The 10 French Pantry Ingredients That Will Transform Your Cooking

There is a reason that French home cooking has such a distinct and recognizable character across wildly different dishes, from a weeknight steak to a Sunday tarte tatin. A small group of pantry ingredients appears in almost every recipe, acting as both flavour-builders and texture-modifiers. Once your pantry contains these ten items, cooking French recipes becomes a matter of fresh ingredients and technique rather than a shopping expedition for exotic items you have never seen before.

The ten are: Dijon mustard (emulsifier, flavour base, marinade), fleur de sel (finishing salt, texturally different from cooking salt), herbes de Provence (lazy herb shortcut for everything from chicken to tarts), verjuice or good red wine vinegar (for vinaigrettes and pan sauces), Puy lentils (fast weeknight base, no soaking), creme fraiche (stabilized cream that does not split in acidic sauces), whole black peppercorns for freshly cracking, canned Puy lentils for speed, dried porcini mushrooms (instant umami depth in any braise or sauce), and good extra-virgin olive oil (not for frying, but for finishing, drizzling and dressings).

The one item new cooks consistently underestimate is the dried porcini mushroom. Ten grams of dried porcini, soaked in 200 ml of hot water, yields a soaking liquid more intensely flavourful than most commercial stocks -- earthy, savoury and glutamate-rich in a way that animates every other ingredient in the dish. Strain it carefully through a coffee filter to remove grit, add it to a braise or risotto and notice the moment the whole dish lifts and becomes recognizably more complex. Keep a 100 g bag in your pantry at all times. It is perhaps the best value ingredient in European cooking.