Staples

[sibyllevance]

I'm very much a beginner in all things kitchen so I tend to stick to recipes for the most part but obviously I can't work on recipes every day. I've just realized today while cooking 'by myself' (i.e. without a recipe) that I had some habits I frankly never realized I even had.
I almost always start by melting onions in a good chunk of salted butter, especially when I have no idea what I'm going to do. It seems like the right thing to do somehow (one of my housemates melts his onion exclusively in oil but I think I won him over just with the smell of mine).

So, what are your staples? Can be an ingredient or a 'foundation' for a recipe (frying onions for me)

Comments

[sibyllevance]

Here are some of mine:

- Dried herbs and spices. Most of the time my cooking would be completely dull without them. I don't always know what goes well with whatever I'm making so I smell each and just take a chance.
- Olive oil. I'm ashamed of that one because it's so damn dear and I kind of use it for anything and everything (and the combo butter/olive oil to melt onion, try it once and you'll never go back again) but it smells and tastes so good.
- Onions and garlic and lemons. I never have too many onions but I've had too much garlic and too many lemons. I like lemons for all kinds of things (salads, houmous, with fish, for guacamole) but if I end up having too many with nothing to use them for, I squeeze them for some lemonade. I roast the garlic (behead it, rub with olive oil and wrap in foil before putting in the oven).
- Beans. Not just kidney, I lived on kidney beans for months and then branched out because I was getting tired of them. You wouldn't believe how filling and tasty beans are. I recommend black-eyed beans especially.
- Pasta and rice. It's a boring staple but a staple nonetheless. Where I am the basmati rice is always on discount (no idea why but I'm not complaining) so I always go for basmati as opposed to white. For pasta I try to vary shapes and sizes. Spaghetti are extremely popular but I think I prefer linguine, even.
- Muscovado sugar which I found completely by accident at my supermarket because it's the cheapest here, turns out it's also the best (it's unrefined brown sugar so it retains all the minerals).

I'll let you stand in for me, thanks!

[marahmarie]

OMG, I was going to post my must-have staples but you just covered the entire list perfectly, except for the sugar, which I've never tried. We are *identical* right down the line on the rest. I wonder if we made meals in identical cookware, and brought it over each other's houses, if we'd even know whose food was who's?

[yvi]

At the moment I am lucky because my boyfriend loves cooking and so he plans that and cooks in the evening and I don't have to worry about it too much. But I wanted to say that this post might be helpful. Not quite the same question, but really nice stuff in the comments.

[sibyllevance]

Thanks for the link, yvi! I'm going to read the comments carefully :)

[yvi]

Oh, and when I have to feed myself I do a lot of stuff with eggs. Mostly scrambled eggs with various ingredients, like kidney beans or bell peppers. Lots of parsley, basil or lovage added to that and you have yummy food.

[sibyllevance]

That sounds wonderful! Eggs are my parents staple though so I didn't want to copy them if I could avoid it haha something to do with 'see? I can do stuff too, I'm not a child'.

[syderia]

I have a thing for turkey breast cut into small pieces, cooked in a skillet.

I can eat it with potatoes, with rice, mushrooms and cream, with rice, coconut cream and bamboo, with apples and cream...

[inkstone]

Sauteeing onions and garlic are absolutely a staple for me. That's pretty much the foundation of everything I cook. If I don't know how to pull together a stir fry, I'll just toss in some oyster sauce to coat everything.

I also always cook rice, which is a meal staple for me. Even if I mess up something -- it's too salty/dry/wet/whatever, if I serve it over steamed rice, I can sort of salvage it.

[sibyllevance]

I've never worked with oyster sauce, what does it taste like? Do you use it with veggies?
I think rice is underrated. Everyone falls head over heels for pasta and don't get me wrong, pasta is great, but rice is such a good ingredient.

[inkstone]

It's a little salty and sweet. Theoretically, I guess it tastes like oysters but I would say the taste is very mild. It's more like a hint than anything overt. It's certainly not like fish sauce where a spoonful is plenty flavorful. And I definitely use it on vegetables! It's great on snow peas, green beans and carrots!

[sibyllevance]

Thank you for that, I'll definitely try it :)

[holyschist]

I've never had oysters, but I agree that oyster sauce is quite mild and not really fishy-tasting or anything. It's a really common ingredient in a lot of sauces, though, and I've found it's often the "missing ingredient" to replicating a particular dish (e.g. mu pad king). (Then again, so is fish sauce!)

[killing_rose]

I'm a college student, so my staples (usually) are shelf-stable or something that doesn't quite get icky in two weeks or so. Two weeks, by the way, is because I only get to the store that often.

I keep chickpeas for extra protein (when they're not making me sick) and nut butters of various flavors (at the moment, two different types of dark chocolate peanut butter, chunky pb, cinnamon raisin pb, and dark chocolate and cherry almond butter) for sandwiches, for adding to fruit, to thicken soups, for adding to stir fries and mock curries.

I try to keep eggs on hand, not for using on their own, but because even though I usually only cook vegan desserts, I've been caught without eggs a couple times and it's been...problematic for the dessert.

I always have celery, carrots, and onions. Also garlic, though I usually buy a jar at the beginning of the year because it's cheapest. I don't care what I'm making--those three things often complement whatever it is.

And I always have olive oil and white wine because between the two, I can cook just about anything.

Oh! Also, coconut milk for a variety of uses.

Hopefully, some of those help. (And lo, but I miss onions sauteed in butter. The oil/white wine combo provides really good flavors though.)

[lassarina]

Pasta (with jars of red and alfredo sauce on hand). Rice. Frozen veggies. And I can usually make things work with some ground beef because I keep lots and lots of sauces in the cupboard.

[quinfirefrorefiddle]

And invention of my mom's- I call it Polish Sausage Lyonnaise.

You need a frying pan, a kielbasa, a couple small potatoes, and a medium onion. Coat the pan with something non-stick, set it on a medium heat. Dice the potatoes (you can peel them if you want) into bite sized pieces, and toss them in the pan. Dice the onion finely, throw it in the pan. Slice the kielbasa into bite size pieces, throw them in. Stir occasionally.

Once the onions are carmelized and the potatoes are well-cooked (with the consistency of a baked potato)- at least fifteen minutes, the meat will be ready as well. Fill a bowl and eat!

It keeps pretty well, and it's *great* for winter nights. Very filling.

[marahmarie]

My mom has made this recipe for as long as I can remember and it is tasty stuff.

[sid]

I'd say pasta, rice and potatoes are standard starting places for when I find myself in the kitchen with no idea what I'm going to make! Leftover veggies and meat from previous meals can be thrown in or on top of or next to any one of those, with some butter and/or olive oil and seasonings. Frozen veggies and/or canned tuna are handy if there aren't any leftovers and I'm not in the mood to cook fresh meat or veggies.

And of course sauteed onions are always a good thing! But I can't tell you how many times I've tossed a dish together and then suddenly realized, "Oh, I should have sauteed some onions!" So it sounds like your starting point is something I should always keep in mind, yes? :-)

[sibyllevance]

I'd say yes :p It's like a habit now, I don't like cooking one bit so the less time I spend in the kitchen, the better. Bizarrely enough just having the onions there always make me feel like I'm halfway through (if only!)

[liseuse]

Onions are definitely a staple of mine. There's a nice quote by Nigella Lawson, which I am going to destroy because I can't remember it exactly, but it goes something along the lines of 'there is something so comforting about reading a recipe and the starting point being to fry some onions off.'

My other staple is spinach. Preferably fresh, but I'm not averse to the frozen stuff - for one thing it's a lot cheaper. It goes in everything. Salad, with pasta, in rice dishes, in curry, in soup.

[telesilla]

Oh hell yeah, frying onions, usually with some garlic too, is where I start for so many of my standard meals. If I'm cooking Middle Eastern food, I fry them in either butter or a combo of butter and olive oil; I'm I'm doing spaghetti or some other pasta thing, it's straight olive oil. I also use a lot of pasta and I buy brown rice in bulk because we eat a lot of it.

My go to meat is usually chicken; I buy bags of frozen, boneless, skinless thighs because they're much more flavorful than the breasts.

[holyschist]

Depending on the approximate culture of origin of the recipe, most of what I cook starts with:

Frying onions, garlic, and ginger (in that order) in peanut oil.

Carmelizing onions in ghee, with some salt to release the liquid faster.

Sauteing onions and garlic in olive oil.

Assorted key ingredients: Onions, garlic, ginger, olive oil, fish sauce, coconut milk, plain yogurt, soy sauce, lemons, limes, peanut oil, the arsenal of 60+ herbs and spices, pasta, rice (jasmine and Indian basmati, mostly), chicken broth.

I keep lamb stew meat, ground hamburger, salmon filets, and Italian sausage in the freezer most of the time.

Everything else varies wildly.

[marahmarie]

I always start my sautes with crushed garlic in olive oil. Once in a while oil does not agree with my mood, so I switch to butter. Sometimes, for the purported health benefits, I melt a 50/50 blend of olive oil and butter, on the "I'm in a butter mood" nights. Garlic is a must-have for my sautes. In my twenties, it was onion and garlic, but for some reason onion doesn't agree with my taste buds so much anymore except raw in salad, or roasted with meats.

Using the garlic and oil or butter I make my own shrimp scampi, clam sauce, red sauces, bean sauces (kidney beans of any color are divine this way) and toss said sauces over almost any kind of pasta I have on hand. My favorite pasta is linguine - it's flat, thin, has perfect bite and holds the silky sauces well.

That's my two cents. :)

[amanda_in_pajamas]

I joke that I add ground black pepper, garlic powder, and onion powder to everything but chocolate pudding. I'm surprised everything I cook doesn't taste the same, quite frankly.

In addition to those three things, BBQ sauce is an absolutely must. I put it on everything (and would put it IN everything if I thought I could get away with it).