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

[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.