Another vote for onions. I once broke up with a guy I was dating when he told me he hated onions and wouldn’t eat them in anything. I can’t cook without them, so I knew the relationship was never going to work.
Butter/oil is a strong second choice.
In order: Water, salt, pepper, olive oil, butter, onion, garlic, parsley, bacon. Ok, maybe bacon has to compete with other meats, but it’s a strong contender.
Cheese. I love cheese.
I like onions too.
Salt by a long shot. Sunflower oil is a close 2nd. I used to use olive oil, but got tired of the low smokepoint. And I’m also more sure of what I’m getting with sunflower oil, after all the recent controversy over olive oil authenticity.
I seem to add onion powder and spinach flakes to nearly any dish I prepare.
Heh, you’re my opposite. We have a salt grinder on the table (my gf loooves salt) but I use very little of it in my cooking.
To be honest, “can’t live without” and “cook with, more than any other” are probably two different responses.
Crusty fresh bread, pasta, butter and cheese are all things I can’t live without. But some of those I only cook with a couple of times a week.
Onions are probably a good bet for the single thing I use most often.
Hmmm, possibly a better choice: when I do things like fried chicken, I keep the leftover oil in a jar in the fridge. I not only use it to fry more chicken, but I use it anywhere oil goes in a savory recipe, such as my sauteed onions or other vegetables. The hint of flavor makes everything better. Bacon grease would be a close second, but I use up bacon grease making the rest of breakfast so it’s never left over like chicken oil.
Almost every dish I make has onions, bell peppers, garlic, salt and pepper.
Also, I forgot the secret ingredient, you know, the L word… Lard
Oh, reading the above, if we’re including basics like salt and fat, of course salt is the one ingredient that is used in almost everything I cook.
Garlic by a long measure. Onions might be second. The chicken base jar gets a work out, too. I use salt to brine chicken, but that’s about all I use it for.
Definitely cheese, then butter.
Carbon.
Onion, garlic, olive oil, and salt appear in practically every savory dish I make.
Volumetrically it wouldn’t account for much, but a go-to flavoring I would really miss if I couldn’t have it anymore is Penzey’s Adobo seasoning. (I think it is a mixture of cumin, ground pepper, and onion and garlic powders.) In fact I have to keep myself from using it in everything, since I don’t want all my food to taste the same. Other go-to spices and herbs that I use constantly are basil, oregano, cumin, white pepper, dill, smoked paprika, and tarragon.
Beer.
Not for the recipe; for me!
Probably chicken. We seem to be on a heavy rotation of chicken, pork, and occasionally venison. Lots and lots of chicken.
But butter, too. I always seem to be buying butter or thinking about buying butter.
Heat.
Sweet Onions and yellow Onions ! I like sweet onion in my salads and cook with yellow onions. I always have them in my house .
My wife lives off this stuff. I like it too, of course, but not like she does. She gets reeeaaaal panicky when we start getting low.
If that were the first sentence in a novel, I’d wanna read the rest.