Pantry fare: How to make anything from your stored goods

It’s coming up on five years since the pandemic lockdown instigated our collective spate of panic-buying groceries. And I’m pleased to report that I’ve finally gotten through my bulk order of canned sardines.

I ate those sardines on buttered toast (divine, with a squeeze of lemon, some sliced red onions, loads of black pepper), stirred them into chickpea salads and mashed them with sautéed garlic for quick pasta sauces. And if I wasn’t feeling sardine-ish, I also had a minor sea’s worth of tuna, salmon and anchovies rubbing fins with the canned beans and tomatoes, bags of rice, boxes of pasta and jars of tahini, preserves, pickles and chiles packed tight on every shelf. My pantry is comfortingly and reassuringly filled to the gills (and not just with gills).

I know I’m not alone. Because if there’s one thing the pandemic underscored, it’s that having a well-stocked pantry goes beyond the convenience of fast, easy meals. All those pastas and beans bring peace of mind. No matter the havoc raging in the outside world — be it pandemics and hurricanes or just too much work to think about grocery shopping — there’s a grounding calm in knowing you always have something on hand to make into dinner tonight. Also inherent in pantry cooking is thrift. Cooking at home is already a money-saver compared with eating out or ordering in, especially when it’s based on an economical roster of beans, rice and pasta.

All that said, pantry cooking is more than merely getting a meal on the table. Now that you’ve assembled all those ingredients, what are the best, most flavorful and appealing ways of using them both quickly and easily? After all, if you already don’t have the time or energy to shop, you might not have much in the reserves for cooking, either.

As I’ve worked down my bulk orders, I’ve learned that finding ways to turn everyday staples into meals that sparkle isn’t hard, as long as you have the right ingredients on hand. Here are some of my best strategies, tips and shopping suggestions to making pantry meals with style.

Color With Condiments

Think of your pantry staples as blank canvases, waiting for the abstract expressionism of your condiments. Stock up on bright, bold items that you know you love, and throw in a couple of new ones to play with. My palette includes chile crisp and chile paste, Dijon and whole-grain mustard, olive tapenade, red curry paste, several hot sauces, Indian pickles (lime, mango and mixed), and red and green salsas, and I use them with an open hand. Adding a few spoonfuls of your favorite condiment to classic pantry recipes can transform them from workaday to wonderful.

Try These Easy Glow-Ups

— Add a few tablespoons of tapenade or curry paste to your favorite midnight pasta, and a dollop of chile crisp to cheesy baked beans or fettuccine Alfredo.

— Instead of making a homemade herb oil for Colu Henry’s wildly popular creamy white beans, stir in a few tablespoons of store-bought pesto instead.

— Put those pantry sauces to work on pastas: Try Eric Kim’s delightfully easy gochujang buttered noodles, in which the fiery Korean chile paste is tempered with butter and a dab of honey. Miso gives Alexa Weibel’s five-star, five-ingredient creamy pasta its inimitable umami richness. And Nargisse Benkabbou’s harissa puttanesca with toasted almonds is a delightful combination of crunchy textures and salty, fiery flavors.

Make dips for dinner by stirring salsa or Indian pickle into yogurt or prepared hummus and serving it with cut-up vegetables, crackers, and whatever cheese and salami are in your fridge.

Learn to Love the Pantry Sauce

You can whip up so many sauces from pantry ingredients: peanut sauce, Caesar dressing, yogurt sauce, tartar sauce, creamy coconut dressing, tonnato sauce. Use them to zip up lackluster meals like a rotisserie chicken or bowl of plain rice, and give new life to plain proteins like meat or shrimp dug out of the freezer, or tofu or eggs pulled from the fridge. Even a drizzle of good olive oil, a sprinkle of flaky sea salt plus one spice (coriander, red pepper flakes, cumin, cinnamon), and a squeeze of lemon or drizzle of honey can lift almost any dish beyond the boring, whether a workaday lentil soup or gentle, comforting vanilla ice cream.

Your Refrigerator Is an Extension of Your Pantry …

Long-keeping vegetables and citrus may already be part of your pantry checklist, and garlic and onions, potatoes and sweet potatoes, carrots and celery, ginger and citrus (some grated zest makes beans, soups and pasta sing) should all be a given.

Some fridge-dwellers you may not have considered: radishes (take the greens off, store in a closed container, and they last for weeks), fennel bulbs, leeks and scallions (stored root side down in water), all of which add brightness and freshness to pantry meals.

Cured meats like salami and hard sausages, aged hard cheeses like Parmesan and pecorino, and brined cheese like feta can keep for weeks and sometimes even months when properly stored. Ditto tofu and yogurt, which often lasts beyond its sell-by date (inspect it carefully and give it a smell before using).

… And So Is Your Freezer

You probably have frozen corn and peas on hand, but frozen spinach can be a godsend when there’s nothing fresh and green in the house. I especially love it in a very verdant pasta with feta and yogurt.

It’s easy to buy individually wrapped frozen fish fillets and bags of wild shrimp, and they’ll thaw in a flash. Frozen seafood can also be cheaper than the fresh stuff at your fishmonger, and the quality is often better — especially when it comes to salmon. As for meat, ground beef, chicken and turkey will thaw more quickly than steaks and chops, and sausages even more quickly than ground meat. Pairing ground turkey with rice, peas or corn and spices in a keema-inspired one-pot meal has become one of my family’s favorite pantry dishes in the weeknight rotation.

And as Hetty Lui McKinnon taught me well, always keep frozen dumplings on hand to make her dumpling noodle soup, with, say, carrots, peas and sliced radishes instead of broccoli and bok choy, depending on what you have that week.

Pantry cooking means being flexible and giving yourself permission to be creative and to adapt the recipe to what’s on hand. At the heart of it all is a well-stocked pantry — and knowing how to use it.

One-Pot Spiced Turkey and Rice

By Melissa Clark

Inspired by the flavors of keema — the Indian dish of spiced, ground meat — this pantry-friendly meal includes rice cooked in the same pot for a one-pan dinner of the most fragrant variety. Feel free to substitute other ground meats for the turkey: Chicken, lamb, beef or pork will all work well, adding their brawny character to the mix.

Yield: 4 to 6 servings

Total time: 55 minutes

INGREDIENTS

3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

1 medium yellow or red onion, diced

1 tablespoon tomato paste

3 garlic cloves, grated or finely minced

1 (1-inch) piece fresh ginger, finely grated, or 1 small red or green chile pepper, minced, or use both

1 1/2 teaspoons fine sea salt, plus more to taste

1 1/2 teaspoons garam masala, plus more to taste

1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon ground cayenne

1 pound ground turkey

1 cup long-grain white rice (basmati or jasmine)

1 cup frozen peas or corn

1 cup freshly chopped cilantro or parsley, more for serving (optional)

DIRECTIONS

1. Add olive oil to a 3- to 4-quart Dutch oven. Add onion and cook until tender, 3 to 5 minutes. Add tomato paste, garlic and ginger and chile, if using, and cook until fragrant, 1 to 2 minutes. Stir in salt, garam masala, cinnamon, cayenne and turkey. Cook, breaking up the meat with a spatula or spoon, until it’s deeply browned, 6 to 10 minutes.

2. Stir in the rice and coat in mixture. Stir in 2 1/2 cups of water and bring to a boil. Cover and reduce heat to very low. Cook at a gentle simmer until the liquid is absorbed and the rice is just tender, 23 to 27 minutes.

3. Remove the lid and stir in the peas and cilantro or parsley, if using. Cover and cook until the peas are heated through, another 1 to 3 minutes. Taste and add more salt if needed. Top with more chopped herbs if you like, and sprinkle with more garam masala.

Cheesy Chile Crisp White Beans

By Melissa Clark

Cheesy bean bakes, a molten staple of pantry cooking, get a fiery glow-up in this easy weeknight recipe. Because different brands of chile crisp and chile paste vary drastically in their heat levels, add your condiments slowly, tasting as you go. When your tongue just starts to tingle but isn’t yet on fire, it might be time to stop. Serve this with tortillas or tortilla chips for scooping, or over rice to catch the gooey mix of beans and melted cheese.

Yield: 4 servings

Total time: 25 minutes

INGREDIENTS

2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

3 fat garlic cloves, thinly sliced

3 scallions, thinly sliced, white and light green parts separated from dark greens

1 tablespoon tomato paste

2 teaspoons to 2 tablespoons chile crisp or chile paste, to taste

2 (15-ounce) cans white beans, such as cannellini or Great Northern, drained and rinsed

1/2 teaspoon fine sea salt, plus more to taste

8 ounces sharp white cheddar, grated (about 2 cups)

DIRECTIONS

1. Heat oven to 475 degrees. In a 10-inch ovenproof skillet, heat olive oil over medium-high. Add garlic and white and light green scallion slices, reserving the dark greens for later. Cook until lightly golden, 1 to 3 minutes. Carefully stir in tomato paste and chile crisp, and cook for 1 minute.

2. Stir in the beans and salt. Taste mixture, adding more salt and chili crisp as needed (remember that the cheese will add saltiness, so don’t overdo the salt here). Sprinkle cheese evenly over the top. Bake for 6 to 10 minutes, or until the cheese has melted and browned in spots. If you’d like to toast the top further, run the skillet under the broiler for 1 to 2 minutes. Sprinkle with reserved scallion greens and serve.

Pasta With Spinach, Feta and Yogurt

By Melissa Clark

In this speedy, verdant dish, pasta is coated with a tangy feta-yogurt sauce that’s garlicky, creamy and bracing from a dash of red-pepper flakes and some grated lemon zest. Frozen spinach adds just enough in the way of vegetables to make this qualify as a one-pot meal, and it truly needs nothing more to make for a satisfying and very easy dinner.

Yield: 4 to 6 serving

Total time: 20 minutes

INGREDIENTS

1 cup plain Greek yogurt, preferably whole milk

8 ounces feta, crumbled (about 1 cup)

Fine sea salt, as needed

1 pound short pasta, such as rigatoni, shells or campanelle

2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil, plus more for drizzling

2 garlic cloves, thinly sliced

1/4 teaspoon red-pepper flakes, plus more to taste

1 (10-ounce) package frozen spinach, thawed and squeezed dry

1 cup freshly chopped mint, basil or cilantro, or a combination, for serving (optional)

Finely grated zest and juice of 1 lemon

DIRECTIONS

1. Take the yogurt and feta out of the fridge so they can come up to room temperature while the pasta water boils.

2. Bring a large pot of salted water to boil. Add pasta and cook according to the package directions until al dente. Reserve 1 cup pasta water. Drain and set pasta aside.

3. Add olive oil to the pasta pot and set it over medium-high heat. Add the garlic and red-pepper flakes and cook until the edges are just golden brown, 1 to 2 minutes. Lower the heat and add the drained pasta. Add spinach, tossing to combine and warm it through.

4. Gently stir in the yogurt, crumbled feta, herbs (if using), lemon zest and juice of 1/2 lemon. Add reserved pasta water as needed to loosen the sauce. Taste and add more salt, red-pepper flakes, and lemon juice as needed. Drizzle with olive oil and serve.