The Dismal Pantry

When your pantry is a sled being pulled through endless badlands, what should you pack? Unrelenting fear and a preoccupation with maintaining the last vestige of your humanity are not excuses to get into a rut with your cooking, so what key items will give you versatility when your cookfire is the smoldering embers of civilization itself?

Anchovies.

These briny little fishes can be the difference between the grim determination to trudge on for one more day and naked, drooling, madness. If you don’t like anchovies because your friend once ruined a pizza with harsh, acrid, super-fishy little beasts, put that experience out of your mind and give them (the anchovies) another chance. After all, what is the apocalypse good for if not opening your mind to new experiences? I sneak anchovies into damn near everything, and nobody has ever complained. They are a concentrated source of umami and they dissolve well into sauces. After some time cooking, the only evidence that they are there is that the sauce is more delicious.

The goal when stocking your sled is to avoid two common pitfalls— junk and tedium. This is accomplished less through creative recipe design and more through maintaining a stable of varied, interesting, and minimally-perishable items. Here is an overview of your pantry. Later we will consider how your menu options expand when you have a freezer, as well.

Grains

Rice and pasta are obvious staples, but there are a variety of other interesting grains and derivations thereof which, while not entirely non-perishable, will keep for a very, very long time if stored with a little care. Moisture can lead to mold or bacteria, and heat can make them rancid. The health benefits of whole grains should be well-known to all by now, but the different textures and flavors that they provide make them an excellent bullet in the arsenal of the harried chef. Oatmeal is only the beginning. From farro to freekeh, and rye to red rice, experiment with whatever you can get your hands on and find your favorites. A select few will be discussed in depth later.

After the apocalypse, like before, a varied set of flours will be mostly aspirational for most people, reminding us that, should we ever have the time and foresight, we could bake a mediocre loaf of bread, and that if we did this a few more times, we could eventually cook a good loaf of bread. Flour has other uses, though, in breading, roux-making, and inadvisable last-ditch attempts to thicken stubborn sauces. Masa, or corn meal, can quickly be turned into polenta, tortillas, or cornbread. With hominy, various combinations of dried peppers and preserved meats can be turned into a serviceable approximation of posole. Crackers are basically tiny plates that you can eat, and they last a long time in their wrappers.

Legumes & Nuts

When we’re using U.S. dollars as kindling for fires to reheat our canned goods, beans may well be currency. Black beans, white beans, kidney beans, black-eye peas, brown lentils, green lentils, beluga lentils, chick peas, and green peas are just a few of the wide array of legumes just waiting to add shelf-stable protein and variety to your pantry. If you have the time and the foresight to use dried beans, you’ll get a better texture and more control over your sodium and preservative intake, but when dinner is urgent, canned beans cook much faster. Combined with grains and judicious seasoning, legumes can sustain you for a very long time.

Nuts have a decent shelf life when fresh, and a long shelf life when roasted and salted. Peanuts (actually a legume), cashews, and walnuts all pull double-duty as stand-alone snacks and fun ingredients in dishes like curries and grain bowls. Nut pastes— like peanut butter and tahini— will go rancid before they grow harmful organisms, and open new horizons in the fields of sauces and dips. Coconut milk is so rich and complex that it is nearly a sauce by itself, so it takes very little to turn it into a delectable curry.

Tamarind is not a staple, but it is interesting. It’s a legume that tastes like a fruit, and you can make juice out of it (it also adds tang to sauces and can be used in desserts). The big blocks of paste will last for months, and the pods last indefinitely.

Fruits and Vegetables

Cans of tomatoes are among the most important staples of a non-perishable pantry, but stock some glutamate-dense tomato paste, too. Like anchovies, tomato paste just makes everything tastier. Canned options exist for a vast selection of fruits and vegetables, but they vary widely in their depressingness. Canned chipotle peppers? Great. Canned mandarin oranges? Okay. Canned green beans? Vaguely depressing, but nevertheless part of our heritage, at least in the Midwest. One extra special item to keep in your dismal pantry is roasted red peppers preserved in oil.

Are mushrooms a vegetable? This question[1] may haunt us until the day our species quits its feeble run at existence. Regardless, they are tasty. Best of all, you don’t have to try your luck with the pale, luminescent, fungus growing from the eye sockets of that fresh corpse, because dried mushrooms are easily rehydrated, and the resulting liquid can be used as stock. Dried peppers are an essential tool for the post-apocalyptic chef, particularly as other ingredients grow more and more rancid. A variety of dehydrated fruits will be worth their weight in kerosene when it comes time to make that holiday fruit cake, but they can also provide a nice accent in certain savory dishes.

“Canned goods?” You say. “Dried Goods?” You say. “Give me some goddamn pickles.” And you would be right to say that. There are three kinds of pickles. Fridge pickles, generally speaking, are made by immersing fruits and vegetables—plus seasoning— in a boiling mixture of water, salt, and vinegar without a ton of concern for the microbiology. Salt, heat, and acidity make them safe for a little while, and refrigerating them keeps them safe for longer than I should legally advise you to continue eating them. But one underrated aspect of the apocalypse is the precipitous decline in casual litigation. Canned pickles are prepared similarly to fridge pickles, but the sealed jars are pasteurized to ensure indefinite microbiological stability, though not an indefinitely pleasing texture. Fermented pickles are wild and complicated and delicious, darkly compelling and highly nutritious, reasonably stable yet ever-changing. They can probably make you sick eventually, but they also probably turn to mush before that happens. With all of manners of pickles, the tang and crunch is an invaluable element to many dishes. The pickling liquid is a seasoning in an of itself. From classic cucumbers, to earthy beets, to fiery habaneros, the pickle potential is practically preposterous even prior to pondering pantry perennials like pepperoncini, olives, capers, and giardiniera. Sauerkraut, kimchi, and similar shredded vegetable ferments can be legitimate dishes on their own, as well as great additions to other recipes.

Meat, etc.

It is occasionally helpful to stop proselytizing about anchovies in order to mention sardines and defend the honor of Spam. In less hellish versions of the apocalypse, a wondrous variety of dried, smoked, and cured meats will be available. These range from your drunk neighbor’s nigh-indestructible jerkies, to elegant hams and salumis that will gradually degrade into impenetrably rocky chunks of sodium-rich flesh, i.e., nigh-indestructible jerkies. In more hellish versions of the apocalypse, it’s canned meat all the way. Unless you’re willing to… never mind.

So let’s talk about canned animal. There’s tuna fish. There’s anchovies. There’s sardines, and oysters, and pulpo (that’s octopus, en Espanol). There’s pickled herring, which is actually its own food group. There’s canned salmon. There’s lutefisk, if you’re in to that. There are dried baby shrimps, and caviar, and salt cod. There are bonito flakes, which are dried, fermented, and smoked flakes of fish— like having lox and fish sauce mixed up together in the same salt shaker.

And then there’s potted meat. You can find luxurious confits of duck and whatever else, but unless you manage to loot the somehow hitherto unknown ruins of a Michelin star restaurant, you’re more likely to be dealing with Spam. And Spam is delicious. Contrary to popular snobbery, Spam is not made of meat scraps scraped up from the floor of a meatery and extruded through a tin-shaped die. It’s made from ham and pork shoulder, with very little random nonsense, relative to other food stuffs invented in 20th century America. It may not be heart-healthy, but neither are other shelf-stable meats. If you find yourself reviling the quivering gelatinous rectangular solid that slides slowly out of the tin, turn off that part of your brain for long enough to roast it on a stick over an open fire or brown cubes of it on all sides in a scorching hot pan. Spam is delicious and it might save your life.

Herbs and Spices

Space will dictate how many different herbs and spices you can stock. Fill up your space, but be aware that your spices will lose flavor as the months go by. If absolutely nothing fresh exists in your world, make sure to stock up on powdered onion and garlic, as well as dried parsley. If you can get actual onions, garlic, and parsley, then use those.

A variety of dried chilis can add depth to your stews and other dishes. Some peppers are smokier, some spicier, some have subtle fruit or raisin-like qualities. In a perfect world, you would stock Pasillas, Arbols, Anchos, Chipotles, Guajillos, Urfas, Aleppos, Birdseyes, and a variety of smoked, hot, and sweet paprikas. And your world is as perfect as you make it, so get your ass some chilis. Skip ahead to see an extensive, though nowhere near comprehensive, guide to dried chilis.

If one were to make a definitive ranking of dried herbs and spices in order of culinary importance, one would also have the personality to become a megalomaniacal cult leader feeding off the terror of the people who have suddenly found themselves in an unfamiliar and precarious position (for a definitive ranking of dried herbs and spices in order of culinary importance, see Appendix A). Some spices, like cumin, ginger, cinnamon, dill, and sage, can stand alone as seasonings. Others, like bay, coriander, and oregano, make nearly everything more delicious. Some, like sumac, marjoram, and savory, are esoteric, but fun. Round these out with lemongrass, tarragon, cardamom, cloves, and saffron, and you’ll be able to clumsily mimic the cuisines of many an obliterated culture.

Oils, Vinegars, and Condiments

Beyond the obvious uses for cooking and seasoning, oils and vinegars can be used to capture the flavors of perishable goods for future use. It is important to understand, however, that you should not use oil to preserve vegetables without consulting somebody who knows what they’re doing— botulism grows in anaerobic, low-acidity environments.

You’ll be set for oils if you just stock vegetable oil and olive oil. Vegetable oil is cheaper, can take higher heat, and has a neutral flavor. Olive oil is flavorful and healthy when it is not cooked. There are a huge number of other oils out there, with different flavors and smoking points, but if you can’t keep them all fairly cool, they’ll go rancid before you use them. If you need to branch out, toasted sesame oil is great in East Asian-inspired dishes, and walnut oil is a delicious alternate finishing oil to olive oil. Post-apocalyptic pros know to use a spoonful of oil from the top of oily preserves— such and anchovies or giardiniera— and then fill them back up to the brim.

Vinegars are harder to pare down, because different flavors seem so appropriate to different dishes. White vinegar, or distilled vinegar, is good for cleaning stubborn clots off of your machete and also for preserving vegetables, if and when you find them. For cooking, cider vinegar and red wine vinegar will get you pretty far. Rice wine vinegar is also good for cooking, and a nice sherry or balsamic vinegar is good for finishing dishes. Having one nice olive oil and one nice vinegar that are never used for cooking over heat, but are only drizzled as a seasoning on finished dishes, will make the apocalypse more tolerable for the bon vivant.

Rounding out the “jars of stuff” section of the dismal pantry are your condiments. Most don’t spoil, though, as always, they will typically retain their flavor better if they are kept cool. Mustard, soy sauce, fish sauce, chili paste, hot sauce, Thai and Indian curry pastes, jerk sauce, and Worcestershire are all condiments that make fantastic supporting seasonings in various dishes. Giardiniera— a term that encompasses many combinations of chopped vegetable preserved in oil— is almost a vegetable. But most of us don’t admit that we eat it out of the jar with a spoon, so we’ll call it a condiment. A spoonful of giardiniera and its oil can be step one for most savory recipes cooked in hot pans.

Actual Vegetation

Though it’s prudent to assume that nothing will ever grow again once things get really bad, it’s also prudent to include optional vegetation in some recipes in order to make them tastier, should you find the requisite ingredients. For the most part, we’ll stick to garlic, onions, and parsley. Each of these has a readily available dried analogue that can be used when the fresh version is not available. Garlic and onions can both keep for months if they are kept at a low room temperature and allowed to breath. Parsley can be grown on a pot on the back of dirt bike, or looted and stored for weeks in a vase of water in a cool spot.

The Inevitable Etc.

If you needed to be told that salt was a staple for the post-apocalyptic pantry, you wouldn’t have survived this long. But you’ll need salt. Sugar and honey add sweetness and balance out bitterness in food. Liquor, beer, and wine add sweetness and balance out bitterness in life, and can also be used for cooking. Sealed boxes or cans of meat or vegetable stock last indefinitely, but need to be used quickly once opened. Bouillon is entirely non-perishable, and incomparably easier to haul quickly over long distances.

[1] The answer is no