How do I cook a meal from what is in the cupboard?

Cooking without a recipe is easier with a template. Base, protein, sauce, finish covers the great majority of simple meals, and once you can see a cupboard in those four categories the question stops being difficult.

What you'll need

• Tinned tomatoes, pulses or fish (optional)
• Pasta, rice or potatoes (optional)
• Onion and garlic (optional)

Step by step

1. Pick the base first.Pasta, rice, couscous, potatoes, bread, noodles. It decides the shape of the meal and how long it takes.
2. Find a protein.Tinned beans, chickpeas, lentils, tuna, sardines, eggs, frozen peas. Tinned pulses are the most useful thing in any store cupboard.
3. Build a sauce element.Tinned tomatoes, stock, coconut milk, a spoon of curry paste, or simply olive oil and garlic. This is what turns components into a dish.
4. Start with onion and garlic if you have them.Softened in oil, they give a base flavour that makes almost anything taste deliberate rather than improvised.
5. Add spice or herbs early enough to bloom.Into the hot oil after the onions, before any liquid. Thirty seconds is enough and it transforms the result.
6. Finish with something sharp, fresh or rich.Lemon juice, vinegar, yoghurt, cheese, herbs, olive oil, chilli. This is the step that stops store-cupboard food tasting flat.
7. Season properly and taste before serving.Store-cupboard meals are often under-seasoned because there was no recipe telling you when. Taste and adjust.
8. Keep a defined set of staples in stock.Tinned tomatoes, tinned pulses, pasta, rice, stock, onions, garlic, oil, and a couple of spice blends. That set produces dozens of meals.

Tips

• An egg turns almost anything into a meal. Fried on top of rice, beans or leftover vegetables works far better than it sounds.
• Frozen peas, spinach and sweetcorn are effectively store-cupboard ingredients and add freshness nothing tinned can.
• A jar of curry paste, a tube of tomato purée and a bottle of soy sauce give you three different directions from the same base ingredients.

Common mistakes

• Looking for a recipe that matches the cupboard exactly — It rarely exists. The template of base, protein, sauce, finish is more useful than searching.
• Skipping the finish — It is what distinguishes an improvised meal from a flat one. Acid, fat or fresh herbs at the end matter disproportionately.
• Adding spices to liquid rather than to oil — They need fat and heat to release their flavour. Stirred into a wet sauce they stay dusty and muted.

Questions people ask