Why Spring Is the Right Time to Empty the Cupboard

The first warm week of the year does something to a cook. The windows open, the market stalls fill with purple sprouting broccoli and the first forced rhubarb, and suddenly that heavy stew you lived on in February feels like a different life. The trouble is that the cupboard behind you is still full of that life: three quarters of a bag of pearl barley, a wrinkled potato, a jar of something sticky with no label.

Spring cooking is lighter, faster and greener, and it works best from a larder that can keep up. A morning spent sorting, sniffing and rearranging will save you money, save you midweek panic, and make you far more likely to actually cook the asparagus you just bought.

Check the Dates and Be Honest

Start with everything open and everything past its best. Dried herbs and ground spices lose most of their punch within about six months, whole spices keep for two or three years, and anything with oil in it — nuts, seeds, wholemeal flour, ground almonds — can turn rancid long before it looks wrong. Rub a pinch of dried oregano between your fingers. If you can barely smell it, it is dust. Add it to the compost and start again.

• Baking powder and self-raising flour: more than six months past the date and they will not give you the rise you expect. Replace them rather than waste good eggs and butter on flat cakes.
• Fats and oils: sniff them. Cold-pressed oils, sesame oil and anything in a clear bottle that has sat near the hob may smell nutty or slightly bitter. That is rancidity, not character.
• Flour and grains: check for webbing, clumping or tiny moths. If you are unsure, freeze the bag for 48 hours to kill any eggs, then decant into a sealed jar.
• Tins and jars: most keep for years, but bin anything with a bulging lid, a dented seam or a rusty rim. Once opened, pestos and tapenades belong in the fridge, not the cupboard.
• Store-cupboard mysteries: unlabelled jars, forgotten spice blends, crystallised honey you will never use. Out.

Make Room for the Lighter Larder

Once the dead weight has gone, restock with intent. Spring food is about sharpness, freshness and quick cooking, so keep the things that lift a plate of green vegetables or a bowl of new potatoes into something you actually want to eat.

• Acid: a good sherry vinegar, a white wine vinegar, lemons, capers, cornichons and a jar of preserved lemons. Acid is what makes spring vegetables taste like themselves.
• Good fat: a peppery extra-virgin olive oil for dressing, a neutral oil for cooking, and a small bottle of cold-pressed rapeseed, which is lovely with British salads and roasted roots.
• Punchy flavour: Dijon mustard, harissa, anchovies in oil, sun-dried tomatoes, tahini, a decent stock powder, flaky sea salt and black peppercorns.
• Seeds and nuts: pumpkin, sunflower and sesame seeds, flaked almonds, pine nuts. Buy small quantities; they go stale faster than you think.
• Quick grains and pulses: orzo, couscous, puy lentils, a tin or two of chickpeas and butter beans. These turn a pile of leaves into supper in fifteen minutes.
• Fresh-ish extras: yoghurt, crème fraîche and a block of good hard cheese make almost any spring dish feel finished.

Organise So You Actually Cook

A tidy cupboard is not about aesthetics. It is about seeing at a glance what you have, so you stop buying your fourth jar of cumin.

Decant open packets into glass jars or airtight containers and write the contents and date on the lid with a marker. Group by use rather than by size: baking together, spices together, grains together, tins together. Keep daily items at eye level and rarely used ones up high. Spices and oils want a cool, dark place, which makes the shelf directly above the hob the worst spot in the kitchen. If you have freezer room, use it for nuts, seeds, wholemeal flour and spare spices; they keep far longer that way.

Give yourself one basket or tray for current projects — the wild garlic, the rhubarb, the bag of Jersey Royals. It stops the new season's produce disappearing behind the tins, which is exactly how good food gets wasted.

Three Skills That Make Spring Produce Sing

With a clean cupboard, a few simple techniques will do more for your cooking than any new gadget.

• Toast your seeds and nuts. A dry frying pan over a medium heat, moving them constantly for two or three minutes until they smell warm and nutty. Scatter over salads, greens and yoghurt. The difference is enormous.
• Bloom your spices. Instead of tipping ground cumin into a cold pan, warm it in a little oil for thirty seconds until fragrant, then add your vegetables. The flavour opens up and spreads through the whole dish.
• Finish with acid, salt and something cold. A squeeze of lemon, a pinch of flaky salt and a spoonful of yoghurt will sharpen and settle a plate of spring vegetables better than any sauce.

None of this takes long, and most of it costs nothing. An hour with the cupboard doors open, a bin bag and a marker pen is the least glamorous cooking you will do this season — and quite possibly the most useful. Do it now, while the first asparagus is still a week away, and you will be ready when it arrives.