How to Stock a Frugal Pantry
What’s in Your Pantry?
Don’t beat yourself up because dinner last night consisted of leftover lasagna and tater tots. Couldn’t be helped. You had to work late, forgot to take anything out of the freezer, and it’s a week until payday.
The nearly empty pantry was of little help.
Most importantly, though, everyone went to bed with a full belly and that’s what counts.
Before you go shopping again, take a look at what you keep on hand in your pantry.
Is it an empty space? 3 kinds of mustard and a box of saltines, maybe a box of cereal?
It’s time to rethink that space.
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Keep a Well-stocked Pantry
A well-stocked pantry will not only be a big help when you are short on time, but it will see you through those lean times. You know, the times when you have “more month than money”. When the unexpected car repair ate into the grocery budget. Yeah, the hard times that hit once in a while.
First of all, let me say that I do maintain a stockpile. Not the end of the world, Armageddon, floor-to-ceiling shelves stocked with enough Twinkies and Spam to last a lifetime.
But, when a sale at my local grocery store combined with rebates and coupons results in being able to get 4 boxes of pasta for the price of one, you know what I do? I get 4. I do the same thing with pasta sauce, soups, vegetables, canned chicken, tuna, or salmon.
Keep your pantry well-stocked and take advantage of it in your meal planning especially when you need a meal in a hurry or you are nearing the end of a pay period and shopping is out of the question.
If you are starting from scratch, download a free copy of my list of useful items for A Frugal Pantry
You don’t have to keep every item on this list in stock. If your family hates beans or peanut butter or sardines then leave them out. If you all LOVE pickles, have more than one kind on hand.
Select a few items at a time and start stocking up. Pay attention to what’s on sale and when you find a great deal buy enough for 2-3 months.
Items in the pantry typically have a long shelf life. When you can get them for more than 50% off take advantage of that and buy with future meals in mind.
If you are keeping a price book to monitor the sales cycle at your grocery store you will see when your favorite pantry items reach rock-bottom prices.
Pantry Staples to Keep on Hand
Beans, canned and dried
Beans are cheap, full of protein, and versatile. Refried beans for Quesadillas, garbanzo beans for hummus, cannellini beans for salads. Red, white, and black beans for chili. Keep a variety of canned and dried beans on hand. Dried beans are cheaper and contain no added salt or sugar.
Cooking dry beans during a meal prep session for use later in the week is a good idea.
Rice, white, brown, jasmine
There are a hundred varieties of rice in this world. It is an inexpensive and wholesome addition to so many meals. Or dessert. I’m thinking of rice pudding with raisins.
Cooking time varies from one variety to another. Brown rice takes the longest to cook, about 45 minutes, but you can cook it ahead of time. It will keep in the refrigerator for a few days if you are prepping meals ahead of time.
White rice and jasmine rice only take about 20 minutes to cook. If you like Thai food then you have to stock jasmine rice.
Oil, olive and canola
Oils can’t necessarily be used interchangeably. Olive oil is perfect for salad dressings and vinaigrettes or for sauteing. Oils with a higher smoke point, like vegetable or canola, are better suited for frying at higher temperatures.
Tomatoes: paste, sauce, diced or whole
Keep diced , whole, or tomato sauce on hand for soups, chili, or for making your own spaghetti sauces. Jarred pasta sauces make for quick weeknight meals.
Tomato soup is a favorite quick meal with a grilled cheese sandwich. Who disagrees with me?
Here’s my pro tip for tomato paste. Recipes so often call for 1 or 2 tablespoons of tomato paste. So, you open the 6-oz can that you have on hand and scoop out 1 tablespoon. The rest of it winds up in the back of the fridge.
And it stays there. Forever.
Instead, scoop out the remaining tomato paste in 1 tablespoon amounts and plop it into an ice cube tray. Freeze them, once frozen pop them out into a freezer bag and you have tomato paste whenever your recipe calls for it. In a pre-measured 1 tablespoon cube.
Canned fruits and vegetables
Stock your favorites for quick meals. Use canned fruits for breakfast in your overnight oats, pineapple chunks are great for shish kababs. I keep a couple of cans of mixed vegetables to make an easy chicken pot pie.
Canned green beans, peas, and corn round out a meal as a side dish, but it’s a good idea to use canned veggies in any combination in a homemade soup that you can make in a hurry.
Oats, cereals
Oats are cheap, cheap, cheap. For overnight oats, cookies, granola. They are a wonderful addition to homemade bread or as a filler for meatloaf.
Breakfast cereals are cheap if you buy them on sale with a coupon or rebate. There’s no reason to pay full price for breakfast cereal.
Pasta, pasta mixes
Pasta is another cheap, versatile food to keep on hand. One of the best frugal pantry staples, gluten-free or whole-wheat flour varieties are readily available to meet your dietary requirements.
Boxed mac-and-cheeses or pasta salad mixes are a good choice for making frugal meals if you buy them at rock-bottom prices. They can be prepared in a snap and “doctored up” to add nutrition and flavor.
A box of mac-and-cheese, a can of tuna, and a cupful of frozen peas and you have a Tuna Casserole.
Add olives and pepperoni to a pasta salad mix to jazz it up.
Peanut Butter, almond butter, other nut butters
Unless you suffer from nut allergies, peanut butter can be used for breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks, and dessert.
On toast, in a sandwich, in a sauce, spread on an apple, or make peanut butter fudge for a special occasion. It’s one of my favorites.
Sugar, honey, molasses, agave, maple syrup
You can satisfy your sweet tooth without using a lot of white sugar in your cooking. Most recipes calling for sugar can be adapted to use other sweeteners.
I follow the recipes for baking or canning foods to include the required sugar.
Canned tuna, salmon, chicken
These are all good, inexpensive choices of protein to add to salads or casseroles. Tuna or salmon patties are a delicious and quick weeknight dinner solution.
Canned and dried milk
Evaporated milk adds a creaminess to recipes calling for milk. Coconut milk is in a class by itself. Nothing can replace it in Thai recipes, but it is also fantastic in overnight oats.
Dried milk powder is so handy to have when you find you are completely out of milk and you planned on mashed potatoes for dinner. Make a small batch with the dried milk…disaster averted.
Broth, stock, soups
I live by the adage that you “Don’t start a soup with water”. OK, it has to be liquid, but use chicken broth or stock or bone broth instead of plain water.
You can use vegetable or chicken stock in place of water to cook rice to add additional flavor.
Dried Fruit and Nuts
Dried fruits are loaded with nutrients, but are also loaded with natural sugars. Don’t overdo it. A handful of raisins in oatmeal or some currents in quinoa adds a punch of flavor and nutrition.
Flour and other baking products
White or whole wheat flour, baking powder, and yeast are necessary if you are going to do your own baking. Flour or corn starch is a good thickener for sauces or gravies.
Baking soda
A workhorse of the kitchen. Use it in baking, but also in cleaning. It is mildly abrasive for scrubbing surfaces without scratching.
Use it with vinegar for super-cleaning or unclogging slow drains.
It’s even good for relieving the sting of insect bites.
Condiments
Mayo, mustard, steak sauce, Sriracha, hot sauce, soy sauce. We all have our favorites. Hot sauces, chutneys, and olives are a weakness of mine. Keep your favorites on hand to enhance the foods you love.
If you have mayo and Sriracha there is no reason to buy Sriracha Mayo. You can make your own.
Vinegar: white vinegar, apple cider vinegar, balsamic vinegar
Another heavy lifter in the kitchen, vinegar has hundreds of uses. Mixed with olive oil for perfect vinaigrettes, a splash added to soups brightens the flavor.
It’s used in canning foods, for whitening and sanitizing laundry, relieving headaches, and on, and on, and on.
Spices and Herbs
Salt and pepper for starters. I wonder if there is a list of ALL of the spices available to us. You don’t need them all, I’m pretty sure. Consider the foods you love to eat and make sure you have the spices or herbs necessary to prepare those meals.
You can make spice mixes at home instead of overpaying for the premade jars in the grocery or specialty store.
Fridge Staples
Dairy, eggs, milk, yogurt, cheese
Keep the dairy products that you love in the fridge. Eggs are the basis for many easy meals. Scrambled, over easy, hardboiled, or in a Fritatta, to name a few.
We don’t drink much milk around our house, but I use it for making muffins, sauces, or overnight oats.
I keep plain yogurt on hand. I can sweeten it with honey and fruit if I want that but for a totally different taste mix it with garlic, minced cucumbers, and a splash of hot sauce for the perfect Tzaziki sauce.
Freezer Staples
Ground beef, turkey, lamb
I think that there must be a gazillion recipes for ground beef. I have only tried about two thousand of them. Love ’em all. The texture of ground turkey is a bit different from ground beef but interchangeable in most recipes.
Ground lamb is a bit more expensive so I only buy it when I can get it on sale, but Shepherds Pie or Lamb Kofta are favorites around our house.
Chicken, whole, thighs
There are probably as many chicken recipes as there are recipes for ground beef, I have only tried about 485 of them.
Chicken wings are a treat, I try to keep some on hand for when the cravings strike.
Thighs are so versatile they have become my preferred cut. Thighs can be substituted for breasts in almost any recipe. They retain more moisture than breasts and usually cost less than half the price.
If you are comfortable cutting a whole chicken into parts, take advantage of the sales and you can please everyone in your family when they get their favorite part for dinner. We have the whole white meat/dark meat debate in our house.
Frozen fruits and vegetables
Produce can be expensive and it has a relatively short shelf life. Keep your favorite frozen vegetables and fruits on hand and use them in place of fresh ones.
Or, you can freeze almost anything that you get on sale. I freeze anything but lettuce. Carrots, onions, peppers, and celery can be chopped and flash frozen, then transferred to storage bags or plastic containers in serving-size quantities.
Berries can be flash-frozen whole and then stored in serving-sized portions.
Stock Pot
This is my secret to making the BEST.SOUP.EVER. Keep a container to hold little bits of leftover this and that. A dab of gravy, a 1/4 cup of broth, a tablespoon of rice, or small quantities of vegetables, or meat that won’t make a meal. Add to it and when it’s full, take it out and start a vegetable soup. Add more stock and anything else you want in your soup.
This container is chock-full of flavor. You won’t be able to duplicate it from batch to batch, but you will swear that each soup you make is the BEST ever. I don’t add fish or birthday cake to my stockpot, but that’s about it.
Produce
Potatoes, white or sweet
Cheap and versatile, potatoes are also nutritious by themselves. We typically tip the scales in the other direction when we add cream, butter, cheese, bacon, brown sugar, pecans, marshmallows, etc.
Consider cooking any potato as simply as possible. A root veggie bake or baked potato logs are easy and delicious ways to cook potatoes that don’t add extra fat and calories.
To make baked potato logs, clean russet potatoes, no need to peel, cut into wedges, 6 or 8 pieces per potato, drizzle with olive oil, arrange on a baking sheet in a single layer peel side down, sprinkle with salt and pepper to taste, and crushed red peppers if you like heat. Bake at 425° for about 30 minutes until they are browned.
Onions, garlic
Onions and garlic are included in every savory dish I can think of. They are readily available and relatively cheap. In addition to adding a depth of flavor, they also add a big nutritional boost.
Onions and garlic cloves are best kept in a cool, dry place where there is some air circulation.
If you find yourself with an abundance of onions, try this. Peel and chop, place on a baking sheet in a single layer, and put in the freezer until frozen. This doesn’t take long, maybe half an hour. Then transfer to freezer bags or small plastic containers in recipe-size quantities. When you run out of fresh onions, grab your emergency stash out of the freezer!
Carrots
Keep fresh carrots on hand for snacking, to add to salads or coleslaw, or for side dishes
The baby-cut carrots are always a temptation because they are so easy, but compare prices with whole carrots. The baby-cut carrots are just the small tips cut off of big carrots. Save some money by cutting up your own carrots. It’s really not that hard!
Keep a frugal well-stocked pantry and you will always be able to whip up meals in a hurry. Best of all, you control the cost and nutritional quality of the meals you serve.
Even a small storage space can be maximized with a few inexpensive accessories to give you a place to store basic pantry items.
For other money-saving tips see
