The Essential Pantry

As long as I can remember, I have always lived in a house. I have joked about it, but people who grew up in apartments don’t always get it.

I cannot live without a dining room.

Admit it: you just called me bougie under your breath...

I need a dining room! Not a nook off a sunroom or a breakfast table in the kitchen, and certainly not half a kitchen island outfitted with barstools and…I don’t even know what to call that. I need a formal dining room—with a dining table and adult chairs (nothing plastic or previously used by The Rock as a defensive weapon in Wrestlemania).

But even with a dining room, space in any home is limited. In a perfect world, we could all afford enormous homes with kitchens so big you could hold parties in there! And the kitchen would extend to an outdoor patio, but I regress.

I’ve always had enough cabinet space to accommodate house staples, current culinary whims as well as our developing palate. What would be ideal is if we could have one more room--perhaps the size of our hallway closet--for a walk-in pantry.

I blame Chef Michael Smith (we’ve caught old episodes of his Chef at Home show) and I now have pantry envy.

Alas, we can’t just have everything we want. What kind of world would it be if we were all waltzing about happy?!

Most of us have a bare-necessity pantry with the ingredients and condiments we use more often. The bakers have a more extensive pantry. And then, there’s the daring whose palate goes beyond pub food—not that there’s anything wrong with that.

Even if you can’t afford to maintain a full pantry of all the flavors you’d like, if you want to experiment with styles, you need to understand the palate necessary and the elements that will get you there. Perhaps you too have limited space, so pick what you love, master it, treat it lovingly and create deliciousness.

Greatist has a great article to help you create flavor profiles for your favorite cuisines. Certainly we have all tried our hand at creating an Italian seasoning mix (whether to top pizza, flavor a sauce, or roasted chicken). This article also offers spice combinations for Chinese, Indian, Mediterranean, Mexican, and Thai cuisines.

This infographic from Women’s Health includes spice blends that can aid in weight loss:

By cuisine (not meant to be a complete list), try these links: African (not sorted by country or region), Caribbean, Chinese, Cuban, Greek, Italian/Tuscan, Indian, Indonesian, Japanese, Jewish/Sephardic, Kenyan, Korean, Latin American (general), Mediterranean, Mexican, Middle Eastern/Persian, Moroccan, Peruvian, Spanish, Syrian, Thai, Vietnamese...