Turn to your pantry staples, such as beans, rice, pasta and potatoes to pull off healthy meals with little effort and minimal trips to the store.
At the best of times, we could all use an arsenal of healthy recipes that utilize pantry staples. During these distressing times of social distancing and restaurant closures, there's some comfort in knowing that we can put a healthy meal on the table using basic ingredients, such as beans, rice, pasta and potatoes.
In this post, I included some of my favorite pantry staple recipes, as well as a general list of items that I like to keep on hand to avoid last minute trips to the grocery store. I didn't include fridge or freezer items, but encourage you to keep some of your favorite proteins, vegetables and fruits on hand to round out your meals.
I divided the recipes into four sections. Click on the category below to skip directly to those recipes.
For pantry staples, we like to stock the following (affiliate links included):
- a variety of pasta shapes - penne, rotini, spaghetti, bucatini and so on. Also, pasta types - regular semolina pasta, as well as whole wheat pasta, brown rice noodles and soba noodles
- beans, both dried and canned - black, red kidney, garbanzo (chickpeas), pinto, cannellini (Great Northern)
- lentils of all kinds - red, green, yellow
- potatoes - both little potatoes as well as russets and sweet potatoes
- rice - while we typically eat brown rices (jasmine, basmati and medium grain), I always have a bag of white rice on hands because my kids love it
- other grains - farro, quinoa, barley, freekeh and more
- broths - I always have chicken and vegetable broths on hand
- spices - I couldn't possibly list everything here, but it ranges from basics like oregano and rosemary to less common spices, such as smoked paprika and ground coriander
- canned tomato products - crushed tomatoes, petite diced tomatoes, tomato paste and salsa
Bean & lentil recipes
rice & other grain recipes
Pasta Recipes
Potato Recipes
Disclosure: I am a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for me to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.
Kelley @ Chef Savvy
Love this idea of using pantry staples! I will totally be making the Curry chicken!