Store cupboard essentials
Not a shopping list for one week — a standing stock. Buy the gaps once, then top up whatever you open. Everything here makes a meal with what is left in the fridge.
47 items
Makes your own editable copy. No account needed.
The items
- Carbohydrates
- Pasta, two shapes×2
- Rice
- Couscous or bulgur
- Noodles
- Flour, plain
- Oats
- Tins and jars
- Chopped tomatoes×4
- Chickpeas×3
- Beans — cannellini, kidney, black×3
- Lentils, tinned or dried
- Coconut milk×2
- Tuna or sardines×3
- Sweetcorn
- Olives or capers
- Passata
- Fats and acids
- Olive oil, one for cooking and one for dressing
- Neutral oil for frying
- Red wine or cider vinegar
- Lemons, when you shop
- Mustard
- Flavour
- Garlic
- Onions
- Stock cubes or paste
- Soy sauce
- Tomato purée
- Honey
- Chilli flakes
- Curry paste or harissa
- Spices worth having
- Salt, fine and flaky
- Black peppercorns and a grinder
- Cumin
- Smoked paprika
- Ground coriander
- Cinnamon
- Dried oregano and bay leaves
- In the fridge and freezer
- Eggs×6
- Butter
- Hard cheese
- Frozen peas
- Frozen spinach
- Bread in the freezerToast is a meal at eleven at night in a way nothing else is.
Makes your own editable copy. No account needed.
Questions people ask
- What makes a meal out of an empty fridge?
- Pasta, tinned tomatoes, garlic, olive oil and hard cheese. Eggs, an onion and rice do the same job. Everything else on this list widens the options.
- How do you keep a cupboard from becoming an archaeology site?
- Replace what you open, and once a season pull everything out and put the oldest at the front. Spices past two years are colour, not flavour.