Today I’m sharing the 5 Ingredients I always have on-hand in my kitchen so that you can be your own personal chef! These 5 must have kitchen ingredients will help you have a healthier, easier and more delicious cooking experience.

Hey, I know how time consuming and labor intense cooking for a family can be. I do this for a living and still have times when i’m pillaging through the fridge, desperate for something good to eat. But the reality is, if your health is important to you, cooking at home is a must. So today I’m sharing with you my top 5 ingredients must have cooking ingredients that I always have on hand to make my cooking experience that much tastier and easier!

5 must have kitchen ingredients to always have on hand:

Sea Salt NOT Table Salt

1. Sea salt is the top thing I use in my kitchen. In fact, I have several small bowls of my favorite sea salt sprinkled all over the place. If you don’t add enough sea salt when cooking, your dish will taste flavorless and bland. Now don’t confuse sea salt with table salt. There’s a BIG difference. Table salt has been stripped of its natural minerals and is actually depleting to the body over the time, whereas sea salt still has all of those healthy minerals in tact. If there’s one thing that you switch in your diet today, please have this be it. It’s such an easy swap, so why not? I prefer pink sea salt, but this may be too strong for you on a regular basis. Do some experimenting and see what you like best.You might be surprised to know that most people actually under-salt their food. It was the top thing my culinary teachers had to remind us over and over again. “Did you add salt?”  So how much salt is enough salt, you ask? I like to add salt in layers. So when cooking, each time I add an ingredient I add a nice pinch of sea salt. When I add onions to the saute pan, I add sea salt. Next I add ginger and garlic…another pinch of sea salt. Now I add the kale, yep…another pinch of sea salt. Get it? Good.

Olive Oil

2. Olive oil is my preferred oil, maybe it’s the Italian in me. But other go-to oils are avocado and coconut. The thing about oils are that they can go rancid pretty quickly. Oils left by the oven can go bad quicker since they are constantly exposed to heat (same goes for your spice collection, but that’s a different post.) Another thing to keep in mind is to always keep the lid on when you aren’t using your oil. This will help preserve it. But do me a favor and go throw out your canola and vegetable oil and replace it with something better.

Onions and Garlic

3. Onions and Garlic (okay this is actually 2 ingredients but I typically use them both like one-in-the-same. I store my onions on my counter and the garlic cloves I buy already peeled.  Because I cook so much, this makes using them quicker and easier. Since my garlic is already peeled I store this in the fridge.

Lemons

4. Lemons have so many nutritional benefits to them.  The rind and juice both uniquely different but combined make a perfect health bomb!!  I like adding lemon zest to things like scones, cookies, salmon when I’m cooking it, shrimp, and pasta.  The juice I love using for salad dressing, kale sautes, broccoli, quinoa salad and obviously in my water!!

Eggs

5. Although its easy to recreate an egg in most baked goods by making a Flax-Egg (not sure how to make this?  Click HERE) nothing beats a softly cooked egg!  Eggs are so nutritious and delicious, they are great for breakfast, lunch and dinner and you can make face masks out of them too!!

These are the top 5 ingredients that I ALWAYS have on-hand in my kitchen! What’s in your kitchen?

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