This post shows how I organized all my ingredients and cooking gadgets in my tiny kitchen/dining room. It’s an idea for those Vietnamese or home chef,Qs who loves to cook Southeast Asian food but has a small pantry.

The built-in pantry in my little house in Florida is a big joke compared to the walk-in pantry back in Texas. It’s so small, I couldn’t fit my waist through the door. So I had to create storage space.

I have so many cooking ingredients and cooking tools to store away but this tiny pantry is impossible to do the job. I contacted my handyman and he and his wife suggested using the Besta cabinet series from IKEA. It’s customizable too and falls within my budget. This is just a rough sketch of my customized Besta cabinet. https://www.ikea.com/us/en/cat/besta-all-parts-accessories-700278/

Here it is in real life!

In block 1 and 2, I stored my gadgets and pots for Asian hot pots, 14-inch Hex Clad wok, Breville Sous Chef processor, bubble waffle maker, French crepe maker, pizelle maker, and waffle maker.

Block 3: I store my Phillips Pasta making machine along with a basket full of all sorts of disc attachments to make all sorts of Asian noodles including pho, udon, and ramen noodles. Next to the Phillips pasta machine is Kitchen Aid Artisan standing mixer.

Block 4: I stored cookie rack, cupcake liners and cookie cutters, yogurt jars for homemade yogurt, sushi and dumpling making kits, and jello molds to make Vietnamese agar agar jelly and sticky rice.

Block 5 and 6 are customized as two drawers per block: One drawer for the kids’ popsicle molds, one drawer for ziplock bags, one drawer for majar jars used for future pickling and homemade chili sauces, and I ended up with an empty drawer that I will use to store the baking ingredients beside the flour. (To be updated)

Block 7 and 8: I use it to store my freezable plastic food grade containers for future meal preps, dry spices, and other dry ingredients.

Block 9: I use this store rock sugar, salt, sugar, soybean and nutbag to make soy milk into a basket. One shelf is for black century eggs, onion bulbs, and shallots and ginger. Bottom shelf has for baskets for beverage mix, Thai tea and matcha tea, fruit and herbal tea ingredients. The beer cans are used for cooking since no one in my family drinks beer.

Note: If you decide to use the Besta storage line for your pantry, the woven narrow baskets I used are from Target made by Brightroom. There’s different models but only the woven style will allow four baskets onto one shelf. The white one pictured would not fit four baskets.

Block 10: I love the organized layout of this block. I have baskets labeled for slices to make pretty much all the authentic Vietnamese noodles soups and our favorite Asian cuisine like Thai chicken satay, Thai Tom yum hot pot, and other Asian meat marinades and meat rubs. The bottom shelf is for cups and mugs within the kids’ reach since they are responsible for putting away the cups and mugs after I wash it now. It’s so nice now that my kids can pour the beverage into the mugs on their own without my help.

Block 11 and 12 are drawers: One drawer is for all my coconut related ingredients such as coconut milk, Coco Soda, toasted coconut shreds, coconut flour, and even my coconut opener. One drawer is for my canned food items and I hardly cook with canned goods. One drawer is for my Vietnamese rice paper packages and rice paper holder since we eat gổi cuốn often. The last drawer is for more freezable food containers for meal preps.

To be continued…

I organized a shelf to store my dry noodles.

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I also reorganize my kids’ “self serve station”.

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Then my actual built in pantry which I use it to store mainly flour collection:

• All purpose flour
• Wheat flour
• Tapioca flour
• Rice flour
• Glutinous Rice Flour
• Bread flour
• Cornmeal
• Flour mix for savory crepes and other Vietnamese baked goods, flour for Korean pancake mix, and Japanese takoyaki too

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