5 Kitchen Staples You Need to Eat at Home Tonight

There are dozens of reasons to eat at home. Financially, eating at home is less expensive than eating out. You can save hundreds or even thousands of dollars per year by eating at home. Plus, nothing tastes the same as a home-cooked meal. Gather up the family and sit around the table for a delicious meal that you cooked with your own hands. It’s a great thought until you start thinking through the logistics of cooking a meal for your family tonight. Maybe you have soccer practice, a school function, or if you calculate stopping at the store on your way home from work, you simply don’t have time to cook.

Having dinner with your family is a wonderful thought, until you realize you have no food and not enough time to go to the store, find a recipe, and cook dinner. Cooking can be difficult, especially if you don’t have any food in the fridge or pantry. Before you start taking orders for what the kids want at Chick-Fil-A, read a few tips that will make cooking dinner possible and easy!

By keeping a few simple foods stocked in the freezer or pantry, making dinner can be much simpler! Save trips to the store, by making sure you have a few staples ready to go. Having a few staple items on hand can help you create simple recipes in record time!

Making dinner for your family doesn’t need to be complicated. Here are 5 kitchen staples you need to eat at home tonight.

Boxes of Pasta

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Pasta, of your favorite variety, is easy to cook and will go with just about anything you have. Pasta is a great way to stretch a meal when you don’t have quite enough protein to go around. Use the ground beef in a meat sauce for spaghetti. Instead of making chicken breasts for everyone, make a smaller amount to add to some bow tie, vermicelli, or fettuccini.

If you’re not in the mood for warm and cheesy or hot and saucy, turn it into a pasta salad. Whether you have leftover broccoli, peppers, zucchini, or tomatoes, you can’t go wrong by transforming your random veggies into a pasta salad. With some veggies, a little olive oil, pepper, salt, and lemon juice (and maybe some grilled chicken or steak), you can make a delectable pasta salad—great for summer days or dinners on the go!

Rice

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Rice is the classic staple for families all over the world. Why wouldn’t it be? Rice is filling, easy, and with the right add-ons, super yummy!

Steam a pot of rice while you cook some chicken or pork in the skillet with an onion. Throw in some egg, green peppers, and a little soy sauce and sugar for some faux Chinese-style take-out.

No egg? Use some taco seasoning and make burrito bowls with whatever veggies, cheese, and other toppings you have.

Experiment with pre-made sauces that can be added to chicken and rice for a quick and easy meal. Most groceries have an international section that is stocked full of pre-made tikka masala, fajita, or General Tso’s sauce. If your family has a favorite, why not keep it on hand with a 10-pound bag of rice?

If all else fails, rice and beans with some seasoning to your liking will keep your kiddos from going hungry.

Join the millions of families eating rice together tonight!

Eggs

Sunny-side up, poached, hard-boiled… how do you take your egg? Eggs are an egg-cellent staple for your kitchen.

Eggs can be scrambled into fried rice to stretch a meal. If you’re on the go or planning meals ahead of time, hard-boiled eggs make a great addition to the mix. Hard-boiled eggs can be added to a salad for extra protein, or grabbed from the fridge for breakfasts when you’re in a hurry.

Of course you can make an amazing dinner out of eggs by grabbing your skilled and making a fantastic omelet with cheese, veggies, and maybe some ham. If your omelet falls apart, don’t fret, just scramble those eggs and throw in whatever meat, veggies, and cheese you have on hand. With a little salt and pepper, no one will care that it’s not an omelet.

In a pinch, who doesn’t love breakfast for dinner? Serve up some eggs with from-scratch biscuits (or canned! Those are good too!), pancakes, waffles, or toast with jam. Honestly, would anyone complain if you had eggs and cereal?

Canned Beans

Black, kidney, pinto, garbanzo… keeping your pantry stocked with beans will never be a bad thing. First of all, cans of beans are among the cheapest foods you can purchase; plus, most beans are full of protein and very filling.

When you’re out of produce and aren’t sure what to make for a side item, beans with some mild seasoning can be a creative and easy side.

Beans can be added to tacos to stretch the filling for hungry boys after soccer, a surprise guest, or when money is tight. Add a can of beans to a pot of soup for some extra flavor and texture. Black beans taste great with tex-mex. Pinto beans add a layer of warmth in a chicken soup. You can even throw garbanzo beans into a salad for a tasty lunch.

The best part about stocking cans of beans is that you can keep them on hand for months at a time.

Shredded Cooked Chicken in the Freezer

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Having shredded pre-cooked chicken in the freezer makes fast meals. You can cook the chicken yourself, in bulk, on a Saturday afternoon in the slow cooker and freeze it. Or you can buy a rotisserie chicken and shred it. Either way, having the chicken pre-cooked will save loads of time.

The chicken can easily be thawed in the skilled with a little liquid, some onion, peppers, and taco seasoning. Throw the mix in a tortilla with some cheese for some quick tacos. Or spread some tortilla chips on a cookie sheet, sprinkle with the thawed chicken, top with cheese and barbeque sauce, and broil until crispy. The whole family will love delicious barbeque chicken nachos.

You’ll create dozens of recipes on the fly with shredded cooked chicken on hand in the freezer. If your family prefers beef, brown some ground beef and freeze that instead—the recipes will still work great!