The Secret Pantry of Expats in France

When we move to France, one thing becomes clear pretty quickly: French cooking takes tradition seriously.

French recipes are often treated like inherited wisdom rather than flexible suggestions.

A proper vinaigrette has a formula.

A classic stew has rules.

But as expats, we all bring pieces of home into the kitchen.

No matter how much we fall in love with French food, many of us eventually start adding ingredients that don’t normally appear in traditional French recipes. Not because French food is missing anything, but because food is memory. Comfort. Habit. A way of making a foreign place feel familiar.

Over time, our kitchens become a quiet blend of cultures: French butter next to soy sauce, herbs de Provence sharing space with chili flakes, peanut butter somehow becoming essential.

Here are some of the ingredients many of us quietly add to our French cooking life — and the ones we still wish we could find more easily.

1. Chili Sauce

Why? Because Sometimes We Want More Heat

Let’s be honest — traditional French cooking is not usually about spice.

Delicious? Absolutely. Fiery? Not so much.

Many of us eventually find ourselves reaching for chili oil, hot sauce, harissa, or whatever spicy comfort reminds us of home. We drizzle it on eggs, stir it into soups, or quietly add a kick to dishes that would probably horrify a French purist.

We tell ourselves it’s “just a little.”

It rarely is.

And while France has improved when it comes to international ingredients, finding the exact spicy peppers or sauces we grew up with can still feel like a mission. Some of us spend weekends hunting down specialty shops or proudly guard the address of that one international supermarket that stocks the good stuff.

2. Soy Sauce

Why? It Somehow Ends Up in Everything

At some point, many of us discover the quiet magic of soy sauce in a French kitchen.

Need extra depth in a stew? Soy sauce. Mushrooms tasting a bit flat? Soy sauce. Leftover vegetables from the market? You guessed it.

Traditional French cooking builds flavour through slow techniques, wine, butter, and stock. Meanwhile, some of us are over here adding a splash of umami and calling it efficiency.

And somehow… it works.

Of course, if we’re being particular, we know not all soy sauce tastes the same. Depending on where we come from, we may find ourselves searching for a specific brand from home, only to discover the French supermarket version tastes… close enough, but not quite right.

3. Garlic Powder

Why? For the Days We’re Tired

We know fresh garlic is better.

We also know some evenings we simply do not have the energy.

French cooking celebrates fresh ingredients and patience, but expat life can be messy, busy, and occasionally exhausting. Some nights, garlic powder saves dinner — and honestly, we’re okay with that.

No judgment in our kitchen.

The same goes for spice blends, like 5 Spice, seasoning packets, or pantry shortcuts we grew up using. Sometimes we miss the convenience foods from home just as much as the recipes themselves.

4. Peanut Butter Becomes Weirdly Important

Before moving to France, some of us never thought twice about peanut butter.

Then suddenly it becomes everything.

Breakfast when we miss home. A quick noodle sauce. Satay-inspired dinners. Emergency comfort food after a long week of paperwork, bureaucracy, or language mishaps.

A baguette with peanut butter? We said what we said.

And while peanut butter is easier to find than it once was, many of us still quietly compare jars and think, ´This is not the one from home’

5. Coconut Milk, Lime, and Other “Unofficial” Additions

Classic French cooking leans heavily on cream, butter, mustard, herbs, and wine.

Many of us quietly add coconut milk, lime, smoked paprika, ginger, or spice mixes from home to brighten things up or make dishes feel more familiar.

Sometimes it starts with practical reasons. Maybe we want something lighter than cream. Maybe we’re craving flavours we grew up with. Or maybe it’s just Sunday, everything is closed, and we’re improvising dinner with whatever survived the week in the fridge.

A classic roast chicken suddenly gets a completely different personality with new seasoning.

A vegetable soup unexpectedly becomes vaguely Thai-inspired.

A French recipe becomes ours.

6. The Ingredients We Learn to Live Without (Or Hunt Relentlessly For)

If there’s one universal expat experience in France, it’s standing in a supermarket aisle thinking:

“How can an entire country not have this?”

To be fair, France has incredible food. Fresh produce, beautiful cheese, excellent bread, markets that somehow make grocery shopping feel romantic. But every expat eventually develops a mental list of ingredients we miss — the ones that are weirdly difficult to find, outrageously expensive, or simply not quite the same.

For some of us, it’s proper spicy chilies. For others, it’s certain cuts of meat, specialty flours, familiar noodles, sauces, or the exact snacks we grew up eating.

Then there are the deeply specific cravings.

The seasoning mix our family used for everything. A particular cereal. The chips that somehow taste completely different abroad. A favourite sauce we can’t justify paying import prices for.

And let’s talk about spice levels for a second.

Many of us quickly discover that “spicy” in France and “spicy” where we come from are sometimes two very different conversations. We buy something labeled ´fort’ with optimism, only to realise it has roughly the heat level of a polite suggestion.

So we adapt.

We learn which Asian, African, Middle Eastern, or international grocery stores quietly stock the essentials. We ask visiting friends to bring snacks in suitcases like culinary smugglers. We swap recommendations in expat WhatsApp groups. We experiment with substitutes. How many times have you asked Google for a substitute ingredient?

Sometimes we even become oddly protective of our secret ingredient sources.

No, we are not sharing where we found affordable imported spices.

That information is earned.

Food Becomes a Mix of Home and France

The funny thing about living abroad is that we rarely stop cooking home or French food — we just adapt it.

We learn the local recipes, shop at markets, and slowly figure out how to make life here feel like ours. A classic French dish gets a bit more spice. A soup tastes slightly more like home. A market vegetable becomes part of a recipe our French neighbours would probably never recognise.

Maybe that’s what expat cooking really is.

Not replacing French traditions — just making room for our own alongside them.

Because eventually, our kitchens stop being entirely “from home” or entirely “French.”

They become something in between.

And honestly, that’s usually where the best meals happen.