Just how much cheaper and longer lasting keeping thing like rice, dried beans and flour can be. It’s amazing to me that no matter how empty my cupboards/fridge is I can always make fresh tortillas, refried beans, and rice in like an hour.
My wife’s Italian. Replace your items with always having a bottle of sauce and a packet of pasta in the cupboard, and there’s always a meal to be had no matter how empty the fridge is.
Amen to that. But I can’t do jar/bottled sauce so if I want easy noodles, it’s cook noodles, leave some pasta water after draining, throw in some butter at the end to make it thicc, then serve topped with olive oil/red pepper flakes/salt/pepper/parmigiano Reggiano (all things I make sure I always have in stock always)
I also keep a stack of cans of San Marzano tomatoes to make a red sauce any time I want, but that takes a couple hours instead of 20 minutes.
There are good sauces you can make from canned tomatoes in 20 minutes (depending on your prep speed).
My go tos are Putanesca & Vodka sauce, but there’s a lot more you can do. Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything has a simple recipe and then a big list of variants, most of which can be done in 20 minutes.
Just how much cheaper and longer lasting keeping thing like rice, dried beans and flour can be. It’s amazing to me that no matter how empty my cupboards/fridge is I can always make fresh tortillas, refried beans, and rice in like an hour.
My wife’s Italian. Replace your items with always having a bottle of sauce and a packet of pasta in the cupboard, and there’s always a meal to be had no matter how empty the fridge is.
Amen to that. But I can’t do jar/bottled sauce so if I want easy noodles, it’s cook noodles, leave some pasta water after draining, throw in some butter at the end to make it thicc, then serve topped with olive oil/red pepper flakes/salt/pepper/parmigiano Reggiano (all things I make sure I always have in stock always)
I also keep a stack of cans of San Marzano tomatoes to make a red sauce any time I want, but that takes a couple hours instead of 20 minutes.
There are good sauces you can make from canned tomatoes in 20 minutes (depending on your prep speed).
My go tos are Putanesca & Vodka sauce, but there’s a lot more you can do. Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything has a simple recipe and then a big list of variants, most of which can be done in 20 minutes.
Noted, thank you! I have a specific sauce I like to make, and I like it best simmered for a couple hours in a Dutch oven hahaha
Yes. And you can get all kinds of crap canned. The only thing I’ve found you can’t really replace is crunchy greens.
I’m not surprised people don’t know after decades of cold supply chain, but it’s a thing.