Stocking a pantry that feeds you for less

Cheap cooking comes down to having enough of the right things on the shelf that on the night you're tired, dinner comes out of what's already in the house. The tired night is where the money leaks out, one delivery bag at a time. The list below is how I'd stock a kitchen from empty if the number on the receipt mattered.

I'm not putting prices on this page. They change by the week and by the zip code, and a number I can't back up is worse than no number. What doesn't change is how to compare.

How to shop it

• Read the unit price. The small print on the shelf tag gives the price per ounce or per pound. That is the only fair way to compare a big bag with a small one, or a store brand with a name brand. Bigger is usually cheaper per unit, but not always. Check.
• Buy store brand on the basics. Canned tomatoes, beans, rice, flour, sugar, oats, frozen vegetables. These are commodity foods, and for most of them the store brand is close to the name brand.
• Buy the cut, not the convenience. Bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs instead of boneless breasts. A whole pork shoulder instead of pre-cut stew meat. A head of cabbage instead of bagged slaw. You pay for somebody else's knife work, and they charge like a surgeon.
• Cook from the shelf, shop for the gaps. Plan a few dinners around what you already have, then buy what those dinners are missing. Shopping for a fresh list of recipes every week is how a pantry fills up with half-used jars of crap you bought for one dinner.
• The freezer is a savings account. Meat on sale, bread, cooked rice, cooked beans, stock. Freeze flat in zip bags so they thaw fast and stack. Label them with the date.

The dry shelf

• Long-grain white rice. Keeps for a long time in a sealed container. Feeds almost everything on this site.
• Dried beans and canned beans. Dried beans are cheaper per serving. Canned beans are faster. Keep both. Black beans, pinto beans and black-eyed peas cover a lot of ground.
• Canned tomatoes. Whole peeled, crushed, and paste. Paste in a tube keeps in the fridge once opened.
• Oats, flour, cornmeal. Breakfast, biscuits, cornbread, a crust for frying.
• Pasta. One long shape and one short shape.
• Peanut butter. Cheap protein that keeps.
• Oil. One neutral oil for frying and high heat, one olive oil for everything else.
• Vinegar. Cider vinegar first. It pickles, it brightens beans and greens, and it is the base of a Carolina-style sauce. Rice vinegar if you cook Japanese food.
• Sugar and kosher salt.
• A short spice shelf. Black pepper, ground cumin, dried oregano, smoked paprika, garlic powder, cayenne, bay leaves. That covers most of what I cook. Buy spices in small amounts. Ground spice goes dull long before a big jar runs out.

The flavor shelf

These cost more up front, but a little goes a long way, and they make cheap ingredients taste like a lot.

• Soy sauce.
• Miso. Keeps for months in the fridge. A spoonful turns greens, beans or soup into dinner.
• Instant dashi granules or bouillon. A cheap shortcut to a stock with some depth.
• Hot sauce. One you like.
• Mustard and mayonnaise.

The fridge

• Eggs. The cheapest fast protein most weeks. The USDA guidance is to cook them until the white and yolk are firm, and egg dishes to 160 F (71 C).
• Onions, garlic, carrots, celery. The base of almost every pot. Onions and garlic keep in a cool, dark spot out of the fridge.
• Cabbage. Lasts for weeks, goes raw, pickled, braised or fried.
• Potatoes and sweet potatoes. In a cool, dark spot, away from the onions.
• Lemons or limes. A squeeze fixes a lot of flat food.
• Butter and a block of cheese. A hard block lasts longer and costs less per pound than shredded.

The freezer

• Frozen vegetables. Peas, corn, spinach, green beans. Frozen at their peak, and nothing goes bad in the drawer.
• Chicken thighs and leg quarters. Usually among the cheapest meat per pound in the store.
• Ground pork or ground turkey. Portion into 450 g (1 lb) flat bags.
• Pork shoulder. Buy a whole one on sale, cut it into roast-sized pieces, and freeze them. One shoulder is several dinners.
• Bread and tortillas.
• Cooked rice and beans. Cool them fast, spread out in a shallow container, and get them into the fridge or freezer within two hours of cooking. Cooked rice left out at room temperature is a real food poisoning risk.

Thaw it safely

Thaw meat in the fridge, in cold water you change every 30 minutes, or in the microwave if you cook it right away. Not on the counter. Leftovers get reheated to 165 F (74 C).

What this pantry cooks

From this list alone: black beans and rice, miso ground pork and collards (with a bunch of greens from the store), sheet-pan chicken thighs and potatoes, and on a slow Saturday, a braised pork shoulder that feeds six.