Just as with equipment, there are only a few ingredients that you really need for cooking - but the rest are fun too.
There are some ingredients you will need so often that it would just be silly not to stock up on them - these are your basic ingredients.
You can think of them as a kind of framework from which you build your dishes, just by adding the components you want to work with - be it proteins, starches or vegetables. (Please note that these base ingredients may vary from cuisine to cuisine!)
