We’ve all seen the guides on what pantry essentials to stock up on: dried beans, oatmeal, dried pasta, rice, tomato sauce, flour. But in a multicultural city like Toronto, you can expect some diversity.

So I put the call out on Twitter, asking people what they keep in their pantry that reflected their heritage and cultural upbringing.

Some of the results (I even got a few international home cooks chiming in): Cassava flour and starch for a Brazilian pantry; canned sprat and buckwheat for a Russian kitchen; achiote and dulce de leche for an Ecuadorian; ghee and spices for chai on a Punjabi shelf; frozen shredded coconut and red lentils for Tamil families; canned mackerel and rice for a Jamaican; polenta and cannellini beans for Italians; olives and yogurt for Cypriot cuisine; and the holy trio of doenjang, gochujang and soy sauce for a Korean kitchen.

For me, I grew up in a Chinese household, so things my mother always kept in her kitchen were bottles of oyster sauce, soy sauce (two kinds: light and dark), rock sugar (less sweet than granulated), 20 lb. bags of jasmine rice, lots of ginger root and green onion, spices like star anise and white pepper, and despite its reputation as a doomsday foodstuff in the West, Spam is an everyday ingredient for us. I also have Japanese and Korean ingredients such as Glico curry cubes, kimchi, furikake (rice seasoning) and miso paste, ingredients that last months and add instant flavour for everything. I asked a few of those who responded to expand.

Toks Weah, 27, academic administrator at the University of Toronto

Weah would usually get Nigerian pantry staples from her mother, Esther, who lives in Oshawa. They include packs of frozen, grated isu ewura (water yam) and obe ata (a sauce made from simmering tomatoes and red peppers) that’s the basis for a lot of Yoruba cooking. Weah’s favourite way to eat isu ewura is in a dish called ikokore, a type of pottage or thick stew that’s rich in meat and seafood. But now, the 27-year-old who is isolating with her husband, says she’s all out.

“My mom lives in Oshawa and has a deep freezer, so she does all the prep work and I’ve been able to get that stuff year round,” she says, adding that her mom would head to the West African grocers in Weston to stock up on boxes of water yam. “But my mother is a health care worker so I can’t be with her and we’re out of it. I miss it so much.”

Other Nigerian staples include garri, a cassava flour that’s often eaten as cereal when soaked in cold water and sweetened with sugar or honey. Seasoning cubes from brands like Maggi are also used as an easy way to give everything from meats to sauces to vegetables a quick umami kick.

For ingredients that are easier to find at the larger markets, Weah makes a Nigerian style omelette, which is flavoured with onions, tomatoes and scotch bonnet peppers and eaten with fried plantains, yam or bread.

Maryam Munaf, 37, founder of Healthy Genie

Munaf is getting ready for Ramadan with her husband and two young kids, aged six and two, and among the dried fruits and nuts she always keeps, dates in particular are a pantry-must have to break the daily fast. They are eaten on their own, stuffed with spiced pistachios, almonds and walnuts, or blended with tahini to make a spread. There’s also lots of olive oil, chickpeas and lentils, things that she says the pantry is usually stocked with throughout the year.

“For iftar, regardless of weather, even when I grew up in Abu Dhabi, for some reason we always had soup as a starter,” she says. “I make lentil soup, which I call the queen of all soups. It’s so good.”

She also cooks green lentils with onions and spiced with cumin, served with a side of yogurt and cucumber salad. For dessert Munaf makes a riff on qatayef, often served during Ramadan. It’s a sweet, deep fried flour and semolina pancake (or dumpling, depending on the region) with a cheese or a cinnamon-walnut filling. As a nutritionist and founder of a healthy Middle Eastern prepared food company called Healthy Genie, Munaf bakes hers instead and drizzles maple syrup on top. “Because we’re in Canada,” she says.

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Fatimah Jackson-Best, 37, public health researcher and consultant

“I spent five-and-a-half years in Barbados where my dad is from and my mom is American so I have a strong Bajan, Caribbean and American influence on my cooking,” she says. The most important Bajan ingredient in her pantry is the hot sauce.

“It’s one of the few Caribbean hot sauces that aren’t too hot and what I like is that most of them will have turmeric, so it gives any bland food a bit of heat and flavour.”

She also has cans of coconut milk from her preferred brand, Grace. “I put it in curries to make it more creamy, you can also put it in oatmeal, you can add it to almost everything to give it a full-bodied taste and you don’t have to worry about additives.”

There’s also lentils, chickpeas, red kidney beans, peas, tea, condensed milk, different varieties of rice (“I feel like every good immigrant child will have rice in their pantry”) and tamarind sauce from Alima’s Roti and Pastry in Brampton. Another important staple is also salt fish (dried cod) used to make fish cakes (They have different names depending on the island. In Trinidad they’re called accra). Flour is used for dumplings in soups as well as sweet fritters for breakfast (she uses spelt flour).

For an all-purpose flavour boost, Jackson-Best makes what’s called green seasoning: a mixture of shallots, black and white pepper, onions, thyme, marjoram, parsley, garlic, sweet and hot peppers, cloves, vinegar and salt. Every household will have their own variation of it, but she says it’s useful to keep on hand as a marinade for meat and fish and even as a soup base.

Correction - April 22, 2020: This article was edited from a previous version that mistakenly referred to spelt flour as a gluten-free flour.