Pantry Meal Kits
For Your Dinner Emergencies!
Shelf-stable recipes and pantry meal kits are meals that use shelf-stable or mostly shelf-stable ingredients.
These work well for stocking up and could help save your dinner-time emergencies.
Have you ever…
Ran low on time to get dinner on the table?
Been too busy to meal plan or get to the grocery store?
Forgot to take something out of the freezer to thaw?
Been totally exhausted and the last thing you want to do is cook?
Having shelf-stable recipes with the ingredients on hand to make these meals can help give peace of mind knowing that if unforeseen circumstances arise, you can still get dinner on the table. They are also a great way to save money as they can keep you from paying the higher prices of eating out when you cannot or do not feel like cooking.
Pantry meal kits are shelf-stable meals with most or all of the ingredients needed to prepare the meal stored together making it easier to grab and cook when needed. The ingredients can be stored together in a container, box, or bag. Most use large zip-lock bags to store their ingredients to make them easier to grab and go when needed. Pantry meal kits are a great way to save money, focus your stock-ups to ensure you are using what you have on hand, and they can help save the day if you ever experience any of the scenarios above.
Pantry meal kits are also great for camping trips (just don’t forget the can opener), and they can make great gifts or be wonderful for donating to a food pantry.
Directions: To make Pantry Meal Kits, simply add all shelf-stable ingredients (unopened) into a large zip-lock bag. (Some meals will only need a 1-gallon sized zip-lock bag, but others might need the larger 2 or 2.5-gallon size bags, depending on the meal and the size of the group you are cooking for.) Then write or print a small recipe card and add one to each bag.
Check out Pantry Meal Kits/Shelf-Stable Recipes or Recipes pages for a few meal ideas along with printable recipe cards.
Tip: Look at your favorite recipes to see if any can be made using shelf-stable ingredients. Using your favorite recipes will help ensure success when you need to make one of these meals.
Click below for videos from She’s In Her Apron on pantry meal kits and how-to’s, and stocking up on shelf-stable foods.
For more information and tips on how to save money on groceries and on stocking up, check out the Groceries and Gas and Lessons of 2020 pages, and let me know if you have any other recipes to share.
