I have always thought that if you have staples on hand, you can make anything. Staples are basics that you can keep in your cupboard to use to prepare a dish. I think that everyone’s list of staples are different. It all depends on the diet that you are on, or your health issues. If you have the right staples, you should be able to prepare a dish even if it’s not on your menu.
This is a list of common staples to have on hand:
Sugar, flour, salt, pepper, milk (dried or fresh), oil, butter, bread and canned vegetables.
While searching on food network’s site, I found their recommended staple list. So when I checked it out, it had nothing on it that I just mentioned. The only similarities would be bread. I meant white bread, they meant breadcrumbs. Once I studied their list, I could see using it as my staples list. You can make quite a few things with these ingredients. You can use breadcrumbs for meats or salads. If you have tomato paste, you can make ketchup. There are many ways to make your staples last. Use proper storage recommendations on your dry staples like flour, sugar and bread crumbs.
Here is the recommended staple list from food network. I also included some great tasting recipes to fix using the staples listed. If you have a different list of staples, there are many recipes in here to choose from. Enjoy!
1)canned tomatoes
Recipe: Pasta e-fagioli
2)Chicken, beef or vegetable broth
Recipe: Indian Summer Chicken
3)Dried Pasta
Recipe: Caribbean pasta with shrimp
4)Canned beans- brown, navy or kidney
Recipe: Three Bean Casserole
5)Canned Tuna Fish
Recipe: Texas Tuna Salad
6)Dried Fruits
Recipe: Sugar Free Cranberry Orange Oatmeal Cookies
7)Olives
Recipe: Antipasto Salad
8)Good Quality Breadcrumbs
Recipe: Pan seared scallops with creamy fettuccini
9)Tomato sauce/Tomato Paste
Recipe: Vegetarian soups for the crock pot
10)Rice
Recipe: Texas Hash