3 Pantry Essentials for Making Delicious Mexican-American Dishes

Pantry
Photo by Heather McKean on Unsplash

If you plan to cut down on eating out and want to stock your cabinets cheaply, try these pantry essentials. You’ll be able to prepare your preferred quick and low-cost meals. 

Dried Beans

To make the Mexican cuisine, you’ll need beans paired with ingredients such as corn and chiles. You can buy dried beans and pinto beans in bulk and store them in your pantry. If you are looking to use them over the next few days, you can cook them in a large pot and store them in the refrigerator.

Apart from making the Mexican cuisine, you can use beans to make Frijoles refritos, frijoles churros, or frijoles puercos.

Crema Mexicana

Also called table cream, it is a fan favorite item to have in the kitchen. It’s rich and buttery with more minor tangy characteristics. It’s looser than sour cream.

You can use it to thicken and enrich stews or drizzle over tacos, dorados, sopes, or potato-and-chorizo-filled tortas.

Masa Harina

Masa Harina is a crucial ingredient if you don’t have a fresh tortilla or fresh corn Masa. With little water, salt, and flavorings such as pureed greens, Masa can be a base for homemade corn tortillas.

You can also use the same dough to make sopes, fried Masa disks with toppings, or oblong Masa cakes stuffed with refried beans.