Building a Pakistani pantry from scratch.

The dry base that lives in the biggest jars

Start with the four packets that get opened every day. Atta is usually the largest single grocery purchase a household makes in a month, and the grade decides what bread you can make: stone-ground chakki keeps the bran and the germ, so it smells nuttier and drinks more water, while a refined fine or super fine grade gives the softer crumb that naan, kulcha and paratha depend on. Buying the wrong grade is why a new cook cannot get the roti they grew up with.

Rice is the second pillar, and a kitchen that cooks often wants two kinds. Long-grain basmati for pulao, biryani and boiled chawal, where the grains must stay separate; a short or broken grain for khichri and kheer, where you want them to soften and cling. Basmati is sold aged for a reason — time dries the grain, so it absorbs more water and elongates further in the pot. Sella is parboiled in the husk before milling, which hardens the starch and forgives an approximate water measurement, which is why it turns up in every large biryani degh.

After that come the quiet ones nobody notices until they run out: cheeni, namak, chai patti, and the milled odds and ends. Suji for halwa and Sunday upma, besan for pakoras and kadhi, a small bag of maida for anything that has to be soft rather than sturdy. Daal is the other half of most households' cooking, and two or three kinds is the usual keep.

• Atta, in the grade you cook with, in a size the house can finish while it still smells sweet.
• One long-grain basmati, plus a short or broken grain for khichri and kheer.
• Cheeni, namak, chai patti, and a jar of gur if your family reaches for it in winter.
• Suji, besan and a small bag of maida — small, because these three turn sooner than rice or sugar.

The masala bench: five ground, a handful whole

Five ground masalas carry the overwhelming majority of everyday salan: haldi, lal mirch, dhania powder, zeera powder and a garam masala. With namak and a cooking fat you can already make aloo gosht, bhindi, karahi and daal. Everything else on the shelf is there for particular dishes rather than for daily use.

Behind those five, keep a small set of whole spices, because they are the ones that survive being kept: sabut zeera and kali mirch for tarka, laung, dar cheeni and both elaichis for pulao and chai, tez patta for anything slow-cooked. A whole seed holds its aromatic oils sealed inside until you crack or heat it, which is why the same spice keeps its punch for a year whole and a few months ground.

• Ground, in small packets: haldi, lal mirch, dhania, zeera, garam masala.
• Whole, in glass jars: zeera, kali mirch, laung, dar cheeni, choti and bari elaichi, tez patta.
• Occasional, and never essential: kasuri methi crushed over a karahi, ajwain in paratha dough, kalonji on naan, anardana for chaat, imli pulp.

The fresh corner you re-buy every few days

No amount of dry stock cooks anything on its own. The fresh base of Pakistani cooking is pyaz, lehsan, adrak and tamatar; add hari mirch, hara dhania and limu and a kitchen can improvise its way through the week. A squeeze of lemon at the end does more for a flat daal than another spoon of masala.

From the dairy side the constants are doodh, dahi and anday. Dahi does triple duty — it goes into the marinade for gosht, it thins into lassi, and it sits on the table as raita. Buy the quantity you will use in a few days rather than the largest tub, because it keeps souring in the fridge whether you open it or not.

One thing worth making rather than buying: adrak-lehsan paste. Blend equal parts fresh ginger and garlic with a splash of water, keep a few days' worth in the fridge and freeze the rest in an ice tray. It tastes far sharper than paste that has sat in a jar.

How much should you buy the first time?

Buy small first, and let the kitchen tell you its own rate. The mistake almost everyone makes when stocking from scratch is buying every jar in the largest size, then finding months later that the dhania is three-quarters full and no longer smells of anything. A pantry is not a stockpile; it is a set of things that stay fresh because they keep moving.

Atta is the honest exception, and even that depends on the season. It is packed from one-kilo bags up to fifty-kilo sacks, and a Lahore summer is the wrong time to take home more than the house can finish. Whole-grain atta carries the wheat germ, the germ carries oil, and oil turns faster in heat: the sack that keeps quietly from December to March can smell sour by July.

• Ground masala: the smallest packet sold. Re-buy it rather than ration it.
• Whole spices: a larger jar is fine; they hold far longer than ground.
• Atta and rice: to a horizon you will genuinely reach, and smaller through the hot months.
• Dahi, doodh and bread: days, not weeks — the fresh clock, not the pantry clock.

Storing a pantry through a Lahore year

Two things ruin stored food here — heat and humidity — and the monsoon brings both at once. Decant everything into airtight containers; a paper bag folded over at the top is not a seal, and neither is a clip on a plastic sleeve.

Keep the masala shelf away from the stove. Haldi within arm's reach of the tawa feels convenient, but steam and heat are exactly what strip a ground spice, and shaking a jar over a simmering pot pushes moist air straight into it.

Weevils, sooseri, are the other tax. They find besan, suji and whole-grain atta before rice or sugar, because those three carry more oil and are milled finer. Airtight storage is most of the defence and the freezer is the rest: a few days in it kills anything already in a new bag of flour. Bring frozen atta back to room temperature before kneading.