What do you have in your pantry?

gratefulforhelp_2

I have a pantry with marble shelves and meathooks (I'm veggie!!).

We keep - basically all the food that isn't in fridge or freezer - eggs, bread bin, biscuit tin, tinned stuff, packet stuff, toiletry and cleaning spares, kitchen paper, loo paper, the top tier of my wedding cake, pickles, sauces, crisps, sack of dog food...

You need a strategy for managing stock!

VfM4meplse

gratefulforhelp wrote: »

the top tier of my wedding cake, pickles, sauces, crisps, sack of dog food...

You need a strategy for managing stock!

Lol, you don't need a strategy, you just need to ditch the contraceptives .

I have a full-length kitchen unit that I jokingly refer to as the pantry, but it does hold an incredible amount of food (square glass containers are best for maximising storage and tesselation) but am now seriously considering adapting my home to include a pantry as part of a planned extension to my kitchen / diner.

I can see why north-facing is preferable...but doesn't it get damp and mouldy? And won't ventilation just encourage unwanted visitors??

Itismehonest

Welcome to the world of pantries, Spirit :beer:
You can keep just about anything you like in your pantry.

We use ours for all tins, jars, packets, vegetables, in fact all foodstuffs which don't require freezing or refrigerating.
It is also where we keep wines & spirits & our kitchen gadgets (including our shredder. OK not a kitchen gadget but it's handy )
Three walls are lined with shelves at various levels the bottom shelf being high enough from the floor to accomodate bottles at ground level & also to have trundle boxes in which we store our kilner jars, tupperware & various bits & pieces like greaseproof-paper, foil, cling film.

Oh & (I forgot) the ironing board, airer, folding steps.

Linda32

If I had one, and boy do I wish I did

In the house that I grew up in, we had one there. The kitchen was tiny so that probably why, we even had a understairs cupboard as well. *swoon*

Anyway, I'd keep baking trays so that I could just take one off the shelf without having to stack.
Mixing bowls and the like.
Chutneys, Jams and Jellys.
Spare Jars
Baking things.

Maybe just things which ought to be kept in a cool place.

Onions and potatoes are another thing I'd keep in there.

Patchwork_Quilt

It sounds as if some people have enormous pantries.

I had to fight for mine. The builder didn't think we needed it. However, I insisted and it's extremely useful. I was thinking "It's about the size of a broom cupboard" but I think it was a broom cupboard. DH filled it completely with sturdy shelves and I keep all my jams, jellies, pickles and preserves in there. The thing about running an allotment is that all the produce comes at once and I find myself making a year's supply of jam, so it's stacked. We also have some trays of our apples in there, although this is an experiment and I do hope I don't find it all full of creepy crawlies at some point. I have a feeling that it ought to be just 'dry' stuff in there.

Once a year, I turf everything out, vacuum the shelves and look at it all before I put it back in, just to make sure it hasn't deteriorated. I have the produce from different years on different shelves so that things get eaten in order and there is a list up of where everything is. There is also a card telling other people (DS and DD especially) that the lid should pop when opened etc, just in case I am not in when they open something.

I think pantry-keeping could be quite an art.

valk_scot

I have what's called a butler's pantry unit in the dining room off the kitchen, basically a massive pine dresser type cupboard with deep shelves in the top section and six huge drawers in the base. It's nine feet wide, ten feet high and the shelves are deep enough to hold wine bottles laid on edge. The drawers are two feet deep too. I keep all my dry goods, jars, tins, jams, crystal and glassware on the upper section, all my crockery in the open middle shelf and the base drawers hold table linen, baking equipment, a craft drawer for DD, all my baking trays and ovenware, teatowls and cleaning cloths and one drawer that's divided into three sections is just for things like rolls of foil, plastic bags, cake decorations, string, greaseproof paper etc etc etc. It basically has the capacity of an average fitted kitchen in one piece of furniture. We had to take the kick plates off the dining room door to get it in, lol!

I've also got a walk in cupboard but it's got hot water pipes running through it so use it for an airing cupboard plus somewhere to keep the cleaning materials, toilet rolls, shampoo and soap stash. And all the big kitchen equipment like the jam pans, cast iron casseroles and such. It's got four drying lines stretched across it as well for drying laundry.

Downstairs I've got a stone flagged utility room. It's shelved down one wall and I store the potatoes, onions, carrots etc and the apples and pears from the allotment and garden down there. I have a second small freezer there too for other allotment produce and the camping fridge for extra cold storage at Christmas. It's cold enough in the room during winter to ctore things that just have to be kept cool rather than chilled. One tip is to keep a max-min thermometer in your storage area so as to know how cold and warm it gets over a 24 hour period. The utility room got down to 2'C last winter, courtesy of the stone floor. I had to insullate the potato sacks from the floor so they didn't get damaged.

The one place I don't store food is in the kitchen, apart from in the fridge. Kitchens vary a lot in temperature and are also often damp and steamy so not ideal for food storage. A seperate food store somewhere cooler is better.

PixieDust

Just *think* of the rules the WI could impose upon that category for competition (cross reference the Kirsty thread )

Our pantry is the size of the understairs and opens into the kitchen.

One side:
shelves: top: different flours, my medicines, salt, things like coconut, gelatine, yeast
Next: Jar Lentils, jars rarely used sugars, some tins shoehorned in
Next: Exclusively tins, all grouped and stacked neatly
Next: Jars and packets in curent use
Next: Sauces/Condiments etc in bottles in current use that won't fit on the shelf above (e.g.ketchups, Lea & Perrins, Soy Sauce), Cereals (all decanted into tubs, icing sugar in tub, pasta decented from huge bag into tubs for ease of use, the Christmas pudding perched on top, frequently testing our reflexes by falling off
Next: Floor - omg where to start! Oil bottles, lots of vinegar, excess bottles/sauces/"stuff" that isn't in use yet (special offer overflow basically!)

Back wall (which is slanted) - shelves - top,matching plastic tubs of bay leaves, couscous, polenta, bicarb and stuff like that (memory fails me!)
Next: Jam, mainly. Jars and jars and jars of the bluddy stuff. And chutneys and pickes and whatnot. Also boxes of fruity tea and packets of biscuits
Next: Same as the one above, minus the tea and biscuits

Next - floor - OMG etc.....plastic box containing stash of flours, excess wash powder not yet in use, xmas cake being fed regularly, huge bottles pickling vinegar, bleach, disinfectant, fabric softener, my son's secret stash of chocolate xmas presents (just discovered that - oops....hope the choc orange is for me ), porridge oats stash, granulated sugar mountain (never did get round to making jam this year ), Dog food excess, not yet in use, 2 boxes of biscuits for xmas, loads of breakfast cereals not yet in use, a huge tin of cereal bars bought on offer and plastic tubs of first aid stuff and meds.

Third wall (outside wall) - spice racks, nail with wok hanging on it, gas meter, nail with bag of carrier bags hanging on it
Floor: 2 ventilaton grilles, trundle trolley (folded), dog and cat food in use, box of cans of beer, wash powder in use, excess cleaning stuff (not much), sack (huge!!) of onions and a huge tub of dishwasher powder

And a partriiiiidge in a pear treeeeeeeeee

Well, not this time, but there are sometimes rabbits, pigeons and squirrels either hanging or on a tray.

There's also the usual food colourings and sprinkles, odd things liks citric acid and stuff that migrates according to necessity but it always there "somewhere".

Well, you did ask

meritaten

VfM4meplse wrote: »

Lol, you don't need a strategy, you just need to ditch the contraceptives .

I have a full-length kitchen unit that I jokingly refer to as the pantry, but it does hold an incredible amount of food (square glass containers are best for maximising storage and tesselation) but am now seriously considering adapting my home to include a pantry as part of a planned extension to my kitchen / diner.

I can see why north-facing is preferable...but doesn't it get damp and mouldy? And won't ventilation just encourage unwanted visitors??

no, it shouldnt get damp and mouldy if there is no heating in there. Ventilation is needed to keep the air dry - so if there is no window then there should be air bricks in the outside wall. (sorry, forgot to mention that! - mums pantry was northfacing but it did have a window and she never needed to open it as it fit so badly the place was like a wind tunnel!).

suzybloo

A few years back we put in a new kitchen and put up a partition wall to make a utility room, but thankfully in my wisdom - even then - asked them to section this new utility room to have a big walk in cupboard. On the top shelf is all my 'good' dinnerservice, tea set, cake plates etc, along with kitchen gadgets and baking tins etc that are used periodically. My small chest freezer fits nicely under the shelving on one wall. I keep all the spare groceries in there. Once a month i do a big shop and then throughout the month I shop from the cupboard, and then re-stock. I have roughly about 6-8 weeks worth of food between the freezer and the tins, packets and kilner jars full of dried stuff, jams etc in there plus about another weeks stuff in the kitchen cupboards,. Am I the only one who loves to look in the cupboard and feel quite pleased to have all this stuff to fall back on! (same feeling as watching the kids nappies blowing on the washing lines when they were wee!)

scheming_gypsy

A freezer full of dead animals for the dogs.