What do you have in your pantry?

Spirit_2

We have converted part of our garage to bootroom/utilityroom and have included a floor to ceiling cupboard that is 175cm wide. We intend to use it to store spare/less frequently used kitchen items and as a pantry.

Our house is a cottage with little internal storage so I am a bit overexcited at the possibilities of what to store in it...so have come to OS for ideas.

nearlyrich

Probably shouldn't ask me apparently we have 42 tins of beans LOL not to mention the 2 sheets of A4 list of tins in stock, no worries here about Armageddon.

meritaten

A pantry - I am deeply envious! we had a pantry in my parents house before I married! What to keep in it.........almost everything that doesnt go in the fridge!
the ideal pantry is north facing and doesnt have a big window - or any window! if you have a cold slab in the pantry - (what luxury) then this is where you can store items that just need a 'cool place'.
My mum used to keep milk and butter in the pantry before we had a fridge - the milk bottles went in a bucket of cold water with a wet cloth on top (in the summer) and the butter just went on the slab unless it was reallly hot! then it too had a wet shroud!

OH you lucky thing! the only thing you need to do is beware of unwanted intruders! be vigilant for droppings, and dont store any foodstuffs which have been opened unless they are in sealed containers!
btw - veg seems to last much better too - as long as its cold and DRY!

meritaten

nearlyrich wrote: »

Probably shouldn't ask me apparently we have 42 tins of beans LOL not to mention the 2 sheets of A4 list of tins in stock, no worries here about Armageddon.

42 Tins of BEANS? not sure I would WANT to be locked up with you nearlyrich! you DO have gas masks I presume?

[Deleted User]

I used to live in an edwardian house in Dartford 40 years ago and I had a smashing walk in pantry complete with marble slab shelves.It was the best thing about the cold draughty place.I loved it and everything went in there.There was also huge black range that must have weighed a ton in the large kitchen as well, but when we lit it to heat the water up the whole house shook and I had to run off gallons of boiling water as I was afraid that it would explode.It was our first house that we bought and was a complete money pit .The pantry was fantastic though especially as I didn't even own a fridge in those days.Nothing ever went off in there and butter and milk and cheese kept beautifully.Mind you being so broke there wasn't that much food to go in there at timesI would love to live in that house now with a bit more cash as it was huge and on three floors with three double bedrooms and from the front door to the back door it was almost 90 feet.We bought it for £6850.00 in 1971 and resold it in 1974 for £10.500 and bought a more modern one withD/glazing and central heating that was cheaper to run but a good bit smaller .But our first house had character.It even still had the old gas mantles and they were connected as well in all the rooms .Would be worth a mint at reclamation yards today We stripped and junked them though.Last year my old house where we lived went for £295K.Silly money really but it was almost a wreck when we first bought it.

angeltreats

meritaten wrote: »

the only thing you need to do is beware of unwanted intruders! be vigilant for droppings, and dont store any foodstuffs which have been opened unless they are in sealed containers!

Sigh... I found this out the hard way. My house is clean, but we still had some sort of mealworm infestation - we think they came in in a bag of couscous from the corner shop. We went on holiday for a fortnight and when we came back they were in EVERYTHING. Every single packet (sealed or not) in the cupboards. Even worse, they had come out of the cupboards and were crawling on the ceiling, and some of them got into some knitting and ate the wool! It was absolutely vile. I threw away every single thing in the cupboards, a load of knitting and brand new wool, and some other bits and pieces. Never seen anything like it.

We have moved house twice since then but I still keep all my flour/sugar/dry goods in kilner jars or big plastic tubs and will do forever more as I am never dealing with those horrid little things again.

As for what to keep in a pantry - I don't have a pantry but I have a great big deep bookcase full of jars and tubs. I have lots of flour (plain, SR, white bread flour, wholemeal, rye, buckwheat, spelt, gram), tons of jars of spices, including whole ones I can grind myself, dried beans and pulses, dried fruit, sugar (caster, granulated, demerara, soft brown and occasionally muscovado if I want it for something in particular), oils and vinegars, various teabags (coffee lives in the fridge as I only use ground and it keeps it fresh) and then tinned food lives in the cupboards. I would love a proper pantry.

GreyQueen

Oohh, you lucky thing, pantry cupboard.

My "pantry" is distributed over several strange places, such as tinned goods in those rolling Argos storage trollies under the bed, but I'd love a pantry like my Nan's.

She used to have two; smallish square rooms (about 6 feet square) opening off the kitchen, one of which had a very small window. Each had shelves around 3 sides, floor to ceiling.

The "larder" cupboard held tinned and packaged foodstuffs, dairy on a slab shelf, the cake tin (this loomed large in my childhood life ). The shelves were covered with adhesive plastic and the whole thing was regularly turfed out and wiped down. In later years, the fridge lived in there, too.

The other pantry was windowless and similarly sized and shelved, and held all the crocks and pans etc.

If you're going to keep food in quantity you need to be very very careful about the cadre of critters known as "pantry pests". These are so small that they can walk around the screw threads of an ordinary screw-lid storage jar. Eeek. I favour those jars with the hinged lids and the rubber seals.

You can easily import critters into your home, as per the ghastly experience of the person who posted above. A pal of mine who is a keen cook lost a cupboard full of speciality flours when one of them came home from the shop contaminated and infected the rest with weevils. He's been Mr Paranoia every since.

So, be careful of storing flours, grain-type products and pulses, and turf your pantry out regularly to make sure nothing unwanted is setting up housekeeping in there, and rotate your tins and all will be well. Cardboard is a popular choice for some critters and mice can chew thru almost any grade of plastic so think tins and glass jars. I think the best deterrant is to keep a close eye on what's going on in there.

My Nan is 88 now and was "in service" in a big city house and in a country house and is very old-school about housekeeping. She told me years ago that people (regular workiing people like my family) used to scrub out and distemper (the predecessor to emulsion paint) the kitchens every single year - in white. She said it was important to be clean and to be seen to be clean.

Oohh, I'm experiencing pantry envy.........well done for making one!

VfM4meplse

Spirit wrote: »

I am a bit overexcited at the possibilities of what to store in it...so have come to OS for ideas.

I would be too!!

VfM4meplse

angeltreats wrote: »

Sigh... I found this out the hard way. My house is clean, but we still had some sort of mealworm infestation - we think they came in in a bag of couscous from the corner shop.

An excellent reason to decant as soon as you buy. You have my sympathy, what a dreadful experience.

sunflower76

Ooooh, what DON'T we keep in ours would probably be a simpler question!

I have a proper understairs pantry, with a cold slab. You go down two steps into it and it has 3 shelves running the length of it.

I keep in there:

Root veg, spuds and squashes and onions on the cold slab
Extra tins, jars and dry goods on one shelf. Anything dry is decanted into glass or plastic recepticles.
Drinks, both alcoholic and juices, cordials etc
Camping supplies under the cold slab
Vaccuum, Steam Mop, Carpet Cleaner and sweeping broom
Carrier bags, Paper bags and other random junk
Board games
Big tub of cat food and bag of cat litter
Tool kit
Sewing Machine and relevant supplies

We often joke that our pantry is a tardis as you can fit EVERYTHING in there. Even when you think you couldn't possibly fit anything else in there you manage to squeeze in something else. I love my pantry

VJW87

My pantry is currently a wooden shelf unit from Argos... but better than nothing! I have quite a few tins of soup and beans, as well as other Heinz tinned foods such as ravioli etc. But my most recent addition - tins of Spam! My local mr Ts had the big tin for 1p dearer than the smaller tin, and I printed a buy one get one free voucher I found on MSE. My husband is very excited over the prospect of spam fritters...! I also have varieties of pasta (must pick up some pasta sauces), coffee, noodles and tacos.
We bought our house based on the size of our bathroom, didn't take long for us to find the kitchen a tight-space as the bathrooms size ate into the kitchen - but ... we make do!
Supposed to be having an 'eat out the freezer only' week next week to free up some space for plenty of staples for winter period e.g. mince, chicken etc.