Food From Scratch Pantry Essentials: Refrigerator and Freezer Edition

Keeping a well-stocked fridge and freezer are the difference between getting 3 from scratch meals on the table a day and not. These are my food from scratch pantry essentials refrigerator and freezer edition.

In The Refrigerator:

Buttermilk

Buttermilk or at least powdered buttermilk is essential for biscuits, breads, ranch, pancakes and many, many other things. It helps add some lift to make things fluffy and add some tang in savory dishes like ranch.

Lard/Tallow

Lard is what we use in our pans for frying and sauteing. Basically any cooking thing that you would use oil for we use lard in. We render it from the fat from our own pigs and it tastes great. I also use it to create delicious and flaky pie crusts and biscuits. It makes wonderfully soft tortillas and pasty dough. We would use tallow but we don’t have any.

Butter

Though we use lard for a lot of things, we still use butter for spreading on bread and in cookies (though I am working on using in more in baking).

Ranch

Having some homemade ranch in the refrigerator is wonderful. It makes salads a snap and is the perfect dip for carrots or other vegetables.

Condiments

Have whatever condiments your family loves stocked. This often is the difference between a meal your family loves and a blah meal.

Yogurt/Kefir

We make our own yogurt but almost always use store yogurt as a starter. I make raw yogurt with milk from our cow when we have it. That being said, for the past six months I have been using Aldi milk.

Cheese

We keep extra sharp cheddar, mozzarella , parmesan and cream cheese on hand.

Veggies

We like to keep some lettuce and carrots always on hand. Carrot sticks with ranch is one of our favorite snacks! Sometimes we have bell peppers or other fresh veggies but for most of the year we eat frozen veggies.

Sauerkraut

Though I am still working on enjoying the taste of sauerkraut it is something that I think is important to eat. We make our own (it is super easy) and eat it at least once a week on our tacos.

Milk

If we have a diary animal in milk than we have a lot of milk in the refrigerator. Otherwise we just get enough milk from the store to make yogurt with.

Fruit

We have various berries from our garden when they are in season which for us is most of the summer. Also, we have either canned peaches or canned apple pie filling in the refrigerator as my husband eats fruit with his yogurt every day for breakfast.

Sour Cream

An essential for making various dips, dressings and meals.

Sourdough Starter

Unless I am going to be using my starter in the next day or so I keep it in the fridge. This helps keep it from getting too hungry

Cream

Cream is so useful in sauces, ice cream and my currant favorite, Custard.

In The Freezer

Meat

We raise almost all of our meat except for some Never Any Ham from Aldi. I like to have different cuts of pork, whole rabbits and a few chickens in the freezer. I also make some wonderful Italian sausage which I keep on hand.

Fruit

We put up our own strawberries, raspberries and for the first time some blueberries. For the most part I just freeze them whole. It is quicker and I can always process them further later if I want. We frequently also have blueberries from Walmart in there as well.

Veggies

We keep pea, green beans and broccoli on hand.

Freezer Meals

Now this comes and goes but I like to keep at least some precooked items in the freezer to save my but when life gets especially crazy.

Breads

I have a bad habit of forgetting that my husband needs a lunch until really late at night so having some bread frozen saves my butt. I also keep some tortillas frozen.

Butter

If there is a really good sale on butter I will stock up and freeze a bunch of it. It is so nice to have a stash for when I run out of butter in the house.

Icepacks

What Are Your Food from Scratch Pantry Essentials?

Comment blow to tell me what I missed and what are essentials for you.