The Pantry Dispatch
Guides to the foods, makers and techniques behind what we stock.
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Complete GuideHot Sauces
Hot Sauce: The Complete Guide
Heat is the easy part of a hot sauce. Any bottle can burn. The good ones use the chile as an ingredient,...
Complete GuideOlives & Tapenades
Olives: The Complete Guide
An olive off the tree is too bitter to eat. Everything you like about a table olive is the work of salt,...
Complete GuideVinegars
Vinegar: The Complete Guide
Vinegar is wine that a bacterium finished. The starting liquid, the speed and the aging all decide what ends up in the...
Complete GuideNon-Alcoholic Beverages
Non-Alcoholic Drinks: The Complete Guide
Alcohol does several jobs in a drink at once: body, warmth, bitterness and a clean palate. This guide sorts zero-proof drinks into...
Complete GuideTruffle Products
Truffle Products: Complete Guide
Most truffle oil has never met a truffle. The aroma comes from a lab-made molecule, and the label says so if you...
Complete GuideSwedish Candy
Swedish Candy: The Complete Guide
Sweden eats a great deal of candy per person, often cited among the highest in the world, and does it on a...
Complete GuideLicorice
Licorice: The Complete Guide
Licorice starts with a root whose sweet compound outpaces sugar many times over. From there it splits into three traditions: pure Calabrian...
Complete GuideMushrooms
Dried Mushrooms: The Complete Guide
A jar of dried mushrooms weighs almost nothing and looks like very little, until warm water gives back both the mushroom and...
Kitchen Know-HowJams & Jellies
Jam vs Jelly vs Preserves vs Marmalade, and Fruit Butter
Jam, preserves, jelly, marmalade and fruit butter share a shelf but not a definition. Jam and preserves, jelly, and fruit butter have...
Complete GuideHoney
Honey: The Complete Guide
A pale acacia honey and a dark buckwheat honey are close to opposite foods, and the difference starts with where the bees...
Complete GuideOther Chocolate
Hot Chocolate vs. Drinking Chocolate: The Complete Guide
Two people can order hot chocolate and receive drinks that seem unrelated. The difference is not how luxurious the menu sounds but...
Complete GuideSalts
Finishing Salt: The Complete Guide to Flaky Sea Salt
Finishing salt is not simply expensive salt. Crystal size and structure change how salt lands on food, how quickly it dissolves and...
Kitchen Know-HowPickled / Brined / Oil Soaked Goods
What Are Cornichons? The Tiny French Pickle Explained
Cornichons are tiny, tart French pickles with an unusually crisp texture. Here is how they are made, how they differ from other...
Complete GuideMustards
Dijon Mustard: What It Is, How It Is Made and How to Use It
Dijon mustard sharpens a vinaigrette, holds oil and vinegar together, seasons a pan sauce and crusts a roast. The name on the...
Complete GuideTea
Mariage Frères Grand Coffret Henri Guide: Eighteen Teas
Mariage Frères' Grand Coffret Henri holds eighteen small tins of tea, from Yin Zhen and gyokuro to Lapsang Chinbara and Marco Polo...
Complete GuideVinegars
Balsamic Vinegar: The Complete Guide
Balsamic vinegar can mean a sharp everyday vinegar, a dense finishing condiment or a tiny bottle that has spent decades moving through...
Buying GuideOlive Oils
Olive Oil: The Complete Buying Guide
Olive oil is sold through regulated grades, geography and label words that are easy to misread. This guide sorts out the grades,...
Complete GuidePasta
Pastificio Gentile: Complete Guide
Founded in Gragnano in 1876, Pastificio Gentile makes bronze-drawn Pasta di Gragnano IGP and dries it slowly over three or four days...
Complete GuidePasta
Rustichella d'Abruzzo: Complete Guide
Rustichella d'Abruzzo has made dried pasta in Penne, in central Italy, since Gaetano Sergiacomo founded his pastificio in 1924. This guide covers...
Kitchen Know-HowGrains
Beans Without Meat: How to Build Deep Flavor
Beans do not need to imitate bacon. A satisfying meatless pot is built in stages: aroma, savoriness, body, salt, acidity, richness and...
Complete GuideGrains
Farro: What It Is, How to Cook It and How to Store It
One bag of farro cooks in fifteen minutes and another needs an hour, and the label rarely says why. Farro is not...
Kitchen Know-HowPickled / Brined / Oil Soaked Goods
What Is Puntarelle? A Guide to Italy’s Crunchy Bitter Chicory
Puntarelle are the pale, crisp inner shoots of Catalogna chicory. This guide covers the plant and its names, the Roman salad and...
Kitchen Know-HowPickled / Brined / Oil Soaked Goods
What Are Lampascioni? A Guide to Puglia’s Bitter Wild Bulbs
Lampascioni look like pearl onions but come from a flowering plant, the tassel hyacinth. This guide covers their botany, the hand harvest...
Complete GuideTinned Fish
Garfish: The Complete Guide
Garfish is a long, silver surface-dwelling fish with needle-like jaws, firm flesh and famously green bones. In Portuguese and Galician conservas, it...
Kitchen Know-HowTinned Fish
What Are Razor Clams? A Guide to Galicia's Long Shellfish
Razor clams take their name from a shell shaped like an old straight razor, and the shellfish inside is firm, sweet and...
Storage and Shelf LifeTinned Fish
How Long Does Tinned Fish Last After Opening?
Most opened shelf-stable tinned fish should be transferred to a covered container, refrigerated promptly and used within three to four days. Refrigerated...
Kitchen Know-HowTinned Fish
What to Do with the Oil and Sauce Left in a Tin of Fish
The fish is only part of the tin. Its oil or sauce has absorbed salt, smoke, spice and the flavor of the...
Kitchen Know-HowTinned Fish
How to Serve Sardines Straight from the Tin
Good tinned sardines arrive with most of the work already done. The remaining job is to give them contrast without burying them:...
Complete GuideTinned Fish
Anchovies: What They Are, How to Buy Them and How to Cook Them
One small fish ends up in five different products: fillets in oil, whole salted fish, white boquerones, amber colatura and paste. This...
Kitchen Know-HowCocktail Bitters
How to Use Cocktail Bitters Outside Cocktails
A bottle of cocktail bitters may live beside the gin, but its closest kitchen relative is probably vanilla extract. A few dashes...
Kitchen Know-HowEntertaining
The Dinner Party Pantry: What to Keep on Hand
A dinner-party pantry is a small set of foods that can become an appetizer, dinner, dessert and drinks without a last-minute store...
Complete GuideEntertaining
Hosting a Dinner Party: Complete Guide
A good dinner party is mostly an exercise in sequencing. The menu matters, but the host’s real job is to remove bottlenecks...
Complete GuideCocktail Bitters
Angostura Aromatic Bitters: The Definitive Guide
A German-born army surgeon in Venezuela made an aromatic tincture in 1824. His sons took it to Trinidad, a label that did...
Complete GuideCocktail Bitters
What Are Cocktail Bitters? The Complete Guide
Bitters are concentrated botanical seasonings for drinks. A few dashes can connect sugar, spirit, citrus and dilution in a way that is...
Kitchen Know-HowGrains
How to Cook Heirloom Beans Perfectly
Good dried beans need little more than water, heat, salt and time, but the texture is where a pot succeeds or fails....
Complete GuideSpices
Burlap & Barrel: The Complete Guide
Burlap & Barrel treats spices less like anonymous pantry dust and more like agricultural products with farms, harvests and processing choices. That...
Complete GuideTinned Fish
Conservas de Cambados: The Complete Guide to Galicia in a Tin
Conservas de Cambados makes sense once you understand where it is: beside the Ría de Arousa in Galicia, with mussel rafts, shellfish...
Producer ProfileNon-Alcoholic Beverages
Copenhagen Sparkling Tea Company
Copenhagen Sparkling Tea Company began with a sommelier trying to solve a food-pairing problem that wine could not. The result is a...
Producer ProfileNut Butters
Big Spoon Roasters Guide
Big Spoon Roasters handles nut butter the way specialty roasters handle coffee: specific nuts, a roast done in-house and small-batch grinding. The...
History and CraftTinned Fish
A Tin Is Never Just a Tin: Inside Fangst and Ramón Peña
Two canneries at opposite ends of European conservas: Fangst in Denmark, reviving Nordic canning with sprats, herring and trout in cold-pressed rapeseed...
Complete GuideTea
The Complete Guide to Bacanha Syrups
Bergamot in sparkling water. Pistachio in espresso. Ginger with lime. Violet simply because you have never tasted violet syrup before. Our complete...
Complete GuideTinned Fish
José Gourmet Sardines in Azores Butter: The Definitive Guide
José Gourmet’s Sardines in Azores Butter may be one of the strangest and most rewarding tins in Portuguese conservas. Here is the...
Complete GuideTea
Mariage Frères Marco Polo Tea: The Definitive Guide
What is actually in Mariage Frères Marco Polo? Why does Ina Garten drink it every morning? And how did a mysterious French...
Kitchen Know-HowTea
A Tea Cupboard for Guests, Built From Mariage Frères
A small, deliberate assortment of tea lets a host ask what a guest likes and have an answer. This guide builds a...
Kitchen Know-HowOther Cooking Sauces
How To Use Noma Projects Mushroom Garum
A hot pan of browned mushrooms will tell you more about Mushroom Garum than tasting it from a spoon. Here is how...
Complete GuideOther Cooking Sauces
Mushroom Garum Guide: Noma's Koji Take on Roman Fish Sauce
Mushroom Garum is the bottle that best explains Noma Projects: a koji-fermented seasoning of mushrooms and oats with a lineage running back...
Buying GuideCereals
Is Expensive Granola Worth It? What You're Actually Paying For
A premium granola costs more than a supermarket box. This guide sets a typical store-bought granola beside a published version of Eleven...
Buying GuideTea
Loose-Leaf vs Tea Bags: Is Loose Tea Really Better?
Whole leaves or a paper bag? Why loose-leaf tastes better and re-steeps, the main tea types, how to brew and store it,...
Buying GuideChocolate Bars
Single-Origin vs Blended Chocolate: What's the Difference?
What single-origin and blended chocolate really mean, whether one is better, what different origins taste like, why the percentage misleads you, and...
Kitchen Know-HowChocolate Bars
Bean-to-Bar Chocolate: What It Means and How It Is Made
What bean-to-bar chocolate is, how it's made step by step, why the process changes the flavor, and how it differs from craft,...
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