Thrifty Cooking in the Doctor's Kitchen: The storecupboard

In BBC Food’s new series, Thrifty Cooking in the Doctor’s Kitchen, Dr Rupy Aujla makes dishes that surprise even the most seasoned of food writers with their high-impact flavour and low cost. How does he do it?

If you're on a tight budget, a carefully chosen selection of store cupboard items will transform a cheap weekly shop into food fit for a queen. We've put together our recommendations for a store cupboard to make the recipes in Thrifty Cooking… for around £1 per portion. Plus each of our guests have recommended their own must-have ingredients.

The basics

• Extra virgin olive oil and vegetable oil/sunflower oilWait, we’ve just started and already I have to buy two of the same thing? No, extra virgin olive oil and a flavourless oil such as vegetable or sunflower oil are not used for the same purposes. While most cooking can be done with cheaper oils, you will only need a small bottle of EVOO to use in dressings or to drizzle over pasta for oomph. Save your money and don’t use EVOO in cooking where high temperatures can spoil its flavour. Use the flavoured oil from a tin of fish, a jar of roasted peppers or sundried tomatoes to give your cooking a boost. Store it in the fridge for up to a week.

• Vinegar