A Well Stocked Kitchen

A list of all the things you need to make great meals

from the brain of Samin Nosrat, pure genius.

Friends, it’s been a long time coming and I now present to you the Cook with Confidence Kitchen List. I’ve created this list for a couple of reasons, first, to give you a curated list of ingredients that will add to your cooking arsenal and give you access to pretty much all the ingredients I typically use in our weekly recipes. The second reason is to have you utilize and try new things. If you think of painting, you would be able to create more depth visually if you had more colors on your palette, right? The same goes for cooking. You don’t need every spice or every ingredient, but a little more to play with will go a long way when it comes to flavors and textures.

One of my favorite cookbooks of all time is Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat by Samin Nosrat. If you are a curious cook or just want to learn a few things to help you be a more intuitive home cook, I can’t recommend this book enough. There is also a 4-part documentary on Netflix with the same name and it’s truly remarkable. Good cooking is all about balancing flavors, and this book truly breaks down how to combine flavors and textures like no other.

As I’ve mentioned before, I went to culinary school about 10 years ago and studied all of the technical aspects of cooking which really moved the needle forward for me in terms of kitchen skills but in my opinion, what was lacking for me was the ability to really focus on flavor profiles and intuitively understand what ingredients go well together and how to use them. I think a lot of home cooks love a recipe because it gives you a map to get to an end result but if you allow yourself some experimentation in the kitchen, you will soon learn how to create your own dishes based on your tastes. I believe the reason I love to cook is because it’s similar to dance. There are basic movements your body must be able to do, the technique of things, but then the real magic comes when you can improv and freestyle and develop your own sense of style and taste.

This list can be utilized in a few different ways. You could take inventory of what you already have and that maybe has expired and just replace those items, a perfect way to do a pantry clean out for the Fall season. You could also just look back at some older recipes or recipes you’ve always wanted to make and pick up an ingredient or item that you don’t own but would like to. Another awesome way to experiment, is to pick up an ingredient that is unfamiliar to you and try using it ( if you need help with this, don’t be afraid to message me). One of our Cook with Confidence subscribers, Pam, picked up miso paste for the Chicken Zucchini Burgers and hasn’t been able to put it down. She messaged me about her new love of miso and some other cool recipes she found to incorporate it in. Play! Use your imagination!! Make mistakes!! That’s all part of the process and what makes cooking fun, and you will learn so much in the process.

I’ve made this document available for download below so you can print it out and check off what you need or want. I’ve added a more elaborate breakdown of ingredients here so you can understand what parts they play in recipes. Again, please don’t feel the need to grab everything on this list. I just wanted to create a document for you that can get you organized in the kitchen and inspire creative cooking!

Let’s go!

THE KITCHEN LIST- Ingredients

Oils/ Fats: