Must Haves for Your Pantry Door Spice Rack

If you're stocking a new kitchen, you'll want to make sure you've stocked your kitchen pantry spice rack with everything you'll need to make basic recipes. You'll want to invest in a generous kitchen pantry organizer or good pantry shelving so you will have a cool, dark space to set up your spices, find them easily and avoid spices' three worst enemies: light, heat and moisture. Once you have a space set aside, fill up those shelves with the following spices.

You'll want to collect an assortment of salts and peppers, both ground and whole, in a variety of flavors. Collect a few sea salts for varying colors and tastes and get an assortment of pepper corns. Green, white, black and red are standard must have pepper corns. Make sure you get a jar of cayenne pepper and a jar of red pepper flakes as well.

Savory spices, such as rosemary, thyme, oregano, basil, parsley, onion powder, garlic powder, dill, cumin and cilantro, are essentials for recipes including roasts, Italian dishes, and poultry. If you like to cook things with an Asian or Indian flair, add in a jar each of fennel, anise seed, ground ginger, curry and garam masala.

You'll also want to stock up on the spices commonly used in baking recipes for flavoring,  such as cinnamon, ground ginger, all spice, ground cloves and nutmeg. Collect a bottle each of vanilla and almond extract for flavoring.

If you like to cut corners on recipes, you may also want to stock up on pre-mixed spices. Check out Cajun, jerk, Italian, Indian, and Jamaican spice rubs. You may also be interested in mixes like seasoned salt, lemon pepper or garlic salt if you like pre-made spices for quick dish seasoning.

Every person's spice rack varies according to the tastes of the individual, so determine what spices you use in most of the meals you cook and collect those spices accordingly. Hopefully your fully loaded spice rack will get you through most recipes in your cookbook.