Pantry
Pantry Staples Worth Splurging On
Salt, oil, and vinegar. Spend on those three first, and your cooking improves before you have even bought a vegetable.
By The Editors · April 5, 2026 · 4 min read
Most pantry staples are, within reason, interchangeable. The flour you bake with is the same flour anyone else is baking with. But there are a few categories where the difference between cheap and good is the difference between a dish that is merely edible and a dish you remember.
Olive oil is two ingredients.
Buy the workhorse — a good extra virgin you can pour without thinking — and buy the finishing oil, the small dark-green bottle you only break out for salads and the last drizzle on a soup. Do not try to do both jobs with one bottle. They are different ingredients, even if the label is similar.
Salt has texture.
Flaky finishing salt is not fancy. It is just salt with shape — and that shape, scattered on a tomato or a piece of steak right before serving, gives food a little crunch and a moment to register on the tongue. Buy a tin and put it within reach of wherever you cook.
“If you only upgrade one thing in your kitchen this year, make it the salt.”
Vinegar deserves better than the supermarket aisle.
A bottle of decent sherry vinegar, or a bright unfiltered apple cider, kept on the counter rather than at the back of a cupboard, will turn a tired vinaigrette into something you would actually order out. The bottle costs less than a single restaurant cocktail, and it lasts a year.