Essential Pantry Upgrade - Basic Collection

Collection includes: Espelt Moscatel (White) Vinegar, Espelt Garnatxa (Red) Vinegar, Gray Salt from Guerande, Rice Bran Oil, and Nunez De Prado EV Olive Oil from Spain

This is where you begin; the first step in the multi-step process of building a more flavorful and taste-balanced pantry, and starting down the short but effective road to more FLAVOR, and improving your cooking without having to do anything else besides upgrading your pantry.

1.  Vinegar:  Buying high quality, more flavorful and more balanced vinegar is the absolute best first step. Although vinegar is thought of primarily as a single taste component in recipes - in this case, ACID - it can do so much more. We prefer vinegars that also bring a touch of sweet, along ith the acid, and in that way hit two taste notes with one breath.  But, these vinegars also bring a flavor component, which is really a win/win.  After all, what we seek when we put something in our mouth is FLAVOR. [Nothing more diss-satifying than putting something in your mouth and having it taste like nothing at all! Think, stawberries!] So, if your pantry taste-focused ingredients can also deliver some flavor - along with the acid and, in this case, some sweet - you are way ahead of the game every time you use it. 

And for those of you who "do" apple cider viengar, we also recommend Katz' Gravenstein Apple Cider Vinegar. Most everyone have BRAGGS in our pantries or refigerators, but rarely cook with it.  Either because we "take it" daily for its health benefits and it doesn't occure to them to cook with it, or because we don't care for the taste. Katz' Apple Cider Vinegar is not harshly acidic, has natural sweetness, and it actually tastes like apples! And, in case you are wondering, there is no such thing as having too many vinegars in your pantry. There are so many types and flavors to choose from, and most are very stable; they may change flavor over time, but they rarely if ever "go bad". To prevent the mother of the apple cider vinegar from growing over time, you can store it in the fridge.

For information about why good artisan-produced vinegar is expensive, and why it's worth every penny, click here.
For more info about the health benefits of vinegars, and especially apple cider vinegar, click here.  

Collection Includes: Espelt Moscatel (White) Vinegar, Espelt Granache (Red) Vingars.  

2.  Sea Salt:  First and foremost, stop using KOSHER salt. Kosher salt is 100% sodium chloride and basically tastes salty - no surprises there! But, you can do so much better. Good sea salts are 83-97% sodium chloride, with (French Celtic) Gray Salt topping the list on the low-end at 83-85%. What is the rest of the salt made of, you might ask?  Other minerals like potassium chloride, magnesium chloride, calcium carbonate, and many many other trace mineral.  Those other salts and minerals add to the flavor and balance of the salt, giving it a milder and less-harsh taste, and adding other taste components that help heighten flavor - like sweetness and bitterness. Plus they are healthier for you because they more closely mimic the natural mineral balance of the ocean - and our bodies.  

Salt is an essential part of cooking, and like the other 4 tastes (Sweet, Sour, Bitter, and Umami), the purpose of salt is to bring out the existing flavor in our foods. You should always salt your food, and we all need salt to live, but you do not want to salt your dishes to the point of salty-ness. The problem comes when the ingredients we are using (vegatables, fruits, proteins, starches, fats and flavorful parts of our pantry - like spices and herbs) have no inherrant flavor - as often is the case.  Then we find ourselves over-salting to make up for the lack of flavor. 

The other consideration is crystalline structure and dissolvability. I prefer a nice mild flake salt at the table - like Murray River Pink Flake Salt from Australia - as it is easy to control (it won't clump together), and the thin crystal structure means it will dissolve quickly, avoiding those crunchy bits, so your are less prone to oversalting.

For more information about sea salt, and why you should care about what salt you are using, click here.

Collection Includes: French Fine Gray Salt from Guerande

3. Cooking Oil: These days, most people cook with olive oil, but I am not a fan. Don't get me wrong - I LOVE me some fresh, early-harvest olive oil! But olive oil is a very delicate oil and does not hold up well in medium or high heat situations. Besides, we go out of our way to buy "extra virgin" olive oil, which has been cold pressed in order to maintain the integrity and flavor of the oil, and then we go ahead and put it into a hot pan. Go figure! 

I highly advise you to use good and flavorful olive oil (see below) but save it for low heat and raw applications, and buy a better performing and more versatile oil for cooking, baking, deep frying, sauteeing, and other medium to high heat situations. 

Our favorite cooking oil is Rice Bran Oil.  It has many virtues, including that it's stable at high temperatures (485 degrees), it's inexpensive, it's flavorless (the one time you generally prefer little to no flavor), it's light weight (so works well for deep frying and baking and won't stick to your food making it heavy or greasy), and it's high in tocopherols (vitamin Es) which keeps it stay shelf stable for long periods of time (up to 3 years) and protects the oil from oxidation - because oxidized (read: rancid or trans-fats or free radicals) oil is extremely bad for your health. Add to that that, compared to most seed oils, it's lower in omega 6 fatty acids (inflamitorly) and higher in omega 9 (anti-inflamitory) fatty acids - the same fatty acids that you look for in olive oil.

And I am not even going to start on why canola oil is bad...

For more on Rice Bran Oil, click here.

Collection Includes: Rice Bran Oil

4.  Olive Oil: Although I don't recommend cooking with olive oil, I do highly recommend using olive oil whenever you can in low heat or raw applications. We recommend you buy the most flavorful olive oil you can afford and that you like the flavor of. Besides being high in omega 9 fatty acids (anti-inflammitory), olive oil is packed with polyphenols - those compound that give our food flavor, but also give our food healthy properties - like the oleocanthol (anti-inflamitory) and oleorupin (anti-cancer/anti-aging) we find in abundance in fresh, early-harvest olive oils. It's these polyphenol compounds found in fresh, high quality, and flavorful olive oils that give it the peppery and bitter flavors and tastes.  Sadly, it is also these pholyphenols that are so easily distroyed by heat, light, air, and time. So, find some good and flavorful olive oils, and use them on everything - but use them AFTER you take the food out of the pan or out of the oven; do like the Italian's and FINISH with your good olive oil.  You mouth and your body will be happy you did.

We love this Nunez de Prado Olive Oil from Andalucia, Spain. One of the few blended Spaish EVOOs, which means it hits a nice balance between the sweeter and no-bitter varietals, like Arbequina, and the stronger and more bitter varietals, like Picual - and adds tons of FLAVOR, which is, afterall, what we are after.

To learn about the health benefits of EVOO, click here.
For more info on what to look for when choosing an olive oil, click here.
To learn why we ONLY sell estate-bottled olive oils, click here. 

Collection Includes: Nunez de Prado Olive Oil from Spain