Sous Chef’s Top 10 Store Cupboard Staples
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March 16th, 2020
A well-stocked pantry can transform everyday recipes. For instance, take the vital ingredient in a simple risotto – rice – and trade up to one of the best varieties you can buy to turn the humble risotto into something extraordinary. Stock up your store cupboard with great quality pasta, olive oil or tomato sauce, and you’ll notice an instant improvement to your recipes.
These 10 ultimate luxury store cupboard essentials create a capsule collection of the very best ingredients to have at your fingertips in the kitchen – do you have them all?
The Ultimate Pantry
Pasta di Aldo filini egg pasta, also known as tagliolini, is a thin ribbon pasta that shines when added to chicken or vegetable broths. The rough surface of the handmade pasta clings to sauces, and the rich flavour is pronounced and refined.
Pasta di Aldo pasta is often heralded as the best pasta in the world. Whether you are reading Italy’s top food organization the Gambero Rosso, or Heston Blumenthal; or even enjoying it served at three Michelin Star restaurant Da Vittorio, outside Milan, you’ll hear consistent rave reviews.
Black rice, also known as forbidden rice, nerone rice or purple rice is an aromatic, wholegrain black rice from Italy. It has a unique nutty-sweet taste and is full of health benefits. The dramatic dark colour looks fantastic served with white feta cheese, and bright green herbs as a simple lunch salad or side dish.
Use Brindisa Arbequina extra virgin olive oil to finish salads or simple vegetable dishes to enjoy its fresh grassy flavour.
The oil is made from 100% cold pressed Arbequina olives, a variety that is most popular in the regions of Navarra and Catalonia. It is obtained directly from olives and solely by mechanical means.
With its soft flaky salt grains and gentle flavour, Diamond Crystal Kosher salt is loved by chefs across the world.
The medium-sized salt sits somewhere between fine table salt and large sea flakes, making it easy to pinch and season as you cook or serve.
Known for its distinctive numbing cold-heat, Sichuan pepper adds a lovely tongue-tingling kick to recipes. Use it in classic dishes from the Western Chinese cuisine, such as Mapo dofu, or Crispy spiced chicken wings.
This sauce is made with the same tomato cultivar as famous San Marzano tomatoes – but are grown on an organic farm 75km to the north-east of the San Marzano PDO region. The tomatoes are hand-picked, peeled and packed into jars with a fresh basil leaf.
This is one of Kikkoman’s purest soy sauces, made with only four ingredients. It’s brewed using whole soybeans (not chopped beans, as with most soy sauces).
This lengthens the brewing time and mellows the sauce, for a subtle and smoother flavour. Beautiful!
Enjoying a cult following, Forvm Chardonnay vinegar is made from Catalan Chardonnay grapes and contains 30% grape juice, which gives it sweeter, more rounded flavour than most vinegars.
Drizzle over scallops or a ribboned cucumber salad.
This heavily reduced richly flavoured chicken stock is a magical store cupboard ingredient, which will add fabulous depth of flavour to dishes in seconds. Use it to give your sauces and marinades tremendous richness and a great hit of flavour.
Buy flour online here, and browse our selection of flour for pasta, pizza and cakes – including Brazilian cassava flour and Indian corn meal.
Additional Store Cupboard Essentials
Branch beyond the everyday staples and add these extras to your shopping list, including tinned olives, shirataki noodles & Mexican corn flour.
Perello olives have a cult following, and are tinned in brine with guindilla chilli which adds a slightly hot kick. Drain and serve the Gordal olives for a pre-dinner bite, or enjoy as part of an antipasti selection with cold meats and cheese.
Shirataki noodles, or miracle noodles, are incredibly low calorie noodles. The high-fibre noodles contain almost no calories, sugar or fat. They are made from the konnyaku or konjac root vegetable, which is peeled, cooked, pounded, coagulated and then squeezed into noodle-shapes. The konjac plant is also known as an elephant yam or the devil's tongue plant. So shirataki noodles are also known as devil's tongue noodles, yam noodles, or sometimes simply konjac noodles or ito konnyaku.
Naturelo masa harina flour is made from dried corn kernels, which are cooked and soaked in lime water, then ground into a fine powder. Use a tortilla press to make beautiful artisan tortillas, a classic base for so many authentic Mexican dishes.
Rummo gluten free stelline is the gluten free version of this fun pasta shape. The dainty stars are made from brown & white rice and yellow & white corn. The gluten free pasta dough is extruded through bronze dies for a rough surface that sauce can cling to.
Stelline is popularly used in broths and soups, and children love the cute star shapes! Rummo gluten free stelline pasta cooks in 7 minutes.
Shop all Sous Chef ingredients, or browse our recipe collection for more fantastic ways to jazz up your everyday cooking.
