What do you always have on hand? Why?
I’d count refrigerated items as pantry staples if they keep for longer than a couple weeks.
One recent addition to my pantry has been dried chillies - great base for red chile sauce for enchiladas. Those plus maseca and some beans (also both staples) and I have a base for amazing enchiladas or tacos or whatever.
Garlic. Olive Oil. Pasta. Canned tomato paste. I default to Italian if I want to impress someone / feed an army.
Corn Starch. Flour. Beer. My weapon of choice, otherwise, is the deep fryer. I use sourdough discard as the starting point for batter. These three ingredients help get it to the correct consistency.
Having a default or focus takes up less space too. I hate wasting food so I sometimes don’t buy new or unusual things because I worry I won’t use it more than once…
Have a batter recipe?
The consistency of the sourdough discard dictates the actual quantities.
I don’t know what sourdough discard is… Actually want to learn to bake more - specifically bread but dealing with sourdough sounds difficult?
We’re venturing into the domain of my partner and I don’t want to misspeak, but from what I understand:
A sourdough “starter” is a ball of dough with living yeast. As part of the process of feeding it, you remove some of the old dough. That’s the discard. You can do all sorts of things with this discard.
Making sourdough is as difficult as baking bread + taking care of a low maintenance houseplant. Not a huge responsibility, but more than just mixing flour and water on a whim.
The users over at [email protected] should be able to start you down that road.