The Barbecue Pantry is critical to a good barbecue experience. But if you pick up a gourmet cookbook and look at the pantry list of what they recommend to have stocked in your kitchen, is that something you are going to buy if you have never cooked in the kitchen? Of course not!  Most beginners are going to be overwhelmed just looking at the list!

The point is that there are so many levels of experience and different levels of desire to create complex meals on the barbecue that it is impossible to make one barbecue pantry list that will work for everyone—most beginners or people just wanting to enjoy a quick midweek barbecue won’t use over 50% of the items on that list.  Instead we are going to break the recommended barbecue pantry into different levels of barbecue involvement, from beginner to pro.

For now, we will have the barbecue pantry for the Level 1 (Just Getting Started Level) and a long list of everything we love to have in our kitchen at a Masters level.

Barbecue Pantry Categories:

Level 1: Just Getting Started on Your Own on the Barbecue.

This Pantry focuses on the very basics and keeps it simple for the person on-the-go. By using prepared barbecue rubs, salsas & sauces it keeps you enjoying the barbecue experience as you learn how to perfect your barbecue techniques AND if you don’t have a lot of extra time to make your own rubs and sauces this is a great place to start. We had Michelle write this section with us as it literally is what she barbecued with the first few years of cooking after graduating High School.  It worked just fine for her at that time in her life when she was in college and didn’t have a lot of time for cooking and it helped her grow her love for grilling. 

Masters Degree Pantry: “Experienced & Ready to Get Creative!”

We think the title pretty much sums it up. It is what we have in our pantry currently and works great for whenever we want to get creative on the barbecue.  There is an occasional exotic barbecue meal we’ll see that originated from other areas of the World that we have to buy a special ingredient for (or substitute something else if it is too expensive or hard to find) but this is everything that we need to let our creative minds wander when creating new dishes in the kitchen.