Today I got stuck in the carbs/dry goods cupboard, because not everything I keep in there is a carb product, like groats, rice, pasta, flours — there’s also things like nutritional yeast, red lentils, and sometimes even crisps.
This is a proper two-door stainless-steel catering cupboard. It’s got four shelves, and the ugly truth hit me, one I didn’t want to hear — that just after the do that’s kicking off right now I start my holiday, and the second my holiday starts I’m off, and I’ll have very little time for a proper clear-out in the kitchen.
How that happened… no idea.
But from tomorrow I’m not cooking, because the caterers are coming in, so I won’t be using this cupboard or these products. Same with the spice cupboard, the tins, the protein products — so in that time I can go through them one by one, cleaning and sorting.
And I can even wash that fucking extractor.
So I started with the carbs/dry goods cupboard.
You won’t do that in 5 minutes with a cupboard like this.
There’s a proper procedure for it.
You have to take everything out.
Every item, especially if it’s open, you have to check thoroughly, check there’s no sentient beings in there. Most often it’s pantry moths, but there’s a few other species too.
That’s either white grubs, or small, greyish-brown moths, could also be brown beetles, grain weevils and flour beetles. The sign that shows pantry moths are present is something in the food that looks like spider’s web threads.
Pantry moths and other pests are exactly why it’s so important to regularly go through, check your stock, especially dry goods and flour products.
And here’s the bad news. There’s no way to protect yourself a hundred percent. Because on sheer probability, sooner or later you’re bound to bring them home with some product from the shop. And that can sometimes come as a surprise. Because you’ve got a sealed product with insects, grubs in it?
Check sealed packaging very carefully for little holes. That’s the result of grubs that came in with the product chewing through the packaging and spreading round the cupboard. Not even worth opening straight away ***********.
Wash the cupboard out properly. If you found moths, do it twice.
Arrange the checked products on the shelves. Sealing up any open packaging.
And how you arrange it matters a lot!
Whatever’s got the shorter date, meaning what you’ll need to use sooner, goes at the front, so that obviously you’d reach for the basmati rice first, and only then for the Buchweizen — buckwheat, but here it’s the German word you learn first.
And at home you’ve definitely got something similar, maybe not cupboards but drawers — and you’ve definitely got less in them. For me, rice for one dinner is rice for 20 people, 2 kg. So I buy rice, groats in 5 kg bags. At home you’ll probably be using smaller packs, but it’s worth using the same procedure.
You don’t need AI for this.
The kitchen is my space for lifestyle medicine.
I'm not a dietitian or a doctor – I'm a chef, and a member of the Polish Society of Lifestyle Medicine. Nutrition is essential to a modern kitchen, and that's nothing new: working from Hippocratic dietetic principles was part of a cook's craft centuries ago. At Rude Kitchen I tie that tradition to modern science — and to lifestyle. Read more about how I bring cooking and lifestyle medicine together on the About page.