Whether you’re looking to expand your food stockpile or you’re just getting one started, here are my nineteen favorites foods to keep in your pantry for cooking from scratch!
What is considered a pantry staple?
A food is considered shelf-stable if it can be stored at room temperature without going bad. While some fresh fruits and vegetables can be stored at room temperature for short periods of time, I don’t include them in my pantry staples as they would need to be rotated/used every week or two, depending on the type.
You’ll find out which foods are “staples” in your own personal pantry as you work on building your food storage. For me, the bulk of these staples are foods that I use at least once a week, if not multiple times per week.
To get an idea of what your staples might be, look at your grocery list or store receipts and figure out which foods you buy regularly that you store at room temperature. This can include condiments and canned goods that you would refridgerate after opening but that can be stored at room temperature until then.
How do I stock my first pantry?
In my post on starting a food stockpile from scratch, I talk about starting with just one item that you already buy regularly. But instead of buying one week’s worth of that item when you’re at the store, maybe you buy a month’s worth.
When you buy more of a food at once, you can sometimes get a cheaper price per pound because lots of companies have ”bulk” prices for buying multiples or a case of something.
If something you want to stock up on is on sale, that’s even better! If you can buy multiples of it on sale, you can save tons of money over buying them at full price right when you need them immediately. Plus, you can easily grab them without having to make a trip to the store!
Where do you source pantry items?
If buying natural and organic products is one of your goals, I have a whole post on places to purchase these foods on a budget! My favorite company that has the best prices for most foods that I buy is Azure Standard.
You can also source pantry items from your local grocery store. While they might not always ahve the lowest prices, they usually have some pretty good sales, especially around the holidays.
Tracking sales and keeping a food stockpile can help you simplify your grocery shopping and save money!
How do I set up a new pantry?
When setting up your new food storage pantry, first you need a location. For mine, we had lots of shelving in our basement that just needed cleared a little and wiped down. The shelving we already had is the perfect depth for food storage so you can group like items behind each other (see the next point), but not so deep that things get lost or disorganized.
If you don’t have an obvious location for your food storage, get creative. Maybe you don’t have a basement, but maybe you have an unused closet that could be turned into an extension of your regular pantry.
Or maybe you’re like me and have lots of storage space above your kitchen cupboards that you never use because it’s just too high for items you regularly. This can be a great place to store extras of individual foods, and you can keep one of each item in your regular pantry for easy grabbing. Just remember to replenish that item after you use it up!
How do you arrange food in a pantry?
For me, my food storage is set up so that ”like” items are groups together. For general categories, look at the categories in this post.
This means that I have all my canned vegetables next to each other, and likewise with canned fruits, pastas, etc. That way, when I’m looking for a vegetable to have with a meal, I don’t have to search the whole pantry, just the one section.
Depending on the size of the can or container, I like stacking like items on top of and/or behind each other. Think about how grocery store shelves are arranged. You don’t see 15 of each item. Instead, you see one or two of the item and all the others are lined up behind it.
If you can keep your food storage well-organized, it will be easy for you to just walk over and ”shop” your pantry just like the grocery store.
When you have a variety of foods you use regularly in your home ”grocery store”, you can often eliminate the need for another trip to (or across) town. For ideas of want you might want to include in your food stockpile, see my family’s favorite below!
How do I cook the foods in my stockpile?
If you’re new to cooking from scratch, it might seem overwhelming at first, especially if you’re starting with a food in its most basic dry form, such as whole grains (unmilled) or dried beans.
I know I was overwhelmed when I first started cooking more from scratch. I grew up cooking quite a bit, but I’d never cooked something like dried beans before recently.
If you’d like to learn how to cook from scratch, I have a whole post on the best cookbooks for beginners learning how to cook from scratch!
Try it before you buy it in bulk
I wouldn’t buy too much in bulk of an item if you’ve never cooked it before (even if you know your family eats the store-bought prepared version of it), but if you buy a small package of it to try and need to know how to prepare it, these cookbooks can show you how!
My favorite pantry staples for cooking from scratch
1. Canned Meat
When I first started my food storage, it primarily consisted of canned fruits and vegetables (see #3 and #4), but it only took me one two-day-long power outage to see a gap in my stockpile: meats. Since we didn’t want the deep freezer to thaw, we didn’t open it. However, that didn’t leave us many options for proteins to make meals out of.
At first, I thought that having meat in your food storage was only for people with pressure canners, but there are actually plenty of options in the store for those of us non-canners.
I love using canned meats for quick, simple meals. Since the canning process means the meat is already cooked, you can skip ahead to the next step in your meal.
Here are a few of my favorite canned meats to use in my kitchen:
- Canned Chicken
- Canned Tuna
- Canned Salmon
If you have (and know how to correctly use) a pressure canner, you can even prepare some of these at home! I love the idea of having home-canned beef stew meat or chicken that I can take off the shelf and quickly turn into a from-scratch meal.
2. Canned Vegetables
I feel like canned vegetables are one of those things you automatically associate with a food stockpile, and maybe not for good reasons. Maybe you’ve only ever been served them as a token vegetable side dish that you had to eat in order to get dessert.
But canned vegetables can taste good! Some of them just need a little help straight out of the can.
Ways to make canned vegetables taste better
- Season with garlic, salt, and pepper
- Top with cheese
- Add to a stir fry
- Fry in bacon grease (no really, canned green beans are 100x better in bacon grease)
I’ll admit that there are some vegetables I like better fresh or frozen, but canned vegetables are a great way to bulk up your food storage. They also tend to be relatively inexpensive as well!
Some of my favorite canned vegetables are:
- Corn
- Green Beans
- Olives
- Carrots
- Water Chestnuts
- Tomato Sauce
- Tomato Paste
3. Canned Fruit
I love canned fruit because you can add it to smoothies, effortlessly pull together a dessert, or even just eat it straight from the can.
My favorite desserts (or even breakfast, if you want) to make with canned fruits include: crisps, cobblers, and shortcakes with fruit and whipped cream.
You can also used canned fruits as an ice cream or yogurt topping!
4. Dried Vegetables
I’m still working on learning how to incorporate dried vegetables into my cooking, but here are some of the ways I’ve tried so far:
- Dried kale powder (you can add it to just about anything and you can’t taste it)
- Dried celery (also to add to dishes, but it has a bit more of a noticeable flavor than kale)
I also have some mushrooms that I dried to make Mushroom Seasoning Salt from Venison for Dinner.
You can also fry vegetables and either rehydrate them in hot water before adding them to your food, or you can dump them straight in your soup to rehydrate them.
5. Dried Fruit
Dried fruits make awesome no-mess snacks that your kids can just grab and go!
Our favorite dried fruits are:
- Dried Cranberries
- Raisins
- Dried Pineapple
- Dried Pears
- Dried Strawberries
- Freeze-Dried Mangos and Strawberries (more expensive, but a fun treat!)
I’m also hoping to dry cherries from my parents’ cherry tree toss year.
6. Flour (or grains to make flour)
I’ve only just recently gotten into growing my own flour, but even before I got my grain mill, I had a stock of flour in my Freezer.
For flour, I tend to stick with regular wheat and white flours. However, you can buy most of the grains listed below already ground into flour if you don’t have a grain mill and want to try some alternative flours.
Some of my favorite grains to grind in my grain mill are:
- Wheat (soft white and hard white)
- Spelt
- Quinoa
- Barley
- Amaranth
- Oat Groats
I also have some rye grain, but I haven’t tried it out yet. I get my grains from Azure Standard since they tend to have to best prices for organic grains.
7. Quinoa
I know I just mentioned this in the last section, but quinoa doesn’t just have to be ground into flour.
You can also cook it like rice as a side dish for a meal.
Another fun idea I’ve heard for using quinoa is to use it to stretch your ground meats! Just add a cup or two of cooked quinoa to your browned ground beef. Especially if you’re making something with lots of seasonings like taco meat, your family might not even know the difference!
8. Oats
We love using oats for oatmeal, but there are so many other uses for them!
We also use them for:
- Oat Milk (It’s so easy and so much cheaper than buying it at the store!)
- Oatmeal Cake
- Granola
- and Granola Bars!
9. Rice
I love rice, maybe even a little too much.
Seriously, just ask my husband. I sometimes have to hold myself back from planning meals that involve rice so we don’t get tired of it.
I love cooking my rice in bone broth (usually chicken) to get all that good collagen and nutrients. Plus, my toddler loves rice, so then I know he’s getting good nutrition and not just completely empty carbs.
10. Beans
Beans are an excellent source of shelf-stable protein that you can stock up on for not much money. You can buy already canned beans, or you can buy dried beans and cook them in an instant pot or crockpot (they are so easy!).
We love white beans, kidney beans, and black beans.
Oh, and garbanzo beans for making a hummus or roasted chickpeas.
11. Pasta
While pasta might not last as long as some of the other items I’ve mentioned, it’s still pretty shelf-stable, so you can stock up on it when it’s on sale. I usually get some mixture of spaghetti, lasagna, penne, and rotini noodles.
With some meat (from the freezer or canned from your food storage) and some sauce, pasta can be a quick, easy, and nutritous meal when you don’t know what else to make.
If you have thawed meat or use canned meat, your meal with be ready in about the same amount as a box of mac and cheese! Toss in some canned or frozen vegetables while you’re heating up the sauce to up the nutritional content even more!
12. Nuts
Nuts are a great source of protein and make awesome snacks for kids! Our favorites are peanuts, cashews, and pistachios, but there are lots of other choices as well.
Nuts pretty shelf-stable, so you can stock up on them for short term at room temperature, but if you are wanting to stock up for a longer period of time, you will probably want to store them in the freezer to maintain their freshness.
13. Sugar
I almost called this section “sweeteners“, but that just makes me think of chemical sweeteners, so I’m leaving it as sugar. When I’m not using honey (see #17 below) or maple syrup, my favorite sweeteners are:
- White Cane Sugar
- Dark Brown Cane Sugar
- Coconut Sugar
14. Baking Supplies
In addition to the flour and sugar that I listed above, you can also stockpile other baking supplies, such as:
- Baking Powder
- Baking Soda
- Cream of Tartar
- Cornstarch
- Yeast
- Cocoa Powder
- Vanilla Extract
- and much more!
15. Shredded Coconut
I love using shredded coconut in recipes, but my new favorite used for it is to make homemade coconut milk. I’m hoping to get a recipe up on the blog soon, but it’s so simple: just two ingredients and a blender!
And as a bonus, after you’re done making coconut milk, you can use the leftover coconut pulp and make homemade coconut macaroons. Here’s the recipe I used with our homemade maple syrup.
16. Oils
You can also stockpile some of your favorite oils for cooking so you never have to worry about running out of them.
I love using olive oil (and bacon grease, but that’s not so shelf-stable) to roast vegetables in. Just toss your veggies in a little olive oil with some seasoning and roast at 425 for 40 minutes.
Roasting makes just about any vegetable taste good! Trust me, I’ve never liked broccoli, but roasted with a little garlic powder, salt, and pepper, it’s pretty good.
You can also stock up on flavored oils for cooking as well. I started buying toasted sesame oil recently, and it’s so good in lots of Asian-inspired recipes like fried rice and stir fry!
17. Honey
I could have just lumped honey in with sugar and created a ”Sweeteners” category, but I love using honey so much that I thought it could use its own section.
Honey is my favorite sweetener to put in tea, especially if I have a cough or cold. If you have seasonal allergies, getting some local honey from your area can actually help with those.
Honey is also an amazing substitute for sugar in just about any recipe! I love that I can get local, raw honey that retains all of its nutrition and use it as a sweetener. That way, I don’t have to rely on buying sugars that are grown elsewhere and shipped in.
18. Seasonings
This is defintely not one of those food storage categories I thought of for awhile. However, if you ever get to the point where you can’t go to the grocery store and have to rely exclusively on your stockpile, you’ll be glad you included seasonings.
Think about this. If you make some pasta and add some canned vegetables and a can of chicken, what’s exciting about that? Not much, unless you’re really hungry and just want food of any kind.
On the other hand, if you have spices on hand, you can jazz up this same meal and turn it into any number of different cuisines!
Note: I’m also including herbs under this section as I love growing them and using them to flavor our food, both in their fresh and dried forms.
Spices to keep on hand for cooking from scratch:
- Garlic Powder
- Onion Powder
- Salt
- Black Pepper
- Paprika
- Cayenne Pepper
- Cumin
- Turmeric
- Celery Seed
Herbs to keep on hand for cooking from scratch:
- Sage
- Parsely
- Rosemary
- Thyme
- Basil
- Cilantro
- Mint
- Dill
With these spices (and others, feel free to add to my list!), you can make just about any flavor combination you want!
19. Coffee and Tea
I never thought of stockpiling coffee until my husband started drinking a brand that we could only get in small bags in our lcoal store.
Since I prefer to grocery shop once a month, I was having to buy multiple bags at a time instead of the larger can I used to buy. But since the coffee was in individual smaller bags instead of one large container, it was a pain to store in my kitchen pantry. So I moved it downstairs and it has officially become part of my food storage.
I more recently have learned that I can buy this brand of coffee in bulk in its whole bean form directly from the company. It’s a better price, and I don’t have to worry about running out of coffee!
If you’re not a coffee person or can’t handle the caffeine, you can else stock on regular and herbal teas! You can do this by purchasing boxes of tea bags when they’re on sale, or you can stock up even quicker by buying loose leaf teas in bulk from somewhere like Frontier Coop. Loose leaf teas are so much more affordable than individual tea bags, so you can stock up on most of your favorites quicker, even if you’re on a budget.
This isn’t an exhaustive list of everything I use to cook on a daily or weekly basis, but it does include most of my main pantry staples. If you have these items in your food storage, you can make lots of amazing, nourishing meals for your family!
