Today I’m teaming up with Gennie from The Gift of Gab to share our essential ingredients for cooking. These are our personal favorite items to keep in the house, not necessarily what everyone needs. See what I consider to be my essential ingredients, and be sure to hop over and check out Gennie’s.

It’s no secret that I love cooking. While I’m often creating and experimenting with new recipes, I definitely have a few favorites that I rotate through on a regular basis. In addition, there are a few ingredients that show up in nearly every recipe I make.

When I go shopping, I’m almost always stocking up on my top 8 ingredients. These are the things I use several times a week (if not every day) and am always running low on.

Chicken

I stock up on bags of frozen chicken when it’s BOGO at Winn-Dixie. We eat chicken most nights, so I always keep it in the house. Usually I’ll try to mix it up and buy some ground turkey or tilapia each week, too.

Spices

I couldn’t really break this out into individual items or it would take up most of my list! Spices are definitely a must for me, and I use them in every recipe I make. My most common are salt, pepper, onion powder and garlic powder.

Coconut Oil

We have switched over to using coconut oil for almost everything now. Every so often I need to use olive oil, but most of the time I stick with coconut oil. It can be expensive, but I try to buy in bulk and look for sales or coupons.

Rice

We don’t eat a lot of pasta or bread, so we eat rice with almost every meal. I buy a huge bag and it will last us for awhile. The nice thing is, rice is cheap!

Bacon

No joke, we go through at least 2 or 3 packs of bacon a week! It’s not just a breakfast food for us, it can be added to just about anything. One of my favorite things is to cook bacon and then use the grease instead of oil to cook whatever I was going to make. Yum!

Blue Cheese

Another item we go through a crazy amount of is blue cheese. Andrew and I both love cheese of any kind, but blue cheese is our favorite. It’s especially good with buffalo sauce or on burgers.

Eggs

Lately I’ve been thinking I need to start buying more eggs each week because we almost always run out of them by the end of the week. Not only do I use them in recipes and for breakfast, but Andrew and I like to have “breakfast for dinner” quite often. We cook up some chicken and bacon and scramble them with some eggs and veggies.

Spaghetti Squash

This is a recent addition to the list. Andrew has been doing Paleo for the month, and so I’ve been trying to make our dinners completely Paleo. We rediscovered spaghetti squash and have been loving it! It’s great by itself or as a substitute for pasta.

Now that you’ve learned what my essential ingredients are, head over to The Gift of Gab to learn what Gennie considers to be her essential ingredients.

What are the most important ingredients for you to keep in the house?