How to Make a New Dish with Ingredients You Already Have

Last week I craved pizza. I had pepperoni, pizza sauce, cheese, and enough other things to make a great pizza, but I couldn't find the pre-made pizza crusts. It took me several days to remember that the store didn't have any in stock, and although I intended to make it to a different store to buy some, I never got around to doing so. Looking through the pantry, I found some penne noodles. I decided to use this and make a pizza/pasta hybrid. My kids loved it so much that we almost finished off an entire large casserole dish, and cooked some more the next night. Most of my family's favorite dinners have developed from not having the right ingredients to make something else. Here are some ideas you can use when you have lots of food in the pantry, but no real meals.

Look through your freezer. Chances are you have some kind of meat in there. But maybe the only thing you have is ground beef, and you are tired of tacos. Or maybe there is chicken, but you've already cooked every kind of chicken dish you can think of. Look through your pantry and find something to combine with it. I once made a dish with beef, cream of mushroom soup, and pasta that was similar to stroganoff, because I could not decide what I wanted for dinner. It was tasty and the entire family loved it. Or maybe you only have chicken, ranch dressing, and bread. Toast the bread and crush it into crumbs. Then coat the chicken strips in ranch dressing and roll them in the crumbs. Then fry the strips. Maybe you won't care for it, but at least you thought of new ways to use ingredients. I once wanted pizza, but the only thing I had this time was the crusts and cheese. I decided to use chicken since there were no pepperonis or beef, and instead of using regular pizza sauce which was not in my pantry, I used buffalo wing sauce to coat the chicken pieces and also as a base. I sprinkled it with cheese, and used blue cheese dressing as a dipping sauce. It is still something we have quite often, because it was so well received.

If you have lettuce, nearly everything else is optional. You can include a meat, or make it a vegetarian night. You can put blueberries and apples and have a salad with a sweet flavor, or you can add minced garlic and bread sticks and have one with an Italian flavor. It pays to be creative with the dressing too. Perhaps you are out of ranch or blue cheese dressing. Instead, use a tiny amount of lemon juice and shake it throughout the salad. Or consider making your own with mayonnaise, spices, and milk. As long as you get something you like, it doesn't matter what strange ingredients you mixed.

Finally, don't be afraid to plan an entire dish around one rarely used spice. I had a spice blend that I didn't know what would combine well with it. It was a spicy mix of peppers, and I couldn't imagine what would work with it. Finally, I decided that it would taste best with chicken. I decided that I wanted a starch with it, so I mixed in some rice. The entire dish looked like it was a type of Americanized Mexican food, so I put cheese on top of it. Finally, it seemed like it didn't have a lot of texture, so I sprinkled smashed Corn Flakes over the top. This is still one of our favorite dishes.

In short, don't be afraid to experiment. It it fails, you can always run to the store and get something else, which is what would have to be done if you were lacking ingredients anyway. But you may just find that you impress yourself with your cooking skills, and discover a new favorite dish.