13 Essential Items Martha Stewart Keeps In The Pantry

There are many facts you should know about Martha Stewart, as she provides wide-ranging inspiration for all things kitchen and dining, whether you're getting ready to host a 12-person dinner party or just looking for ideas on what to cook for yourself tonight. Whatever plans you have in store, you can be sure that Stewart will provide you with ideas for creating an elegant, creative, and overall high-quality experience.

It's no wonder, then, that Stewart would also be the first person on anyone's list for finding inspiration on how to stock their pantry. That's because we all know her vision transcends the mundane task of food storage; it transforms pantries into artful, functional spaces that reflect a harmonious blend of aesthetics and utility. How does she pull this off, you ask? First of all, with her holistic approach. Stewart seamlessly combines her culinary expertise with a knack for interior design, which can transform each food-pantry item into an element of decor. Second, her penchant for organization ensures every ingredient has its rightful place in the pantry to maximize efficiency. Lastly, her undeniable good taste suggests that anything she has in her pantry is probably something we also need in ours. Let's take a look at what those items are so we can begin our own pantry overhaul.

You can never go wrong when you always have canned beans in your pantry. They're nutritious, last for ages, and when properly cooked, they taste delicious. Not to mention the fact that they come in a wide variety — from black beans to cannellini beans to chickpeas — all of which have their own individual flavor and texture. Indeed, Martha Stewart recommends stocking up on these varieties, plus great northern beans, pinto beans, and kidney beans, all of which can come in handy to spruce up vegetables, meat, and rice dishes.

The key thing to remember is that when it's time to use them, you should always rinse canned beans before pouring them into your pan. That's because that translucent liquid that coats your canned beans — which has helped to preserve them all this time — is mostly made of salt and starch. While these certainly won't kill you, they're not the healthiest things to ingest, and they risk diminishing the flavor and texture of the actual beans. Once that's taken care of, Stewart recommends using those beans for pretty much anything you want. She singles out adding them to hummus, tacos, stews, and chilis, but at the end of the day, it's up to you, and that's part of the beauty of canned beans.

If you do any baking at all, or even if you just drink coffee in the morning, you're likely to have at least a bit of sugar sitting somewhere in your pantry. But Martha Stewart takes this a step further and stocks sparkling sugar in her kitchen. Although this might not be the type of sugar you put in your coffee (or even in your chocolate chip cookies), it does play an important role in the appearance and texture of a wide range of baked goods.

In fact, sparkling sugar (aka sanding sugar) is made up of large crystals processed into heat-resistant translucent grains. These grains are ideal as a topping for muffins — or in Stewart's case, brioche bread pudding — because they retain their shape and crunch despite the heat that surrounds them, extending a shiny patina over your dessert. Because of their translucent color, they make any baked good look like it's shining. Leave it to Martha to go a step beyond the delicious and turn her desserts into something beautiful. 

Martha Stewart keeps many different types of vinegars handy, but she considers apple cider vinegar as a pantry staple. Along with using it for recipes ranging from roasted sausages to vegan chocolate cake, Stewart calls for 2 whole cups of raw, unfiltered apple cider vinegar in her recipe for fire cider tonic, a tangy beverage cited as an herbal folk remedy offering natural health boosts. 

Can't find quality raw apple cider vinegar at the store? No problem, Stewart has you covered. In a 2022 episode of "Martha Cooks", she illustrated her love of apples by preparing a series of apple-based recipes, including homemade apple cider, which has many applications beyond simply enjoying the drink. It can be turned into apple cider vinegar, it can be used to make apple cider doughnuts, or, following Stewart's example, it can be the start of an apple cider cocktail made with bourbon and lemon juice.

Adding salt is a must for many recipes, but a lot of the time, a home chef will just take some table salt and add it to the pan without a second thought. Martha Stewart, of course, is not the average home chef. In fact, she found not one, not two, but 47 different types of salt in her pantry, as she mentioned in an Instagram post.

While she did not go into detail about which types of salt these were, we can only assume that one of them is the seaweed salt Stewart prepares herself from the foraged kombu growing by her house on the coast of Maine. Others may include kosher salt, which Stewart uses to prepare her lemon confit; Maldon salt, which Stewart puts on the rims of her margarita glasses; flaky sea salt, which goes on her bagels as part of her everything bagel seasoning; and chili-flavored salt, which Stewart uses to grace the rims of cocktail glasses when she wants to give a drink a dose of heat.

Without baking powder, or some kind of riser, your baked goods are doomed to hardness and flatness. There is store-bought baking powder, which is fine, and then there is homemade baking powder, which Martha Stewart espouses, and which is better than the commercial stuff in a number of ways.

First of all, you may have noticed a slight metallic aftertaste in foods made with store-bought baking powder. That's because many baking powder brands contain sodium aluminum sulfate, a flavor that can easily seep into your baked goods, especially if you make the mistake of adding too much. The good news is that all you have to do to make your own baking powder is combine baking soda with cream of tartar and sometimes cornstarch. And the even better news is that this concoction will provide much better flavor than what the store-bought stuff provides, making your baked goods taste the way the recipe intended. Store your mixture in a sealed container in your pantry for up to six weeks. 

Much like pasta, rice is a starch that you can add to dishes to make them more filling, or use to create a complete meal along with a protein and a vegetable. So if you have rice on hand, you'll be all set for many types of meals. But you can make rice even more effective by following Martha Stewart's advice for perfect rice that she shared with Insider, which varies somewhat depending on whether you're using white or brown rice.

While many of us boil or steam our rice with nothing but water and salt, this results in a fairly bland dish, albeit one that can be paired with any sauce of your choosing. But rice doesn't have to be bland. Stewart enlivens her rice by first sautéing onions and shallots in olive oil before adding the rice in the pan to sauté it with the mixture. Then she gradually adds already-boiling water, which should be at a ratio of 2 cups for each cup of white rice. 

When cooking with brown rice, Stewart says it's best to only use 1¼ cups of water per cup of long-grain brown rice, and 1½ cups of water per cup of short-grain brown rice. Whichever rice you choose, just remember that before cooking it, rinsing rice is more crucial than you might think. This removes starchy rice dust and varied contaminants that likely accumulated on your rice as it made its way from the paddy to your pantry.