Chelsea teaches you about all of the things you absolutely need in your kitchen for cheap meal prep and cooking on a budget. Want to learn what to cook after your kitchen is stocked? Check out this video:
Hey guys it’s chelsea from the financial diet and today i’m going to be talking about one of my favorite elements about you know being good with money and that’s home cooking which might not sound obvious is like budgeting or investing or all of that like fancy money stuff might but i actually have found that in my life being a good home cook and learning to love
Cooking is one of the best ways to save a ton of money while also making your life way sweeter so basically if you’re the kind of person who like carrie bradshaw uses your oven for storage and pretty much lives off of a diet of like sad salads that you get to eat at your desk or you know frozen meals that you eat or seamless as i know many people are to get
Good with food and cooking really is twofold one is making things easy on yourself so you can’t be lazy and the other is really having the tools at your disposal to be able to always make something good now when it comes to making things easy one of the best ways to do that for yourself is to do like a big batch cooking night most people choose to do that on
Sunday where you plan out a meal you portion some off for the week you freeze some for later and you really take that out of your hands so that you can’t find yourself on a tuesday night lazy and starving and ordering the same chinese meal that you get every tuesday but when it comes to having the right tools it’s really about knowing what kind of stuff you need
So that you can always make something out of what’s in your kitchen and most of that comes down to really basic things like herbs spices oils sauces so that no matter if it’s just like a little bit of rice a little bit of vegetables maybe some leftover meat from something whatever you can always put it into something that feels like a real meal now i come from a
Home where my mom cooked every single meal more or less and i cooked it with her so i was always very used to like making things from scratch and learning what kind of ingredients to use with things but i know that for a lot of people even just knowing the right kind of spices to really have in your cabinet is pretty foreign and when you can’t cook anything it’s
Almost the only option to spend tons of wasteful money whether that’s on premade foods on seamless or on going out to restaurants so in order to make sure something good can always come from your kitchen i’ve found that these are the 19 ingredients that you really need to have on hand to get you out of any pinch and into any delicious meal the first category is
Herbs seasonings and pastes so the first one is obviously salt and pepper which should go without saying but i’ve been to a tragic amount of people’s apartments where they don’t have salt and pepper and if you’re already mastered the having salt and pepper element i think it’s maybe time to upgrade to like the nice flaked kosher salt because it’s a lot more gentle
And just taste better and then you can start maybe like expanding your salt arsenal and you can have like the pink himalayan salt or truffle salt or whatever and then as far as pepper spring the extra dollar 50 get the thing with the grinder because pre ground black pepper is sad and makes everything taste like a school cafeteria the next is crushed red pepper now
Not only does it add a little bit of a kick without being strong or overwhelming it’s also something that can almost act as like an entire flavor profile in itself like you take some pasta toss it in with some toasted garlic a little bit of butter or good olive oil some salt pepper and crushed red pepper and that tastes like a meal cinnamon because you can use it
For both sweet and savory dishes and it’s also a great way to make coffee tastes like christmas herbs de provence which is this really aromatic savory blend of herbs that is great for any like roast meat roast potatoes that kind of thing good chicken bullion because you always need broth for like a huge variety of things and sometimes you don’t want to have to run
Out of the store and get like a you know big container of chicken broth or stock or whatever if you keep the good bullion and you can spring for ones that taste a little bit better i like the paste kind that you keep in the refrigerator you’ll always be able to make a soup in a pinch curry paste which you always want to keep in the fridge because you can make a
Curry out of basically anything you have in your house chili paste or dried chilies if you’re the kind of person who likes things spicy i know that people are obsessed with sriracha but if you’d like to upgrade a little bit in terms of flavor you can get like the scoop you know garlic and chili paste or you can get some dried chopped chilies at a lot of different
Asian supermarkets and they’re just great if you like spiced old bay i’m from maryland so on a big old bay fan it tastes delicious on anything old bay popcorn old bay french fries old bay meat seafood vegetables old bay everything it’s the best garlic because aside from warding off vampires which is extremely important it’s also just something that makes basically
Anything taste good anytime someone says about a food that it tastes delicious when you saute it and garlic and olive oil that means it probably doesn’t taste good because that makes everything taste good even gross tasting stuff but garlic fresh roasted sauteed whatever is the best thing ever and it has no calories it’s like a gift from god to make our food
Taste good without being butter oils and sauces olive oil of course you should always have but what many people don’t know is that a lot of the mass-market extra-virgin olive oils are not actually as extra-virgin as they claim to be so this is one of those things where if you’re a big user of olive oil and/or you like the taste of it not cook just fresh whatever
Definitely invest in good olive oil it’ll probably be about 15 maybe even 20 dollars a bottle but trust me that the taste is totally different and it’s made in a much much better way soy sauce because if you’re a fan of pretty much any recipe from most of the asian continent most of it you’re going to need soy sauce at some point it’s just incredibly useful and it’s
Very similar to salt except it has that extra wonderful kind of almost you mommy flavor that takes it to that next level sesame oil again especially if you’re into cooking a lot of things from different asian countries which i know i am one thing about sesame although one bottle will last you 10 million years because a single drop of sesame oil makes everything
Like you’re being punched in the face with sesame’s vinegar and i actually like to have what i refer to as the holy trinity of vinegars which in my house is apple cider vinegar rice wine vinegar and balsamic vinegar they each serve super different purposes but are all amazing in their own way good mustard because that sad depressing yellow stadium mustard is just
Like we should all evolve past that we should not be condemned to eating terrible neon school bus yellow mustard for the rest of our lives we should be experimenting in like hot chinese mustard whole-grain mustard different french mustards that stain your nose like all of that should be a part of our vocabulary because yellow mustard is it’s just sad it makes food
Taste sad cooking basics flour because aside from the hundreds and thousands of things that you will bake that require flour it’s also pretty much the essential component for thickening things except for maybe corn starch so to make a roux to make a lot of basic sauces to make you know breaded meats whatever you need flour always have it on hand butter and if you
Can it’s good to keep one little stick on the counter in a butter dish because that way it’s always the perfect spreadable texture sugar of course and if you’re not someone who bakes a lot and therefore needs a lot of caster sugar on hand i would definitely say cane sugar it has a slightly better flavor but serves basically all of the same purposes i don’t know
If it’s actually better for you but my mind tricks myself into thinking that it is so that’s another reason baking soda you always need it you never expect to need it and yet every recipe somehow ends up calling for it cooking wine and by that i do not mean the cooking wine that they will sell at grocery stores that taste like turpentine i mean a not great bottle
Of red and a not great bottle of white like you know nine ten bucks whatever at the liquor store that you can use for recipes now i’m always of the opinion that if you wouldn’t drink the wine you shouldn’t use it in cooking my mother disagrees with me a lot of people disagree but there’s no reason to not have like one dry white and like you know relatively fruity
Red on hand because you know there’s always going to be a reason to cook with wine it makes everything taste good so for me those are the basics to keeping any kitchen feeling warm and inviting and full of good flavors one that will actually make you want to cook in it instead of ordering out for the millionth time that week obviously you might have to accumulate
Some of these things slowly if you don’t already have them but they’re definitely things that everyone can find use for in their cupboard becoming someone who cooks can feel like a very daunting task especially if you didn’t grow up cooking or watching people cook but it’s just really a question more than anything else of being prepared because basically anyone
Can follow a recipe and the day you become someone who cooks is the day you stop wasting a lot of money so thanks for watching and as always don’t forget to hit the subscribe button and to go to the financial diet calm for more bye
Transcribed from video
19 Kitchen Essentials For The Home Cook | The Financial Diet By The Financial Diet