Pantry cooking, or cooking with ingredients that you already have on hand instead of making a trip to the store, is a great way to save money and lower your grocery budget. Buying food when it is on sale and stockpiling inexpensive food to use later means that you’ll never have to pay full price for any food item. Do this on a regular basis, and you can easily cut your food bill in half without coupons. With coupons, you can save even more.
The only drawback that I see to pantry cooking is that sometimes it can get a little boring. You might not feel like having whatever is in your pantry. That is when you need a couple of strategies to help get you through.
Freeze Extras
Just because you are trying to use up certain ingredients in the pantry does not mean that you have to serve the same dish meal after meal. Instead, see if you can freeze the extras and then bring them back out during a different week. You’ll still be using ingredients from the pantry with the added bonus of easier prep next time.
Use Basic Ingredients in New Ways
Scour the Internet, books and magazines for new ways to use basic ingredients. For example, one of our favorite pasta dishes uses tomato soup, while a meatloaf recipe using stuffing mix.
Include Flexible Fun Foods
Dishes that are flexible enough to accommodate different types of ingredients can help meals from becoming boring. For example, with pizza, you can add a number of different toppings, you can fold the dough over to make an inside out pizza, or you can even make a desert pizza. There are very few people who will say no to pizza, whatever form it takes. Some other flexible fun foods include pancakes and soup