Recipes Everyday Cooking More Meal Ideas DIY 20 Pantry Staples That Are Cheaper and Healthier Homemade By Vanessa Greaves Vanessa Greaves Vanessa Greaves is a Senior Editor at Allrecipes with nearly two decades of experience helping home cooks gain confidence in the kitchen. A self-taught cook who grew up reading cookbooks for fun, Vanessa lives and breathes the challenges faced by busy everyday cooks to get dinner on the table. Allrecipes' editorial guidelines Published on March 12, 2020 Trending Videos Close this video player Photo: magicallydelicious You can often save money and eat better by making everyday pantry staples yourself instead of buying them at the store. Making your own means you get to control the ingredients to suit your taste and dietary needs, too. Take a look at 20 DIY recipes for foods you probably keep in your pantry at all times. 01 of 20 Chicken Stock View Recipe Baking Nana Here's a thrifty way to use up chicken necks, backs, and wing tips. Make and freeze stock in pint- and quart-size batches. More Chicken Stock Recipes 02 of 20 3-Ingredient Slow Cooker Sweetened Condensed Milk View Recipe CoOkInGnUt "This turned out way better then I thought before it cooled. I must say I used this in my coffee this morning and can't wait to try it in other things. It is thick and cream with a wonderful flavor. The time it took to make this was well worth it." —CoOkInGUT 03 of 20 Light or Dark Brown Sugar View Recipe Buckwheat Queen "Making your own brown sugar is so simple and easy and it tastes exactly like store-bought! You'll never run out of brown sugar if you keep two simple ingredients on hand: white granulated sugar and molasses." —JillH 04 of 20 Chef John's Homemade Mayonnaise View Recipe Chef John's Baking Nana "Homemade mayo is one of those indescribable culinary pleasures. If you have a stick-style or regular blender you can make your own mayo! It's so much cheaper and way more delicious. You also get to decide what kind of oil you want: a nice fruity olive oil; a lighter vegetable oil; or your own secret custom mix." —Chef John 05 of 20 Flavored Baking Chips View Recipe SHORECOOK "I put this recipe together out of necessity to make raspberry cheesecake cookies. Raspberry chips were not available in my local stores. Any flavor you desire is possible by changing the extract and food coloring. This recipe allows you to have as many flavored morsels as there are extracts for a fraction of the cost. Enjoy!" —SHORECOOK 06 of 20 Confectioners' Sugar View Recipe bdweld "It never fails, you run out of powdered sugar and forget to restock it!?!? Update: since having to make my own powdered sugar, I have not bought any!!! I make it ALL the time now!" —Life is Good 07 of 20 Croutons View Recipe Molly Never waste stale bread again. Bread cubes can be toasted in butter or olive oil, and flavored with your choice of salts and herbs. Store in an airtight container. More Crouton Recipes 08 of 20 Applesauce View Recipe cookin'mama Make it on your stove top or in a slow cooker, and adjust the sweetness, spices, and texture to suit your taste. You can peel and core apples, or just chunk them up and use a food mill to strain out solids after cooking. Cook down the applesauce even more to make sweet, thick apple butter. More Applesauce Recipes 09 of 20 Pancake Mix View Recipe magicallydelicious Reach for this handy mix when you're too sleepy in the morning to measure out all the dry ingredients separately. The recipe tells you what wet ingredients to add to make it into a batter. Gluten-Free All-Purpose Flour Mixture How to DIY Your Own Quick Baking Mix 10 of 20 Pasta Sauce View Recipe Dianne Make and freeze, people. Make and freeze. Then you'll always have pasta sauce ready to go for super-quick dinners. More Pasta Sauce Recipes 11 of 20 Pesto View Recipe 5boys2cook4 Store-bought pesto can't touch this stuff. Freeze leftover pesto in ice cube trays to throw into sauces. More Pesto Recipes 12 of 20 Fresh Raspberry Balsamic Vinaigrette View Recipe Marianne Keep a clean jar and lid in your pantry to shake up fresh dressings in seconds. So easy, so impressive. More Salad Dressing Recipes The Easiest Way To Make Salad Dressing, Ever 13 of 20 Onion Soup Mix View Recipe mommyluvs2cook "Way cheaper to make it yourself than buy the packets. This recipe makes the equivalent of one packet of soup mix. If you're adding this to a liquid, the bouillon cubes don't need to be crushed." —Kitty Johnson 14 of 20 Self-Rising Flour View Recipe mommyluvs2cook Do not spend money on a bag of self-rising flour when all you have to do is add a couple of everyday ingredients to regular flour. You can do this! Homemade Almond Flour 15 of 20 Spice Blends View Recipe angelosmommy Taco seasoning, chili mix, seasoned salts. How many times have you spent big on these? Now's the time to mix up your own. More Recipes for Spice Blends 16 of 20 Homemade Shake and Bake Mixture View Recipe dotdash meredith food studios Home cook DCEJ says, "Truly excellent. I was about to make dinner when I realized that I had forgotten the coating mix for the chicken. This is great. It's less expensive and has less sodium than the boxed stuff." 17 of 20 Vanilla Extract View Recipe The Gruntled Gourmand Vanilla beans and vodka. How easy is that? If you don't want to make a big batch, scale the recipe down to 20 servings; you'll need only one vanilla bean and 1/8 of a liter of vodka. (And you don't have to use premium spirits.) Just a note: Don't mistake this for vanilla extract made commercially - this is more like a vanilla infusion and does enhance flavor. But it's not true vanilla extract. 18 of 20 Homemade Poultry Seasoning View Recipe mkstevens09 "Outstanding. I forgot to purchase poultry seasoning for my cornbread dressing. I made this one and it is far better than anything I could buy. I can see many uses for this recipe!" —cindygah 19 of 20 Hal's Wine Mustard View Recipe lutzflcat "OMG! Nothing could be easier! I cut the sugar down to a little less than 1/2 cup at my husband's request and added 1/2 tsp. salt. I almost devoured an entire jar dipping pretzels in it." —Denise Kasz Willmarth 20 of 20 Homemade Ketchup View Recipe Image Credit - Chef John. Chef John "This ketchup does come close to those name brands in terms of taste, texture and color. I've never had a tomato paste-based ketchup that I liked, so I decided to cook down crushed tomatoes instead. By using the slow cooker, we take most of the labor out of the process." —Chef John Check out our collection of do-it-yourself recipes. Was this page helpful? Thanks for your feedback! Tell us why! Other Submit