I am about to say something heretical for a food blogger to say

March 22, 2019 1:56 PM

There are going to be days when you cannot cook, days when your stove is out of commission, or days when you’re suddenly stuck at home because your road is blocked off, and you have few groceries. This is where industrial food comes in. Platitudes about real food are all nice and good until you have a real need for food that cannot wait.

Jonathan Katz has some thoughts on how to best stock your pantry.
posted by MartinWisse (32 comments total)

There are going to be days when you cannot cook, days when your stove is out of commission, or days when you’re suddenly stuck at home because your road is blocked off, and you have few groceries. This is where industrial food comes in. Platitudes about real food are all nice and good until you have a real need for food that cannot wait.

There is a whole category of food blogger with ideas for "freezer meals" that addresses this very situation. The idea is that you block off like one day on a weekend and go hogwild, cooking a months' worth of meals either in toto or most-of-the-way, and then freezing them for use throughout the month. A lot of them call on pre-cooked ground meat that is then doled out into smaller containers for freezing, and then when you need it, pulled out and thrown into pasta sauce or taco spices or whatever. A lot of them use the Instant pot - sling cubed meat into a ziploc baggie with some sauce and frozen vegetables, then freeze; for dinner, just pull a bag out of the freezer and dump it right into the Instant pot (no need to thaw) and turn it on.

And, I mean, it works, if you like the recipe ideas and you are okay with repeating the same thing a couple times over the month. And if you don't mind sacrificing one of your days to cooking four pounds of ground chuck or whatever. I've toyed with this kind of approach in the past, but the recipes they have on offer don't appeal to me so I always go "uck" and back out.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 2:14 PM on March 22, 2019 [12 favorites]

Having a well-stocked pantry is also useful if you ever get snowed in for over a month.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 2:45 PM on March 22, 2019 [7 favorites]

It doesn't need to be a full-day deal. We cook a pot of chili or dahl or stew/soup or a pot roast or stirfy/thai curry on rice and freeze a half-dozen containers once a week or so. Call it an hour at most per week in the kitchen (often half that). We need hot lunches and dinners a number of night a week, so this provides a stock pile. That plus deliberately making left-overs with salads and weeknight dinners when we're in seems to work for us.
posted by bonehead at 2:46 PM on March 22, 2019 [5 favorites]

I've toyed with this kind of approach in the past, but the recipes they have on offer don't appeal to me so I always go "uck" and back out.

My wife and some of her friends get together and make a bunch of these meals every few months and, honestly, they're never great. They're good enough in a pinch for days we know we won't have time to cook, but the kind of food that freezes well and can go into a slow cooker without being thawed often not very good. Chili is a solid bet, but one can only eat so much chili.
posted by asnider at 3:06 PM on March 22, 2019 [8 favorites]

There are going to be days when you cannot cook, days when your stove is out of commission, or days when you’re suddenly stuck at home because your road is blocked off, and you have few groceries.

Like, you know, the zombie apocalypse. So then you have a scene where you go into a dark grocery store, stinking of rotted meat and produce, seeking out canned goods that haven't spoiled yet.

Nah, it's just I've got to eat all those expired black beans from the emergency stocks, what am I gonna do with them?
posted by Bee'sWing at 3:09 PM on March 22, 2019 [1 favorite]

Freezer meals are only really useful if you are dealing with meat. If not, opening a can of chickpeas is even faster.
posted by tofu_crouton at 3:17 PM on March 22, 2019 [7 favorites]

And seafood is always faster to cook than to defrost.
posted by tofu_crouton at 3:18 PM on March 22, 2019 [1 favorite]

Just gotta point out, Datrex Emergency Food Bars have at least a five year shelf life, and don't require thawing, microwaving, adding sauce or measuring. Why waste the space in the refrigerator?
posted by happyroach at 3:43 PM on March 22, 2019 [2 favorites]

Look. I think this is fantastic for people planning. To accompany this article though, we need to look at this challenge through the practical eyes of today's crisis - and that changes everything. Especially the stupid crises we face today. As such, here's great advice from James Acaster planning for a No-Deal Brexit.
posted by Nanukthedog at 4:00 PM on March 22, 2019 [5 favorites]

From the "some preparation required" section:

Frozen vegetables – including: frozen peas, frozen corn, frozen spinach, frozen okra, frozen broccoli. Note: some frozen vegetables have more nutrients than their average fresh equivalents.

I've worked in a factory that produced frozen vegetables. The "processing"* they undergo could not be more minimal. They're shucked/shelled, cut from the cob (in the case of corn) and lightly steam blanched, just barely. Then they go for a quick ride through a tunnel freezer and get bagged.

They're fine and good and handy as hell. Buy them and eat them.

And! Shelling peas* is a pain in the ass anyway. Seeing them get shelled and flash frozen on an industrial scale was a revelation.

*I mean, garden-fresh peas are amazing, but it's March in Canada, so those aren't a thing.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 4:03 PM on March 22, 2019 [58 favorites]

There is a whole category of food blogger with ideas for "freezer meals" that addresses this very situation

We took a mixed approach of "freezer meals" and "make sure your kitchen is stocked" pre-baby. For about three months, whenever we made something freezer-appropriate (soups, stews, chili, casseroles, etc. along with some hot breakfast type things), we made a double batch, and froze half. We also stocked up on quick meal things: basically, all of the frozen dumpling/dumpling-adjacent things (potstickers, ravioli, tortellini, pierogi...), dried pasta and jarred pasta sauce, frozen veggies, and yes, kasia, because Ashkenazi (my husband wasn't really acquainted with it and got super confused when I told him to make some farfelle along with it.)

The mix worked very well in terms of keeping us alive through the first six weeks or so when we were finally ready to start moving on to actually cooking stuff again. (And, not going to lie, there was also take out and delivery mixed in there, too.)
posted by damayanti at 4:10 PM on March 22, 2019 [4 favorites]

Gosh it's nice to see an article that's descriptive rather than prescriptive - "hey this is the way I do, but you do you". My own pantry pretty much aligns with his, but more spices; we tend to discover new-to-us flavour profiles and just go hog-wild with them for a while. (My son's new beau is Mexican, so lately we are learning about all the different kinds of Mexican food; next month, we might be back on the Thai or on to something else. We might be a bit, um, overly involved in our food since Himself retired.)
posted by Mary Ellen Carter at 4:48 PM on March 22, 2019 [4 favorites]

~Looks in pantry...
peanut butter
jelly
refried beans
tortillas

We’re good to go
posted by Thorzdad at 6:23 PM on March 22, 2019 [13 favorites]

Looks in the pantry, organic black beans, organic diced tomatoes, corn, 12/15 oz cans of Bolivian sardines in spicy tomato sauce, onions hanging in a bag, on the door handle, 4 heads of garlic, 5 lbs white whole wheat flour, organic cane sugar, pasta, dried edamame, Parmesan cheese, 8 gallons of spring water, coffee, three little cylinders of propane, propane stove, propane bbq out back, ground coffee, teas, electric hot water heater for cofffee / tea, electric, hot plate, frozen chili verde, and soup, cornmeal, baking powder, all kinds of spices, shelf stable soy milk. Always ahead on the cat food, and litter. The coolest thing today, I realized a six standard sized, muffin tin, fits in my electric toaster oven. I can make a batch of muffins in 18 minutes. So nice in the summer, since it doesn't heat up the place. I have a regular gas stove and a smaller fridge, but if the power goes out or the gas, I can still cook, one way or the other.
posted by Oyéah at 6:49 PM on March 22, 2019 [6 favorites]

I forgot about the other pantry with the 6 jars of organic marinara, numerous jars of home made marmalade, extra olive oil, maybe some cooking wine.
posted by Oyéah at 6:55 PM on March 22, 2019 [1 favorite]

We have a lot of canned corn / beans. Which I sometimes eat as a snack.

(runs away)
posted by batter_my_heart at 7:07 PM on March 22, 2019

One thing about freeze a month's worth of food is the assumption of freezer space availability. If you have small amounts of storage space whether it is the refrigerator, freezer or pantry is going to affect your meal planning profoundly.
posted by jadepearl at 8:20 PM on March 22, 2019 [6 favorites]

I'm so used to avoiding ads, or the spaces ads are in; that it took a second reading to notice the heading or sidebars. A very nice article becomes even better with a cultural reference; adds to the study aspect of anything.

That; and the pantry matches a lot of the lists. Ability to prep and cook foods for the win!
posted by buzzman at 8:32 PM on March 22, 2019 [2 favorites]

My pantry (and the drawer under the spare bed) currently contains 24 tins of Italian tomatoes, because I'm worrying about Brexit. It's a small kitchen, so there isn't room for much else - I was also stockpiling tinned sardines, until I read the small print and realised they were from Morocco, so I've eaten them.
posted by Fuchsoid at 8:42 PM on March 22, 2019 [5 favorites]

Having a well-stocked pantry is also useful if you ever get snowed in for over a month.

This will happen to me when I get old. I snowed in this winter, but I'm able to walk through the driveway in deep snow, and luckily I was out in the car when the snowstorm came, so I parked it on the road and walked the last part.
I seem to recall it happened to another Mefite as well?

Anyway, it's happened all my life, I'm used to it, so I have a pantry so well stocked that my brother has named it after a popular food market and my sister claims I'm a closeted prepper. I will never run out of food. For Christmas, though, we all got food poisoned. It turned out there had been a power outage while I was a away on business and the freezer had thawed and re-frozen without me noticing it and I made ramen soup of bad meat. It was the worst Christmas ever, and it got me thinking that if there is a real catastrophe, (not just ordinary snowing in), you can't depend on freezer food, because with catastrophes come power outages. I use tons of frozen peas and beans though, they are really fine when it isn't the season.

For great canned food, look for the Bonduelle brand, their stuff is delicious, I have all sorts of beans, beans and corn, corn on its own, chickpeas. Tomatoes in all their forms from Mutti.
Animal fats keep well in the fridge for up to a year, if you don't have the freezer space. Butter needs to be frozen for long duration, but ghee doesn't.
Onions and potatoes keep well in a dry cool and dark space, so they are good.
Flour and dry yeast is good to have on hand always.
Oats. I don't eat oatmeal regularly, but it's good for breakfast when you are snowed in without eggs or dairy.
Obviously all the rice and pasta, both European and Asian and African varieties.
All the condiments and spices you like.
Vegetable oils you like.
All the canned fish you like. Just yesterday, I was planning to make tuna and bean pasta for dinner, like in the blog post, but I ended up just eating a carrot because I had a huge lunch at work. I stockpile anchovies as well, they make everything more delicious.
Honey! And chocolate! I learned this from a polar explorer: you need to have some goodies in your bag.

Remember to keep eating from your pantry and restocking when times are good, so the stuff in your store is always as fresh as possible.

I was also stockpiling tinned sardines, until I read the small print and realised they were from Morocco, so I've eaten them.
They may well have been imported through Spain or the Netherlands, though.
posted by mumimor at 3:17 AM on March 23, 2019 [5 favorites]

If you produce a lot of kitchen garbage, you probably use industrial meals.
posted by filtergik at 3:45 AM on March 23, 2019

but one can only eat so much chili.

Incorrect.
posted by the uncomplicated soups of my childhood at 5:26 AM on March 23, 2019 [17 favorites]

I was all ready to like the article but his first recommendation for a meal made from staples was kasha varnishkes and now he is dead to me.
posted by Joe in Australia at 6:15 AM on March 23, 2019 [3 favorites]

I might be a poor weirdo but I definitely know the value of a well stocked pantry.

Right now there's enough canned veggies, rice, dry beans, lentils and oats to live on for at least one well fed month, maybe enough for 2-3 people if strictly rationed and planned. Given good health and clean water you can get by on about a cup of rice and beans a day, easy.

When I was actually camping, mobile and homeless this was something I definitely missed - the ability to stockpile non-perishables. When I was living on my bike I could store about a grocery bag's worth of food at the most, and carrying around canned goods wasn't really an option due to weight.

I actually got fully snowed in this year and had to hit my little pantry pretty hard. And twice this year I've had the flu or a cold so bad I couldn't make it into town to get food, and I was really happy to have a stock of various kinds of tea, broth and instant soup on hand to make surviving all of that a lot less miserable. Instant ramen might be garbage as a food but sometimes it's just the thing when you just want something salty, warm and really low effort.

I also stockpile stove fuel and backpacking stoves, and make my own alcohol burning penny stoves, so right now I think I have three different kinds of stoves and fuel systems and they're all super cheap and small. One is an isobutane burner like a whisperlite, and I have a couple of cans of fuel. Another is a couple of cans of sterno and pot stands/burners. The third is the alcohol stove, which I might have like six or seven of those little guys kicking around at any given time because I'm prone to make a new one every so often to keep my skills sharp. There's also firewood seasoning and I can build a fire darn near anywhere I like, and I have some camp fire cooking tools.

In addition to this I keep at least one Sawyer Mini water filter around, along with water jugs, canteens and other water handling and storage, and usually at least a 5 gallon cube of water on rotation.

Sure, I live in earthquake country, and I've had this kind of preparedness drilled into me since I was a kid - but this preparedness most often centers around the pantry.

The upside of this is I feel a lot more food secure knowing I have enough nutritious food to eat and clean water to drink no matter what happens short of a scorched earth firestorm or mega-tsunami.

When we've had the power go out, run out of water or have been snowed in I can just sail right through it. My housemate's SO once commented during an extended power outage something like "This is basically just like any other day for you and you barely even notice it, huh?" and she was basically right.

One of the recent house upgrades is a full size stand up freezer. It's slowly being filled up with spare veggies, prepped garlic and soup stocks and stuff. And this year I'm going to pack that thing full of wild blackberries, blueberries and salal berries, and if we fill that we have another freezer we could bring online. I only caught the tail end of berry season last fall and I was filling up gallon bags in like 30 minutes of lazy, casual picking. We're going to drown in berry smoothies and juice all winter long next year.
posted by loquacious at 6:55 AM on March 23, 2019 [6 favorites]

I'm lucky. I live in Chile, where fresh food is easy to find, good quality and (relatively) cheap. I just got back from the weekly street market a few blocks from my house. Got a haul of lettuces, basil, pepino dulce, strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, eggs, blue cheese, cashews, walnuts, mangoes, tangerines, apples, garlic, cherry and regular tomatoes and flowers for my wife.

We have pasta and rice and such in our pantry, and frozen meat, chicken and fish in the freezer, but most days we cook with fresh veggies and fruit. We don't really eat much canned food.

We're also lucky to live in an area without major climatological emergencies, though this might be changing. Two years ago Santiago got its first ever snow-storm, the lights went out, because snow laden tree branches broke off and snapped the aerial cables that make up most of our electrical grid, and we stayed home for a day and a half. I made pizza in a cast iron pan on the gas stove.

The only thing I stock up on is water. I try to have at least 10 or so liters in large plastic bottles in the pantry.
posted by signal at 7:12 AM on March 23, 2019 [1 favorite]

Look what the Guardian had: One-pot puttanesca, chickpea soup and spicy popcorn: Yotam Ottolenghi’s store-cupboard recipes
posted by mumimor at 7:40 AM on March 23, 2019 [4 favorites]

Simple - when you can't get to taco bell or mcdonalds you stock up on :
Annies Mac n Cheese
Tinas Frozen Burritos
Frozen Pizza
Grape Nuts & Wheaties & Milk
posted by symbioid at 10:19 AM on March 23, 2019 [1 favorite]

I was all ready to like the article but his first recommendation for a meal made from staples was kasha varnishkes and now he is dead to me.

So my mom is like you- hates even the mention of the dish, but to me it reminds me of my grandmother so I love it. Come to think of it, Grandma forcing mom to eat it might be why she hates it... kasha varnishkes is a land of contrasts...
posted by Homo neanderthalensis at 3:57 PM on March 23, 2019

Frozen chicken breasts and the instant pot were the only reliable way I was able to do keto. Making bacon and eggs is not very appealing after a shift of slinging bacon and eggs.
posted by nestor_makhno at 5:23 PM on March 23, 2019

HM, do you happen to know what your mom thinks of quinoa? Because they taste similar to me and that's part of why I dislike them.
posted by Joe in Australia at 6:39 PM on March 23, 2019 [1 favorite]

HA! she is not a fan (though not a pure white hot hate like with KV) while I am a fan- you may have hit upon it!
posted by Homo neanderthalensis at 7:16 PM on March 23, 2019 [1 favorite]

Pantry-stocking advice: "Fill your chest freezer with a hundred things of frozen carrots."
posted by turbid dahlia at 4:14 PM on March 24, 2019