Not the basics like oil or salt, nor those fresh ingredients such as garlic or onions. These top 12 versatile ingredients are the readymade things that can last in your kitchen cupboard or fridge for weeks—or even months—that make it easy to whip up a plethora of dishes when you've not had time to do a meticulously planned shop.
It's been a while since I've written up one of these "building blocks" musings. I've been meaning to do this one for ages, but never seemed to find the time. These 12 readymade items, widely available in supermarkets, are little kitchen lifesavers, whether you fancy an impromptu Asian feast or need to give your traditional Sunday roast that extra edge. Furthermore, they can be kept in the larder or fridge once opened for weeks or even longer.
Here they are, in no particular order
1. Garlic & ginger paste
Like many of the things on this listical, you can make your own and store it or freeze it. The question is whether you'll get around to doing that. This stalwart of the modern Indian kitchen—not surprisingly a mixture of minced root ginger and garlic—is offered by numerous brands. And, it is definitely a timesaver when knocking up a "curry in a hurry". But, its uses go way beyond that. Kick start Chinese or Japanese wok dishes with a teaspoon or two. Or, use it in the base of rich wine sauces for game. After all, ginger and garlic combine beautifully with soft fruits like pear or forest berries. It's also great to add to marinades for meat and poultry or to give sautéd side vegetables such as leeks or celery a little special something.
2. Worcestershire Sauce
'Worcester" sauce is not just the stuff of full English breakfasts, Welsh rarebit and Bloody Marys. Almost like a "super stock", this heritage anchovy-based sauce brings depth and intensity to a multitude of stews, sauces and casseroles. For example, it is the best option for pasta sauces when you don't have easy access to Italian anchovy sauce that's not that readily available in many parts of the world. And, it perks up vegetables or poultry shoved under the grill for one of those quick suppers when you get home later than expected. For those of a vegan bent, use mushroom ketchup in a similar way.
3. Dark chocolate
Dark chocolate—70% cacao fats or higher—will last for months in a cool cupboard, assuming you don't get the midnight munchies. Even when it gets little white "flecks" on it, it's perfectly safe to eat. Obviously it's useful to have around if you like whipping up a batch of grown-up chocolate chip cookies or fresh pain au chocolat on a whim. More important is its uses in savoury dishes, most obviously delicious Mexican mole sauces for poultry. But, there's probably an even bigger audience for its other form of magic: giving your Italian ragù an intensity to make others coo in admiration. Drag your spag out of the bog every time with a sparing quantity of this secret weapon.
4. Whisky
No, not just for steadying your nerves when recipes don't go to plan or celebrating when they do. Beyond its barroom uses, whisky is a mystical ingredient. Perhaps that's why the Spanish embraced it and went crazy for whisky sauce on steaks or chicken. Let's never forget the joy it can bring to a gumbo if you don't have bourbon to hand or boozy pan-seared scallops or langoustines cooked down in a little of the original amber nectar. It makes a fantastic marinade with nothing more than a dash of salt and black pepper for booze-infused anchovies, served au naturel as a starter with a little crisped seaweed. Or, give the extra kick to your banana bread. Noooo! Yer dannae have to use the good stuff in cooking. Sláinte Uisge-Beatha!
5. Soy sauce
In terms of population, this must surely be the world's most consumed sauce. Billions of people use it daily in Asia as part of their traditional cuisines and lunch hour Westerners dab their supermarket "sushi" into it. It has a myriad of culinary uses and almost as many forms and producers. Of course, it's used in endless Asian dishes where it serves the dual function of a seasoning and as a specific flavour. But, its uses go way beyond the Asian kitchen. Perk up a lacklustre "Western" salad with a little soy and lime juice dressing. Better still, drizzle a little onto vanilla ice-cream topped with puréed lychee and melon as a pudding. Use it in marinades or give your potato salad a twist. It has almost as many uses as the number of the world's population that use it.
6. Flaked Almonds
Yes, they do go stale. But, it takes quite a while. These little critters are hugely versatile whether among you bakers—I'm not really big on the sweet things front—or in their use in Indian cooking where they can be a garnish or milled and cooked into sauces. You can use them as they come in numerous salads. And, of course, they are a key ingredient in a lot of cooking from Southern Europe, perhaps most famously as a blended paste that includes wine, nuts, herbs and spices in Catalan France and Spain that is distilled into liqueurs but is also used as a base for rich stews made from meat marinaded in this paste for even days before cooking. Or, go in for a bit of fusion cuisine and mix them with breadcrumbs for an alternative schnitzel or fried chicken.
7. Dried chillies
Many forms of dried chillies have an almost endless shelf life. But, like soy sauce, dried chillies come in a daunting number of forms, from the fiery dried Kashmiri chillies sought after for so much Indian cooking to the delicious smoked chipotle used in Mexican cooking; the sweet chillies of Southern France to the flaked chillies used in a lot of Turkish or Southern Italian dishes. My advice is to find at least one variety of mid-spicy dried chilli and stock up. Dried chillies that can be used in sauces or, milled in a spice grinder or crushed using a pestle and mortar, sprinkled on salads for a bit of a kick. You can always add the specific ingredients later. And, since a recent review of the inventory of one Mexican supplier I admire offered 137 varieties of dried chillies from Latin America alone, you're never gonna amass all of them. Simply enjoy the bite.
8. Processed coconut
Of course there are Asian recipes that call for defrosted frozen coconut or grated fresh coconut. But, the two main forms of processed coconut—tinned coconut milk and so-called "creamed coconut" are little kitchen helpers. The former can sit in the kitchen cupboard for decades but can only safely last in the fridge for a few days once the can is opened—yes, you can freeze it, but it becomes a little "mucky" once defrosted. The latter, however, can last in the fridge for weeks, ready to be added to numerous Indian, Thai, Caribbean or Vietnamese dishes. Simply wrap what you don't use until you need to dilute (portions of it) in boiling water or grate it into dishes during cooking. Both forms are produced by numerous excellent manufacturers with their sources in Africa, Asia and the Caribbean.
9. Readymade stock
Animal, vegetable or mineral, let's face it, few of us get time to make proper stock. And, even when we do, it's not prone to longevity. Breaking news: if you make that wonderfully gelatinous chicken or beef stock stock that draws out all the "jelly" from the bones, you have to use it within a few days. If you freeze it, it can actually become rather vile once defrosted because it hasn't been strained as vigorously to remove the "ugly" bits as with the processes used to make stock on an industrial scale. Yes, stock remains one of the most important ingredients in the global canon of many dishes. But, here's the thing you might not know: diluted stock cubes and "jelly pots" consistently score highest in blind tasting tests by foodie experts compared with overpriced supermarket "fresh" stock. So drop the snobbery and stock up on stock cubes and "jellies".
10. Honey
Honey is truly an amazing ingredient, just one of the gifts the bee gives us: without its pollination so many other crops upon which we rely would not fruit. It's also an amazingly durable edible. Pots of honey excavated from Egyptian tombs have proven safe to eat even after being stored for thousands of years. A traditional alternative to sugar as a sweetener, its culinary uses go far beyond something to plop into a hot beverage. It's a key ingredient in many Japanese sauces—such as teriyaki—and equally a key ingredient in Northern European dressings, glazes and sauces; from honey roast ham to German honey and mustard dressings. It's vital to Mexican sopapillas or Eastern Mediterranean baklava. Perk up your Scots porridge with a spoon or nibble it on slices of bread like a queen in her counting house. Or, get a bit more adventurous: roasted salmon with a honey, garlic and lemon glaze or use it to make Chinese crispy sesame chicken. Never be without it.
11. Concentrated tomato paste
Concentrated tomato paste—sometimes marketed as purée, which it technically is—should be viewed as a single-vegetable stock. For decades it was the subject of culinary snobbery, not seen as "the real thing". But, now even highly regarded Italian heritage brands produce concentrated or double concentrated tomato pastes. Good! They are your friend. What the old guard snobs fail to recognise is that few of us these days have the time to lovingly reduce masses of passata for 15 hours to create the perfect sugo. Today it's widely available in tins, tubes and "pots". The tube kind is particularly helpful. It can safely stored in the fridge for weeks and, frankly, that's great, because a little goes a long way. No, it's not a substitute for tomatoes in Italian cooking, but it acts more like an accelerator, intensifying the flavours or the tomatoes already being cooked in the dish. And, you can use it in exactly the same way for numerous dishes from Latin American, Spanish or Indian traditions. But it's not limited to the classics: add a little to your savoury crêpe batter for colour and a flavour twist; knock up quick versions of dipping sauce for Asian food by combining it with chopped garlic, peanuts, sesame oil and spring onion; or add a dash to the boiling water of your parsnip side dish for something a little more interesting.
12. Vinegar
Like honey, chillies, stock or soy, vinegar comes in many guises. The most important takeaway from this is that it is a feature of numerous food cultures around the world dating back centuries; millennia, even. Whether the pickles of the Japanese table that use rice vinegar, sugarcane Kolah vinegar used in cooking in India, apple cider vinegar beloved of the German and Nordic tables, or the vaunted Balsamico Tradizionale di Modena of Italy, vinegar comes in as many forms as food cultures that understand its value, made from whatever they found locally to make it. It's one of humanity's oldest "chemical" cooking ingredients—on average 4 to 6% acetic acid, it's basically kitchen chemistry 101. If your larder is big enough, by all means amass a massive collection. It's another of those readymade ingredients that can be stored safely on a shelf for ages. But, if I were to narrow it down to the three essentials for any kitchen I would say they were balsamic vinegar for all those salads and Mediterranean dishes where you will experience it "raw" and a good white wine vinegar and bog standard distilled malt vinegar (which is transparent) that can largely stand in for all those global cuisines that call for vinegar to be cooked into the dish. With those three in your arsenal you will be able to knock up a passable last-minute vinaigrette or an Indian dish that requires vinegar in the cooking process without a beat.
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