The Kitchen Pantry: A Hidden Treasure Trove of Culinary Delights

The kitchen pantry is more than just a storage space for food items; it is a treasure trove of culinary delights waiting to be discovered. Often overlooked and underestimated, the pantry holds the key to creating delicious meals, enhancing flavours, and adding variety to your everyday cooking. And, we are including more and more pantries into our kitchen designs, than ever.

A beautifully filled pantry, with painted shelving and walnut features.

So, what is a kitchen pantry?

A kitchen pantry is a storage space in a kitchen that is designed to store food, drinks and other kitchen essentials. It's like a small, dedicated room or a built-in cabinet that typically contains shelves, drawers, and sometimes even hooks or racks for organizing. The purpose of a pantry is to provide easy access and storage for food and commonly used kitchen things. It helps keep the kitchen organized and makes it convenient to find what you need while cooking or preparing meals. 

Dark-painted cabinetry within a pantry in our Margate bespoke kitchen.

Why do you use a pantry?

The pantry can house a wide array of essential ingredients for countless recipes. From spices and herbs to oils and vinegars, these are the things we might not necessarily use all the time but we need to store them for that time when we need to transform a bland dish into a culinary masterpiece. Being easily accessible in a pantry means we are likely to use them more too, probably.

A fully stocked pantry in our Bethersden kitchen.

A pantry is also a great place to store the bulkier packs of staple grains and legumes, which are the building blocks of many meals. Rice, pasta, quinoa, lentils, and beans are pantry staples, and as we approach the colder months, knowing we have a store of nutritious bulk in the pantry means we can make those comforting winter soups, stews and casseroles.

Many working parents will understand the saviour of the baked bean or spaghetti hoops. And, canned goods are a lifesaver when it comes to convenience and shelf life. Items like tinned tomatoes, beans, tuna, and coconut milk are pantry essentials that can be transformed into quick and delicious meals. Whether you are making a comforting tomato sauce or a creamy curry! And, the pantry means you can store more.

Of course, the pantry is incomplete without an assortment of condiments and sauces. Ketchup, mustard, soy sauce, hot sauce, and mayonnaise are just a few examples of pantry items that are easy to reach in a pantry and can elevate the flavour of your food.

A corner cupboard - making use of the space in our Chilmington kitchen.

For those of us with a sweet tooth, the pantry can be a paradise of baking essentials. Bigger bags of flour and sugar can be stored tidily - we all know the mess they can cause. The likes of baking soda and baking powder, vanilla extract, cocoa powder, and chocolate chips, which can take your creations to the next level, are easily accessible and easily stored.

Cooking and baking essentials stored in our Margate pantry.

The kitchen pantry is a treasure trove of culinary necessities and is becoming a more popular feature in our kitchen designs.

We can see why!

You can talk to one of our designers about including a pantry - no matter the size - in your kitchen. And, you can see more examples of our pantries and larders here.

Dunbury Farm’s pantry - as traditional as you can get 🤍