The Chinese Only Need 20 Groceries - Stop Buying the Rest

📖 Get Make It Go Further — the habits from my mother's kitchen, written down for an American grocery store (244 pages, 46 dinners): https://mrsjinkitchen.com Twenty groceries and one jar: my mother's whole kitchen, from an ordinary supermarket, and why every bottle in your cupboard is the same five things with a different label. If you have thirty half-used bottles and still nothing for dinner, I had that cupboard too. Flavor is made in the pan. The shelf, the jar and one Tuesday dinner are below. Hao ma? 🍚 THE SHELF: THE TWENTY Sixteen that stay: rice (20 lb bag), eggs (a dozen), dried noodles, all-purpose flour, soy sauce, cornstarch, sugar, rice vinegar, neutral oil, sesame oil, salt, white pepper, fresh ginger (keeps in the freezer), green onions (roots regrow in water), garlic, yellow onions, potatoes. Four that travel: TWO cheap meats (chuck, pork shoulder, chicken thighs, ground beef, whatever is lowest that week) and TWO cheap vegetables (cabbage, green beans, broccoli, carrots, whatever the store has too much of). 🍚 THE JAR (makes every bottle you own) ½ cup soy sauce, 2 tbsp sugar, 2 tbsp rice vinegar, 1 tbsp cornstarch, ½ cup water. Shake in a jar. Keeps 3 weeks in the refrigerator door. 4 tbsp per dinner for 4. More sugar = glaze. More vinegar = sweet and sour. More cornstarch = thick brown sauce. 🍚 THE CLOCK 15 minutes at the board, 5 at the stove. Any weeknight. 🍚 THE CARD: TUESDAY PORK AND CABBAGE FROM THE SHELF Serves 4. 1 lb (450 g) pork shoulder, sliced thin across the grain 1 tbsp cornstarch + 2 tbsp water + 1 tsp oil (the coat that keeps the water in) ½ head cabbage, about 1 lb, sliced thin 3 slices ginger, 2 cloves garlic sliced, 2 green onions cut fine 3 tbsp oil 4 tbsp from THE JAR 3 cups cooked rice Toss the pork with the cornstarch mix. Let it sit 15 minutes while you cut the rest. Heat a wide pan on high until a drop of water skips. Add 2 tbsp oil, ginger and garlic, 10 seconds. Half the pork in one layer, 30 seconds, toss 30 seconds, out. Repeat. 1 tbsp oil, cabbage, high heat 2 minutes until the edges brown. Pork back in, 4 tbsp from the jar, toss 30 seconds until glossy. Off the heat. Green onion on top. Over rice. 🍚 I WILL NOT ARGUE Sesame oil in the jar, or none. Garlic or none. White pepper at the end. 🍚 THE PAN IS HONEST Wet and brown → jar went in before the pan was hot. No smell → green onion cooked with the fire on. Gray cabbage → the whole head went in at once. Meat tastes flat → no ginger in the oil. Feels like no dinner → no rice under it. 🍚 ONE QUIET THING ABOUT THE STORE Thirty bottles at about $5 each is about $150 in the cupboard, half of it heading for the trash. The five things that make all of them cost about $10 and last two months. 🍚 THE HABIT Sunday: fill the jar, buy the two travelers, freeze the meat flat in 1-lb bags. Ginger keeps 3 months in the freezer. Green onion roots regrow on the sill. 🍚 WHAT I WOULD ASK OF YOU Carry two things: the five in the jar, and the two heroes on the windowsill. Then tell me if anyone noticed the bottles were gone, honestly how many bottles are in your cupboard, and your state. 🍚 NEXT TIME IN THIS KITCHEN The jar, a head of cabbage and nothing else. #chinesecookingrecipe #pantry #cheapdinner 🥢 Subscribe for a new kitchen habit every week — ordinary groceries, better dinners.