes.
- Cinnamon — a quill, not ground, so it can go into a braise or a drink and come out again.
- Bay leaves — the cheapest possible upgrade to every pot of beans, stock and braise you will ever make.
Then two dried herbs: oregano and thyme. Both are genuinely good dried, which is not true of most herbs, and between them they cover Mediterranean, Mexican and American cooking.
Tier four: the ones that make it yours
Now buy by cuisine rather than by list, because this is where a pantry stops being generic.
Cooking Indian and South Asian food: turmeric, cardamom, ginger, mustard seed, a garam masala or the spices to build one. Cooking Mexican food: whole dried chilies — ancho, guajillo — and Mexican oregano, which is a different plant from the Mediterranean kind and not interchangeable with it. Cooking Middle Eastern food: cumin and coriander you already have, plus sumac, dried mint and sesame. Baking: nutmeg whole, clove, allspice, vanilla.
And a tea you actually want to drink. A black tea if you take milk, a rooibos if you want the same cup without caffeine.
How much to buy
Less than you think, and this is where most new pantries go wrong. The temptation is one of everything in the largest jar. The result, a year later, is a shelf of faded spices and a suspicion that you are not good at cooking.
Buy the amount you will use in a season. For a spice you are trying for the first time, buy the smallest quantity available — two or three tablespoons is enough to find out whether you reach for it. Whole spices are the exception and can be bought in larger amounts, because they keep for years.
What to skip at the start
- Ground nutmeg, ground cardamom. Both fade in a few months. Buy whole nutmeg and a rasp; buy cardamom pods.
- Pre-made blends you can build. Italian seasoning, poultry seasoning, pumpkin pie spice. Once you have the components you can mix them, and you will know what is in them.
- Saffron and vanilla. Both genuinely good, both expensive, both easy to let sit unused for two years. Buy them when you have a dish in mind.
- Anything you bought because a recipe used it once. This is how thirty-jar cupboards happen.
The shelf itself
Set this up before you fill it, because storage costs more flavour than age does.
One shelf or drawer, not above the stove and not in window light. Tight lids; opaque or dark containers if you have them. Whole spices at the back where they can sit, ground ones at the front where you will use them before they fade. And write the month on each jar as you open it.
That is the whole system. Nine or ten items, a shelf out of the heat, and a pen.
About this article
Leaf & Larder has no licence and no stock yet, and nothing here is an offer to sell anything. This is editorial writing about cooking. It makes no medical or health benefit claims about any ingredient, and where we did not know something we left it out rather than guessing.