• Tips and Techniques
• Terms
• Cookware & Bakeware
• Basic Ingredients
• Herbs & Spices
• Kitchen Utensils
• Knives
• Food Safety

By definition, every edible thing you use in cooking is an ingredient, so this list—while long—cannot be considered to be definitive. These ingredients are the ones you use to thicken, dilute, sweeten, unsweeten, season or otherwise alter whatever it is that you’re cooking. Different combinations of ingredients can make a chicken breast (for instance) the centerpiece of an Italian, Mexican, French or a traditional American meal. (Think Chicken Parmigianino, Pechugas con Tocino, Chicken Cordon Bleu and Southern Fried Chicken.) The right ingredients make all the difference in the world.

None but the most dedicated and experienced cooks can be expected to have all of these ingredients on hand. But, over time, you will accumulate many of them. Be careful they don’t get too old. Herbs and spices in particular loose their potency over time. Try the new freeze dried varieties that are available in the freezer section. They have a much better shelf life.

Arrowroot is a good thickener for clear glazes and sauces. It’s more delicate than cornstarch or flour and is particularly good for Chinese dishes. Don’t use it with dairy-based sauces since it turns slimly. It’s more expensive than cornstarch. Use 2-3 teaspoons dissolved in a bit of cool water per cup of sauce.

You either love or hate anchovies. But no matter what, keep some anchovy paste around. It’s one of those “secret ingredients” that perks up sauces and salad dressings. It doesn’t pay to buy anchovies, unless you’re into putting them on pizzas.

Get double-acting baking powder. It reacts twice, once when you wet it and the other time when you heat it so you get a fluffier finished product. For those of you who have trouble remembering the difference between baking powder and baking soda, the most popular baking powder comes in a can with an Indian on it. Baking soda comes in the orange box with the arm.

Nowadays, there are not many baking uses for baking soda. But keep some on hand anyway. It’s good for sprinkling on a grease or electrical fire to help extinguish it. You can put an opened box in the refrigerator or freezer to absorb bad odors. You can also use it to brush your teeth and, in a pinch, you can use it to help calm an upset stomach. It can also serve as leavening agent—which is something that makes dough or batter rise like baking powder or yeast—but there aren’t many recipes that call for it any more.

If you do run out of baking powder, you can combine equal amounts of baking soda with cream of tartar and use that instead. (Baking soda only does its leavening trick when there’s an acid present. Cream of tartar is a dry acid.) But realize that the combination is not ‘double-acting” like the baking powder. It only works when you add the liquids to the batter, so if the batter sits around for a while before you get it in the oven or it you beat the batter too much, the leavening will be lost and your baked goods will be flat. Stick to baking powder.

These will come in handy for making gravies and sauces. Any kind will do. Real gourmet cooks make their own, but the canned version will do just fine. See Kitchen Tips and Techniques for a way to make canned broth taste like homemade stock.

Capers are actually the buds of a plant called a caperbush. They have a sharp piquant flavor and are used to add pungency and saltiness to many Mediterranean recipes. They also go great with bagels and lox. The flavor is similar to that of mustard and black pepper.

Corn starch is great for thickening sauces and giving them a little gloss, but not as much as arrowroot starch. To avoid lumps, mix the starch with an equal amount of cold liquid until it forms a thin paste, and then whisk it into the liquid you're trying to thicken.

You can make demi-glace by continuing to reduce homemade stock until it gets real thick and brown, but it’s easier to buy it in a gourmet store or on-line. It is a thick, intense, meat-flavored gel that's often used as a foundation for soups and sauces.

You’ll need flour for baking and thickening gravies and sauces. Basic, everyday flour is made from wheat, but it can actually be ground from a lot of different of nuts and seeds such as barley, buckwheat, chickpea, corn, oats, potato, rice, rye, and soy. But what you’ll find inmost kitchens is all-purpose flour. It’s made with a blend of hard and soft wheat flours and comes either bleached or unbleached. The two styles are interchangeable; however some people opt for the unbleached since it is processed less than the bleached.

Consider getting one of those big sealable jars to keep it in so it stays fresh longer. FYI, other types of wheat flours include semolina flour, which is typically used for making pastas; whole wheat flour, which is getting more use by low-carb dieters since it is a “complex” carb; bread flour, which is best for making yeast breads; pastry flour and cake flour, which are the softest kinds of flours; and self-rising flour, which is all-purpose flour to which 1 ½ teaspoons of baking powder and ½ teaspoon of salt has been added for each cup of flour.

Remember the gingerbread man? For many of us, gingerbread was our first encounter with this key ingredient in most Asian cuisines. A versatile ingredient, it can be a savory addition to spicy hot foods or sweet ones. When buying fresh ginger, look for pieces with a plump, smooth, somewhat shiny skin. If it’s wrinkled or cracked, the ginger is drying and past it’s prime. To prepare fresh ginger, peel off the skin with a vegetable peeler or sharp knife. Store fresh ginger like you do potatoes (under the sink is a good place).

Garlic powder provides some of the flavor, but not the texture, of fresh garlic. It disperses well in liquids, so it's a good choice for marinades. Garlic salt is garlic powder with the addition of salt. You can make your own by combing three parts table salt with one part garlic powder.

It has become a gourmet item. Since it’s made by bees, its color and flavor will differ depending on what kind of flowers the bees get their nectar from. In the U.S. alone there are more than 300 kinds of honey with flavors like Clover, Eucalyptus and Orange Blossom. For cooking however, the basic supermarket variety is just fine. It’s pasteurized and blended to give it a uniform taste and texture.

The web site www.pepper.com claims to have 1,000 different hot pepper sauces available for sale. You won’t need to keep that many in stock. If you have a favorite or want to experiment, try browsing through their offerings. But you can’t go wrong with Tabasco® pepper sauce from McIlhenny Co. It ranks at about 2500-5000 Scoville units, which makes it hot enough to impart a nice bite (when used in moderation) but not too hot to cause you to break out in a sweat. A Scoville unit is actually a measure of capsaicin (the chemical in hot peppers that is responsible for their heat). Bell peppers have zero Scoville units. The Habanero (also called a Scotch Bonnet sometimes) has 300,000+. In between are more common varieties like Anaheim (500+ Scoville units); Jalapeno (2,500 or so); Serrano (can vary from a low of 8,000 to upwards of 20,000); and Cayenne (30,000 to 50,000.)

It’s a fortified wine that can be either dry or sweet. Sweet Marsala is used both for drinking and cooking. Dry Marsala makes a nice pre-dinner drink.

Keep both plain yellow mustard and Dijon mustard handy. The plain is great for hot dogs, but the Dijon is better for cooking. The most famous Dijon has its roots in France. In 1777 a Monsieur Grey, who had the recipe, formed a partnership with Monsieur Poupon, who had the money, and they started making their mustard in Dijon, France. It was an instant success, but it took them more than 200 years to make that great commercial about the guy in the limo running out of mustard.

This can get really complex. Buying olive oil is almost like buying wine. Just remember there are four grades—extra virgin, virgin, fino and pure—based on how acidic the oil is. The best are cold-pressed, a chemical-free process that involves only pressure, which produces a natural level of low acidity. Extra virgin is the highest quality and the lowest in acidity. Virgin olive oil also has individual taste characteristics though not as fine as extra-virgin olive oil. Fino (Italian for “fine”) is a blend of the two and pure olive oil (or just plain olive oil) is a blend of refined (not cold pressed) olive oil and virgin olive oil. Use the extra virgin for dishes where the oil is a primary ingredient such as salads, for dipping and in dishes like bruschetta or pasta tossed in garlic and olive oil. Use the pure olive oil for frying, sautéing and cooking.

Oil, Vegetable Vegetable oils can be extracted from numerous sources—corn, soybeans, peanuts, cottonseeds, safflower seeds, rape seeds (for canola oil) and sunflower seeds—but corn oil and soybean oil seem to be the most prevalent on supermarket shelves. Pale in color and neutral in flavor, vegetable oils have different smoke points (i.e. the temperature at which they will begin smoking) depending on where they came from. Peanut oil has one of the highest smoke points and is great for deep frying. Canola oil has a high smoke point as well and is a healthy choice since it’s cholesterol free and has 50% less saturated fat than olive or other vegetable oils.

Either get a can of cooking spray or buy one of those spray bottles that you can fill with your favorite cooking oil—vegetable or olive. The commercial product consists of a combination of oil, lecithin, and a harmless propellant that you can use to give cooking surfaces a nonstick coating. It’s great for coating the barbecue grill before grilling chicken, which tends to stick, and vegetables, which tend to dry out.

This is a Cantonese seasoning that is a staple condiment of Chinese cooking. A rich brown sauce, it is made with boiled oysters seasoned with soy sauce, salt, and spices. The ingredients are cooked until thick and concentrated. Oyster sauce brands have a wide price range, but steer clear of the cheaper brands since they usually contain MSG. Also, the better brands are never fishy.

Or pignolas, which are a nut that comes from certain varieties of pine trees. Their flavor ranges from mild and sweet to pungent. They are an ingredient in pesto. In a pinch, you can substitute chopped almonds or walnuts.

Salt is yet another ingredient that is taking on gourmet airs. You can get by with regular old table salt. But, if you want to step it up a notch, buy kosher salt for cooking. It has a coarser grind and, ounce-for-ounce, seems more salty than table salt, so be more careful when substituting it for regular salt in recipes. If you want to really be perceived as someone in the know, try one of the gourmet salts that are now on the market. Most of them are sea salts. And there are a number of them.

Celtic salt is a naturally moist salt harvested off the coast of Brittany, France. Fleur de Sel is comprised of "young" crystals that form naturally on the surface of salt evaporation ponds and hand harvested under specific weather conditions in Guérande region of France (this probably has the highest snob appeal). Then there’s basic French sea salt, which is harvested from Atlantic seawater; Hawaiian sea salt, which is a pink salt that has a volcanic baked red clay added to enrich it with iron oxide; Italian sea salt, which is produced from the low waters of the Mediterranean Sea along the coast of Sicily; and so on. Each is said to have a distinctive taste and various health benefits.

Sherry is a fortified, cask-aged wine that ranges in taste from dry to medium dry to sweet. For your kitchen, don’t buy cooking sherry. It’s loaded with salt to make it undrinkable. Buy an inexpensive bottle of dry sherry for use in the occasional recipe. It will probably last you a lifetime, unless you’re into drinking sherry while you cook.

Shortening is vegetable oil that has been processed into solid form. The most popular kind is Crisco. Today, shortening has fallen out of favor since most brands are trans fats, which are considered to be the worst sort of fat one can ingest.

Soy sauce is made from various proportions of fermented soybeans, a roasted grain of some kind—usually wheat—salt and water. Although it originated in China, it is used across Asia especially in Japan. What we’re used to in the U.S. is the Japanese version with the most popular brand being Kikkoman®. Unlike the Japanese version, the Chinese soy sauces use relatively low amounts of other grains. They come in two varieties, light and dark. Dark soy is aged and has a brownish-black color and much thicker texture. Light soy has a lighter color, plus a saltier flavor. It is used more in cooking. Try the Pearl River Bridge® brand. Whatever brand or type of soy you use, make sure it’s been naturally fermented for several months. Whatever you do, avoid synthetically manufactured soys that are produced in a matter of days.

Sugar too has gone gourmet. It used to be that regular sugar—alternatively referred to as fine granulated sugar, table sugar, standard granulated sugar or extra-fine granulated sugar—was good enough. But now, no coffee shop worth its salt (sugar?) can be without packets of brown granulated sugar. Some recipes—usually for baked goods—will call for powdered or confectioner’s sugar, which is regular sugar ground superfine.

Brown sugar comes in light and dark varieties. Light brown sugar has a mellow syrupy flavor and blends easily with butter. Dark brown sugar has a stronger flavor. Both of them are slightly moist and sticky and will get hard over time, so store them in an airtight container. Storing in the refrigerator also helps keep it from getting hard.

The French word for vinegar describes its origins: vinaigre - meaning sour wine. Though its origin is in wine, it can be made from any fruit or from any material containing sugar. The source is usually used to describe the vinegar. A good one for a vinaigrette dressing for salads is rice wine vinegar. It’s very pale gold with a clean, delicate flavor that doesn’t overpower the equally delicate flavor of a good extra virgin olive oil. Red and white wine vinegar will also come in handy at times. The red is more robust and pungent than the white. Good red wine vinegar ages just like red wine does and softens over time if unopened. It’s great for marinades. White wine vinegar is clear and pale gold, almost colorless. The taste is distinctly acidic, and the aroma reminiscent of the wine from which it comes. It’s good for use in salad dressings (even vinaigrettes if you like a slightly stronger vinegar taste).

Also, if you’re into making herb-flavored vinegars, white wine vinegar is where to start. Then there’s balsamic vinegar. Like olive oil, balsamic vinegar is as complex as fine wines. You’ll find balsamic vinegars on grocer shelves for anywhere from $3 to upward of $50. True balsamic vinegar can only be produced in the regions of Modena and Reggio in Italy, where they are aged a minimum of 10 years, bottled in 3.4 ounce bottles and sell for $50 to $500. Look for a good-quality medium priced one—somewhere around $7 -$10. And finally if you’re into fish and chips, British style, get a bottle of malt vinegar, which, unlike other vinegars, is made by the two-fold fermentation of barley malt or other cereals. Distilled white vinegar should be reserved for washing windows.

What passes for wasabi in most restaurants is usually horseradish with green food coloring added. Real Wasabi is a root vegetable and part of the cabbage family. Wasabi paste is made by finely grinding the root. You can buy the paste in some gourmet stores or by ordering it online. It comes in a tube, like anchovy paste. It’s great in dressings, dips, sauces and marinades. It’s hot, but the heat doesn’t last as long as chili peppers.

Go for the Lea & Perrins® brand when you buy Worcestershire sauce. After all, they invented it, sort of. They brewed up the first batch from a recipe that was brought back from India to Great Britain by an ex-Governor of Bengal. It was pretty vile stuff but, for whatever reason, they didn’t toss it right away but decided to save it. A few years later during spring cleaning, they rediscovered it and decided to give it one last taste. Voila! Like a fine wine, it had matured and turned into a pretty good sauce. Aging, it seems, is the key. The flavor depends on how long it spends in the barrel. Although the ingredients are listed on the bottle as “malt vinegar, spirit vinegar, molasses, sugar, salt, anchovies, tamarinds, shallots or onions, garlic, spices and flavoring” Lea & Perrins says that the exact recipe is secret.