Store cupboard and Freezer Essentials for easy Store Cupboard Meals

Planning meals, shopping and cooking can feel like a full time job when life is busy with work or family. It can be a challenge to constantly come up with easy dinner ideas that will feed your household and sometimes, we just simply run out of inspiration and get stuck in a cooking rut.

Cooking healthy, family meals and mid week meals can be made much easier with a well stocked store cupboard and freezer. Dinner ideas start to flow and even when you haven't made it to the shops, you can whip up a healthy meal.

Having frozen chopped vegetables, including onions, along with dried pulses or rice means that you can always make soup or a curry or a stir fry, deliciously seasoned with spices.

Store Cupboard Essentials

1. Spice Pots or any good quality blended curry spices or curry powder.  Check that they don't contain salt or fillers. Spices will keep for ages provided you store them in an airtight container and preferably in the dark. ** Using spice mixes means that you don't need to buy lots of different individual spices and they can easily transform basic ingredients into easy dinner ideas.  Use to make a simple curry, add to yoghurt to use as a marinade for chicken kebabs or spice up a simple soup recipe.
2. Balsamic vinegar
3. Dijon or wholegrain mustard
4. Soy sauce 
5. Couscous
6. Lentils (red and brown)
7. Rice
8. Tinned chickpeas
9. Tinned tomatoes
10. Coconut milk
11. Dried noodles
12. Tinned cannellini / butter beans / kidney beans
13. Vegetable/chicken stock
14. Extra virgin olive oil
15. Honey / agave nectar
16. Peanut butter
17. Gram Flour / besan flour / chickpea flour
18. Lemon Juice / lime juice

Freezer Essentials

1. Peas
2. Chopped Onions
3. Garlic
4. Ginger (broken into 5cm chunks)
5. Chillies (freeze them whole)
6. Butternut squash - chopped and ready to go
7. Carrots
8. Chicken breasts
9. Prawns
10. Coriander
11. Puff pastry
12. Satay Sauce (check out our easy recipe here which freezes so well)

Pair these essential basic ingredients with the following store cupboard recipes for delicious, quick and healthy family meals

• Vegetable Fried Rice
• Pakoras
• Tandoori Masala Vegetable and Lentil Curry
• Lentil, Spiced Roast Carrot and Feta Warm Salad
• Spice Pots Goan Daal
• Prawn Korma
• Chicken Korma Express
• Chicken Bhuna
• Goan Chicken Curry with Lentils
• Simple Marinade for Vegetables or Chicken
• Vegan Savoury Pancakes
• Satay Sauce
• Lazy Vegetable Bhuna

Spice Pots are all about realistic cooking and easy dinner ideas.  We are on mission to help you make quick, healthy curry and Indian-inspired food at home. Get your cupboard and freezer stocked up so that you can easily follow a simple, healthy meal plan for you and your family however busy you are with life.

Happy Cooking! x

** We have a handy storage tin for storing your spices mixes in the dark to keep them fresh.