11 Healthy and Tasty Dishes You Can Make with What’s in the Pantry

Autumn, with its yellow trees, its ocher tones and the cold – little at the moment – ​​awakens our appetite for spoon dishes, legumes, comfort dishes and vegetable stews. But these months of leaf fall also tell us about the rush to get to work on time, full buses, children to take to school, traffic jams and the rush. Eating healthy and foraging for everything may seem like an oxymoron, but to reconcile ourselves with our routine, we can resort to cans, jars and preserves. Comforting cuisine on your wrist.

The first thing is to have a good stock of food in the pantry, a bit like the stock in the cupboard but in the kitchen. The basics would be: pots of legumes, white beans, lentils and chickpeas. Other vegetables like stew, leeks or borage. Bricks vegetable broths, chicken, fish… Various cans of seafood such as mussels, cockles and tuna. Variety of spices, including black pepper, ginger powder, garlic powder, paprika, curry… And, in addition, I would incorporate a can of coconut milk, useful for certain preparations more exotic, and condensed milk or vegetable milk for creams.

With this in the pantry and the ingredients for a basic stir-fry, we can eat a healthy, varied dish that requires little work.

If you already have your pantry stocked but are short on ideas, here are some for preparing meals to take to work or for improvising a dinner in just a few minutes.

What can you do with a pot of white beans?

Chop the onion and garlic, fry them with a little oil until soft, add a little white wine, let it evaporate and add the white beans once drained. Add a little fish stock, boil for ten minutes and top up with the canned cockles with their own stock, another minute then eat.

It’s simpler, if possible. With a pot of good quality white beans, we can make a different hummus than chickpea hummus, or even something finer. It involves grinding the drained beans with sesame paste (tahini) to taste, garlic, salt and lemon juice. You can add a little water until you obtain the desired creamy texture. It can be served as is, with a little paprika on top and sesame oil, or failing that, olive oil. But if we want a really tasty starter, take a jar of red peppers cut into strips, fry them with garlic and a little olive oil and put them in the middle of the hummus drizzled with their juice. With this and pita bread (if possible) we have a complete dish.

The secret is to first buy a jar of beans and another of canned green cabbage. We put both in a saucepan and we can use the broth from both, until it is lightly covered so that it is not too velvety. Let it cook slowly so that they integrate. At the same time we sauté with olive oil, minced garlic and paprika and, being careful not to burn the paprika because it is bitter, we let everything cook together and adjust the salt .

You can also always fry ham tacos or slices of blood sausage in the pan and add them if you want to give it a touch reminiscent of your grandmother’s stews.

What can you do with a jar of chickpeas?

A jar of chickpeas in the pantry is almost a treasure, they go with everything.

We make a sauce with chives and garlic, and when it is well poached we add the chickpeas. Meanwhile we put the fresh spinach in a saucepan and stir until it releases the water. Once this is done, we add the vegetables to the chickpeas and sauté everything. You can accompany it with halves of hard-boiled eggs and you have a complete dish.

It’s a stew that comforts you on cold days. We need chickpeas and a tray of cultivated mushrooms, it could be shiitake or oyster mushrooms.

First we prepare the traditional garlic and onion sauté, if we like it. When it’s ready, add a few tablespoons of fried tomato, sweet paprika and a touch of spice which will give it character. And then the mushrooms, sautéed well with everything, add a little broth or water and cook for five minutes. Meanwhile, we open the jar of chickpeas, wash them well, add them to the stew and cook for another 10 minutes so that the flavors integrate. And that’s it. A spoon and eat.

Packaged pulses are also great for making more exotic dishes, like a pulse curry with little work. It goes just as well with chickpeas as with lentils. In this case, for the chickpeas we will need a pot of cooked chickpeas, curry and a pot of coconut milk. It involves sautéing garlic, chopped onion, tomato and ginger which can be fresh or powdered, although fresh is more refreshing.

We then add a tablespoon of curry powder, and we can also add cumin, cayenne powder – if you like it spicier – but just with the curry it’s already good. We stir several times so that the vegetables soak up the flavor, we add the drained chickpeas and the coconut milk until barely covered, we let everything cook together for 10 minutes over low heat. To serve, you can add herbs, such as coriander, which gives it an exotic touch.

And with a jar of lentils?

Lentils are versatile and pair well with almost everything. To a basic legume stew, you can add chicken breast, squid, sautéed mushrooms, other vegetables or whatever comes to mind.

The basic everyday stew, the one that always tastes good. Easy, just make a sauce with onion, garlic and a little tomato, add paprika and a few slices of chorizo ​​if you like, then the pot of lentils, let cook for 10 minutes with a little chicken or vegetable stock or water and they are ready to eat or put in the container and rush to work.

So simple and we even have a first course to invite, we need, in addition to the lentils, a can of natural squid. We start by making the traditional sauté of onion, garlic and tomato, once well cooked, we add the lentils and a fish broth until they are barely covered. We let it cook for a few minutes while we lightly grill the squid and serve the lentil dish with the squid on top.

This salad is even better if you prepare it in advance. We only need a jar of lentils, tomatoes, chives and some spices. Once the legumes have been drained, put them in a salad bowl and mix them with a diced tomato or cherry tomatoes cut in half, as well as a very fine spring onion, a chopped hard-boiled egg and a handful of drained capers. We prepare a vinaigrette with oil, vinegar and a teaspoon of Dijon mustard, salt and freshly ground black pepper. Mix everything well and voila, a complete dish ready to eat.

And with a pot of beans?

With these legumes we can prepare one of the typical dishes of Costa Rica and Nicaragua, gallo pinto, also called in other regions “Moors and Christians”; a mixture of beans and rice that accompanies all meals. It’s very simple, just fry the onion and green pepper cut into small cubes, add the drained black beans, fry them too then add white rice – it can be ‘one of those already pre-cooked and just do it. microwave for a minute. We fry everything and can season with salt, pepper and some herbs, coriander being the most typical.

This salad is made with a mix of legumes – two or three, for example chickpeas and white and kidney beans or chickpeas, white beans and lentils – and it also helps us use up some leftovers we have.

We very finely chop the onion and halved cherry tomatoes, red or yellow pepper and mix them with the legumes. In addition, we also chop pickles, piparras, capers, olives and add them. We season everything with salt, pepper, oil and adjust the vinegar – carefully because the variants we have included already have it – and that’s it.