♪ ♪ - So now I have an awesome-smelling, quickly prepared meal that came straight out of my pantry.

- You know, when a recipe starts "three tablespoons minced ginger," sometimes I just go on to the next recipe, because who wants to mince ginger?

It's really hard.

- When you have as many umami-rich ingredients as are combined in this pot, the aromas are delicious.

- Once in a while, I really like it when people get mad at me.

So here's a great opportunity for just that.

I say you're better off boiling your vegetables than steaming them.

- Oh, the savory, sweet caramelized onion adds a whole other layer of flavor to this tomato rice soup.

And the rice really makes it a hearty meal.

I feel like you could feed a family of four with this.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ - You know, the test of a great home cook is that they can cook with what they have, what's in their pantry.

They don't always have to go out to the supermarket.

So this week on Milk Street, we're gonna take a fresh look at great dishes you can make from simple pantry ingredients.

We start with pinto beans with bacon and chipotle chilies, otherwise known as frijoles charros.

Then we do a hoisin ginger noodles and finish up with tomato rice soup with caramelized onions.

Please stay tuned.

- Funding for this series was provided by the following: - That meal.

You sautéed, you seared, and you served, cooking with All-Clad, bonded cookware designed, engineered, and assembled in the USA for over 50 years.

All-Clad, for all your kitchen adventures.

♪ ♪ - So the importance of having a well-stocked pantry is evident when you have to throw together dinner fairly quick.

You want it to be hearty, want it to be good.

I always keep canned beans, canned tomatoes, and broth handy just in case I need to make a quick meal.

So today we're going to make some pinto beans with bacon and chipotle.

Now, bacon is awesome for rendering out the fat and making it nice and smoky.

And the chipotle is going to make it nice and spicy while we use the canned chilies in adobo sauce.

I've got my pan heating up here, and over about mid heat, I'm going to dump this bacon in.

And as it's browning, you're going to get a little bit more flavor.

You might get a little bit sticking on the bottom.

That's okay.

Browning is flavor.

So the bacon is going to cook for about four to six minutes, and that should be enough time to render out enough fat to cook your onions in.

So now we've got the bacon rendering out all this fat.

It smells delicious.

You've got that nice smokiness of the bacon kind of wafting through your kitchen.

And so this is a great time to add the onions.

(sizzling) Give it a good zhuzh.

So we're going to cook up these onions for about four to five minutes as our bacon continues to render down, and get them nice and translucent.

While my onions and bacon are cooking, I am going to chop up one of my chipotle chilies, and this is one of my favorite pantry hacks because there's so much flavor in this little can.

There's a couple chilies.

You can add it to rices.

You can add it to meat dishes.

And in this dish, specifically, it does a beautiful job of imparting spice and just a little bit more smokiness.

So I'm going to take out one of my adobo chilies and chop it up nicely.

Nice and fine, I think.

If you like bigger pieces of chili, you can keep them large, but I want to make sure that I have as much to mix in as possible.

I love the smell of the chipotle sauce in this.

So I'm just going to add this to my onions.

We're going to stir this around just a little bit, (sizzling) And you're going to notice that the onions, you know, let off a little bit of a sweet smell, but the smokiness of the chipotle goes perfectly with it.

To impart just a little bit more flavor, I'm going to tip some of the adobo sauce into this.

You can add a little bit more if you want it a little bit spicier, a little bit stronger, but I think about a tablespoon-ish will do it for me.

Look at all that flavor on the bottom of the pan already.

All righty.

So to that, I'm going to add just a little bit of cumin, one of my favorite spices for imparting earthiness.

I'm going to add a little bit of the chili powder.

And then I'm going to add some minced garlic.

I know it's tempting.

Don't use the jarred.

Fresh is going to make such a great difference here.

All right, now that this is all beautiful, colorful, wonderful, I'm going to add my beans.

Now, I have canned pinto beans.

With canned beans, you want to make sure you rinse them well and drain them.

The bean liquid is not going to be super helpful here.

So I'm going to tip in my pinto beans.

Give it a little stir.

And then I'm going to add in my canned tomatoes.

Give it a good stir.

I want to start pulling up some of that browning on the bottom of the pan.

And then I'm going to add in my chicken broth.

Now, I tend to keep cans of broth or Tetra Paks of broth in my pantry and in my basement.

But if you don't want to use chicken broth here, you can use a beef broth, a mushroom broth, whichever kind of tickles your fancy for the moment.

So let's pour this in.

I'm going to let this come up to a simmer, and I'm going to cook it for about 20 to 25 minutes until it's nice and thick.

So make sure to use your spatula to scrape up all of the little brown bits on the bottom of the pan, because it's so much flavor that you don't want to leave behind.

♪ ♪ So we've been cooking these for about 20 minutes.

And I'm sure that if you're cooking these up, it smells amazing because these smell divine.

So when you're using canned vegetables and canned beans, you might end up with a little bit more salt on them than you're accustomed to.

So rinsing the beans is critical, but also making sure that you taste for salt throughout, especially as it reduces down.

This is actually a very good point to test for salt here, so I'm going to take a quick taste.

Ooh.

That's nice and spicy.

Does need a little bit of salt though.

So I'm going to give it a good, healthy pinch.

And I want to give it a little bit of pepper, too.

Everything tastes good.

Everything looks good.

I think I'm ready to plate.

So while these would be great as, you know, a side or a topping for a hot dog, or, you know, whatever you could really think of, I'm just going to have a quick little snack portion.

And when I'm eating beans.

I like to add a little bit of freshness, So if you have some chopped herbs you can throw them in.

I personally am a big fan of sliced radishes and finely chopped onions.

So throw these guys in just to top it.

If you want to put in like a little cotija cheese, or whatever you're feeling that day, go for it.

It's kind of a choose your own adventure pantry meal here.

So now I have an awesome-smelling, quickly prepared meal that came straight out of my pantry.

So let's give this a quick taste and see how it's doing.

It's smoky from the chipotle pepper.

It's still got a little bit of sweetness from the onion.

This is our pinto beans with bacon and chipotle, and they are delicious.

♪ ♪ - You know, when a recipe starts "three tablespoons minced ginger," sometimes I just go on to the next recipe because who wants to mince ginger?

It's really hard.

But I found a way to do it, which actually works pretty well.

So let's start by taking part of this off here.

Okay.

So you don't always have to peel ginger.

You can cut it into coins, and throw it in a stew, and then fish it out before you serve it.

But lots of recipes, you do actually have to mince the ginger.

Take a teaspoon like this and it does an amazing job.

It'll skin it, it'll take the peel right off.

Works much better than a peeler, for example, and it will actually peel over the gnarly parts as well.

It also gets into these little nooks and crannies pretty nicely, and it's easy on your hand.

So that's it.

So that's peeled ginger.

Now, the next thing I like to do is to cut the ginger into coins.

I'll just trim off that little piece there.

But we can just cut this into coins like this.

And now I can mash them or smash them.

It's nice to have a broad knife.

A Chinese cleaver's good, or a broad knife like this, and just smash them down, And then you can just chop them, mince them.

And that does a pretty good job.

It's much easier than dealing with ginger that's not been smashed.

It's nice and soft.

It cuts into small pieces.

And there you have probably a tablespoon or so minced ginger.

So there you go.

So the next time a recipe calls for minced ginger, you don't have to go on to the next recipe.

Just peel it with a spoon, cut into coins, mash it, and then mince it with your knife and you're good to go.

♪ ♪ - These delicious hoisin ginger noodles, come together almost entirely from the pantry.

The sauce is made up of several high-impact, umami-rich ingredients that make it very easy to create layers of complex flavors that complement each other.

For the noodles, you have options.

Linguini work fantastic.

A dried lo mein works really well.

Or you can use the Japanese wheat noodle called udon, which is slightly thick and has a wonderful chewiness to it.

Today we're using udon, and because the sauce comes together in the wink of an eye, we're going to get started by cooking our noodles.

We have four quarts of water at a boil.

We'll add our noodles to this.

And, please take note, we are not salting this water at all because our sauce is going to take very good care of that.

While the noodles cook, we'll start on our sauce.

The first thing we start with is hoisin sauce.

This is a bottled sauce full of complexity in its own right.

It's made from fermented soybeans and a little chili, which is there more for flavor than for spicy heat because hoisin is generally not spicy.

It also has a decent amount of sugar in it, garlic, and those ubiquitous "spices" that you see on so many ingredient labels.

This brings a salty, sweet, savory intensity to almost anything you add it to.

Now, to that, we are going to add some chili garlic sauce.

This is where the spicy heat comes from.

It's also made up, surprisingly, of chilies and garlic.

Those chilies are heavily salted, which breaks them down and brings about some fermentation, which really deepens their flavor.

If you don't have the chili garlic sauce, you can substitute sriracha.

Just be aware that sriracha is a little bit spicier heat-wise than the chili garlic.

So add a little bit and then build it up to your own preference.

Next, we have two tablespoons of soy sauce.

It, too, is made of fermented soybeans combined with a grain, usually wheat.

Now, soy sauce is not the least bit sweet.

What it brings is the deep, salty brininess.

It really complements the hoisin sauce very well.

Now we have a couple of tablespoons of toasted sesame oil.

This is one of my favorite ingredients.

Sesame oil comes toasted and untoasted, but the toasted sesame oil has a deep, nutty flavor that's much more assertive.

So it cuts through the strong flavors in the sauce more efficiently.

And then last, but definitely not least, is grated fresh ginger root.

I cannot overstate the quality that fresh ginger root brings to sauces like this, and pretty much anything you add them to.

Ginger is very, very bright, almost tangy, and it has a stealth-like spicy pepperiness that comes through and makes itself known in almost anything you add it to in the best way.

Ginger definitely speaks up for itself, and it has that rare quality of being assertive and complementary at the same time.

We have a couple of things to prep, and these are optional garnishes, but they're definitely worth incorporating.

We'll start with some scallions.

We'll just slice these on the bias.

These will be used on top.

They not only add a little bit of color to the dish, but a little bit of texture, and that really lovely allium quality as well.

And then for some really nice toasty crunch, good old salted peanuts.

As I pointed out, almost everything in this sauce is from your pantry.

Everything is shelf stable, and once opened will keep almost indefinitely in the refrigerator.

The fresh ginger and the scallions are the only things that come from the produce mart.

Even the peanuts will keep in the pantry.

Set those aside.

Our noodles should be just about ready.

Let's go take a quick check.

These are definitely cooked, so I will go drain these, and come back and we're ready to sauce.

♪ ♪ Noodles are drained back in the pot.

We'll add all of the sauce to it.

When you have as many umami-rich ingredients as are combined in this pot, the aromas are unbelievable.

♪ ♪ These noodles are worthy of a beautiful serving bowl.

Get every last bit of goodness out of here.

Our final garnishes.

And these are our incredibly delicious hoisin ginger noodles, almost entirely from the pantry.

Very, very flavorful, rich, multiple textures.

You saw how fast they were to make.

I must say, I'm pretty darn proud of this recipe.

♪ ♪ - You know, once in a while, I really like it when people get mad at me.

So here's a great opportunity for just that.

I say you're better off boiling your vegetables than steaming them.

Now, why do I say that?

First of all, it's true if you steam vegetables, there's less vitamin C loss because it's about the volume of water.

You boil lots of water, there's more loss.

But when you boil vegetables, you get more antioxidants.

They're released, they're available to your body to absorb.

So steaming-- fewer antioxidants; boiling-- more.

Now, the problem is, overall, however, the amount of nutrients in vegetables has very little to do with steaming or boiling.

It's about how they're grown, what the soil was like.

For example, you can lose half the vitamin C in broccoli over a week if it's stored at room temperature, like high 60s versus high 30s.

So it's also about how long it was transported and how it was transported.

So it really doesn't make that much difference from a nutrient point of view.

However, boiling is one of those things that's really easy to do.

Come home at night, put a pot of water on, it's very easy to cook vegetables that way.

Now, one other thing I love to show is using-- this is a technique from China-- the hot oil technique.

So we're just going to boil these vegetables.

They're done now.

Put them in a colander.

Turn them out.

So there are the boiled vegetables.

Obviously, we're not going to overcook them.

They're al dente.

Now here's the trick.

If you have a little bit of minced ginger, you can put that on top.

I'm going to put quite a lot on because there are a lot of vegetables there.

And scallions as well.

Put some scallions on.

And you can do this with poached chicken, you can do this vegetables, a lot of things.

And now we have about a quarter cup of oil that's hot and we're just going to drizzle it on and you're going to hear it drizzle.

(sizzling) And what that does is release the flavor, blooms the flavor, of the ginger and the scallions.

So now you have the world's simplest dish.

You boil your vegetables, you drain them, put it on a platter, a little bit of minced ginger and scallions, and then about a quarter cup of pretty hot vegetable oil on top and you get this wonderful flavor.

Add plenty of salt, of course, and it's so easy.

So the next time you want to cook vegetables, I say boil them, add some ginger and scallions, a little bit of hot oil and you have just an amazing dish in about 15 minutes.

♪ ♪ - Sometimes nothing hits the spot more than just a good tomato soup.

With a couple of tricks up our sleeve, we can make a tomato soup a hearty meal.

And that all starts with our onions here.

So we'll start off by bringing our pan up to medium heat.

And to that we'll be throwing in a little bit of oil.

As well as these onions that have been thinly sliced.

A little bit of salt and pepper, And a little extra trick: some sugar.

Now, this sugar is going to help us speed up the process of caramelizing these onions.

If you're a caramelized onion purist, by all means, go ahead and caramelize the onions the way you like to do them.

But, if you add in some sugar, you'll see that process happen a lot faster.

Now, these onions will cook down for about 12 to 15 minutes, or until they start to caramelize.

So it's been about 15 minutes.

And, as you can see, my onions are beautifully brown and glossy.

We want to save half of these to be a garnish right at the end.

So go ahead and scoop that out.

To this, we'll go ahead and add in a little bit of our aromatics.

Here I have some dried thyme.

We're just going to sauté that up until it is beautifully fragrant, and that only takes a couple seconds.

Now, to this, we'll go ahead and add in our tomatoes.

Now, this is a can of whole peeled tomatoes that have then been crushed up by hand.

Whole peeled tomatoes are canned when they're fully ripe, which means you're going to get big tomato flavor.

We're also going to add in our chicken stock.

And if you wanted to make the soup vegetarian, you could totally use veggie stock.

And finally, we'll go ahead and throw in some long grain rice.

Now, here I have long grain white rice.

You could totally use things like arborio rice.

But if you do opt to use long grain brown rice, you have to increase the cooking time to 35 to 40 minutes.

With long grain white, you only have to cook it for about 20.

Once this comes up to a simmer, go ahead and lower the heat to medium, pop a lid on it, and let that cook for about 20 minutes, or until that rice is beautifully tender.

♪ ♪ It's been 20 minutes and our rice is definitely cooked.

Ooh.

It smells so deep in flavor.

Thanks to those caramelized onions, we really added an extra layer of savoriness to this pretty quick and easy pantry tomato soup.

Just to bring a little bit of freshness into the game, we'll go ahead and add in some parsley.

Now, we're going to add in this chopped parsley off heat, so that way we get a lot of its brightness, but we don't overcook it.

Go ahead and stir it in.

And it's at this point, once you add the parsley, that you want to give it a taste.

just in case it needs more salt and pepper.

Can use a little bit more pepper.

Now, from here, we're basically done.

We could go ahead and ladle some of this soup into a bowl.

Beautiful.

And those onions that we reserved earlier, those are going to sit right in the middle as a nice little garnish.

Mm.

Now, from here, this soup is entirely a kind of choose-your-own-adventure situation.

If you have stuff in the fridge that you think would go well on it, go ahead and throw it on in.

Here, I have some basil pesto that we had lying around, as well as some parmesan cheese.

So could throw that in.

You could certainly throw things like bacon bits on top.

You could throw croutons in here.

Harissa paste to make it a little bit spicier.

You could go in all sorts of directions.

At the end of the day, this is your soup.

So let's go ahead and throw in a little bit of this pesto.

I like to swirl it around a little bit.

And when there's parmesan on the table, you have to add more parmesan, period.

♪ ♪ Excellent.

And for a little extra push of lusciousness, I'm going to top it with a little bit of oil.

Mm.

Oh, the savory sweet caramelized onion adds a whole other layer of flavor to this tomato rice soup.

And the rice really makes it a hearty meal.

I feel like you could feed a family of four with this.

Now, this just goes to show you, you don't have to go to the grocery store to get a dinner that is delicious and flavorful like this tomato rice soup with caramelized onion.

You can get this recipe and all the recipes from this season of Milk Street at MilkStreetTV.com.

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- Funding for this series was provided by the following: - That meal.

You sautéed, you seared, and you served, cooking with All-Clad, bonded cookware designed, engineered, and assembled in the U.S.A. for over 50 years.

All-Clad, for all your kitchen adventures.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪