12 Unexpected Ingredients Martha Stewart Can't Live Without

With 100 published books under her belt, an enormous repertoire of bespoke recipes on her blog and YouTube channel, and a new Netflix documentary about her life and work hitting screens in 2024, it's safe to say that Martha Stewart knows her way around the kitchen. In her over 40-year career, Stewart has had plenty of time to find the one ingredient she hates cooking with and those she considers essential. Widely known Martha Stewart staples include things like Vermont Creamery or Kerrygold butter, organic cow's milk, and fresh eggs from the chickens on her home farm.

Like anyone else, Stewart's list of must-haves also features a few curveballs. From guilty pleasures that she loves to snack on to unusual ingredient hacks that elevate simple recipes, Martha Stewart advises home cooks to keep an eclectic range of unexpected foods in their pantry. We explore 12 of the most unexpected ingredients that the undisputed queen of entertainment can't live without.

Dried mushrooms can bring deep, umami flavor to many recipes, and Martha Stewart considers them a pantry essential. Her love of dried mushrooms also extends to soups, stews, sides, and pasta dishes. One famous example is her Polish mushroom soup recipe, which calls for a mixture of dried borowik and shiitake mushrooms, as well as fresh button mushrooms, to create a rich, earthy broth.

In Season 4 Episode 4 of her televised series, "Martha Stewart Cooking School," Stewart uses a blend of rehydrated shiitake, porcini, and cremini mushrooms to whip up a vegetarian ragu. Stewart explains that "ragu sauce is typically made with meat [...] but you'll be surprised to learn you can make an equally robust and flavorful vegetarian option using a combination of dried and fresh mushrooms," (via YouTube).

To prepare dried mushrooms, you need to soak them in boiling water until they soften. This is one of the best uses for your French press beyond making coffee, as you can use the built-in strainer to pour off the water and remove any impurities before preparing your mushrooms. By chopping the rehydrated mushrooms finely, you can recreate the robust texture of ground meat and bring an intense depth of flavor to your dish.

While many of us reach for cookies and ice cream after dark, Martha Stewart's late-night snack of choice is unexpectedly classy. In an interview with Town & Country, Stewart reveals that she "eats pickled herring as a late-night snack [...] because it's savory and good." However, she also clarifies that she doesn't typically snack and tries to keep eating between meals to a minimum.

Pickled herring is also sometimes included in Martha Stewart's breakfast spreads. In an Instagram post titled "Breakfast for three in East Hampton," Stewart shares a picture of a beautifully laid breakfast table stocked with pickle rye bread, fresh tomatoes, coffee, and pickled herring from Russ and Daughters New York deli. Stewart is also a fan of pickling fresh vegetables and how to brine crunchy veg, like cucumbers, carrots, and beets at home.

Another unexpected food Martha Stewart sometimes indulges in is liverwurst — a type of German sausage made from offal. During her "Cold Cuts" episode with Al Roker, Stewart explains, "Oh, I love liverwurst [especially] the Schaller & Webber brand that squeezes out of the tube, you know, when I get home late." It's clear Stewart has a preference for strong, savory flavors when she snacks  (like pickled herring).

Liverwurst is usually made from a blend of organs, including livers, kidneys, and heart. Schaller & Webber liverwurst is made from pork liver, but they also sell calf liver pate in a liverwurst-like tube casing. Liverwurst can vary in consistency, from firm, sliceable sausages to more spreadable versions closer to pâté or foie gras. However, unlike the sad reason that foie gras is banned in many countries due to animal welfare concerns, liverwurst and pâté are not usually considered controversial and are available in most good delis and grocery stores.

Long-time fans of Martha Stewart will know how dedicated she is to her morning green juice routine. Speaking with Harper's BAZAAR, Stewart explains, "I have been juicing for many years [and] the vegetables primarily come from my vegetable greenhouse or my garden." 

One of the essential ingredients that Stewart includes in her daily juice is celery. However, Stewart explains that she doesn't just use the celery stalks but also includes the leaves in her drink claiming, "It's extremely important to keep the leaves on." Celery leaves are also a key ingredient in Martha Stewart's borscht recipe — a traditional Eastern European soup made from beets.

If you want to make Martha's green juice at home, apart from celery leaves, you'll also need cucumber, spinach, mint, parsley, ginger, half a blood orange, and pineapple (leave the skin on), as well as a fairly heavy-duty juicer or food processor to cut through the celery stalks and the tough, raw leaves. Stewart favors her Breville Bluicer model, although you can also find cheaper alternatives like the Magic Bullet mini-juicer that will do the job. As well as enjoying the taste, Stewart believes that "green juice is the secret of good skin [and] the secret of good, healthy hair."

Always an advocate for doing things properly, Martha Stewart likes to forage seaweed and prepare it from scratch. In an interview with Food & Wine in 2022, Stewart explained, "At my house in Maine, there's seaweed everywhere. You can pick that up out of the ocean and dry it. It takes like 12 months." Stewart notes that this is mainly kombu seaweed, which grows on the Northeast Coast.

Once the kombu is dry, Stewart uses it to make seaweed salt — a mixture of granulated seaweed and coarse salt. Stewart also likes to use seaweed as part of the presentation when she's hosting a shellfish feast. Oysters or stuffed clams on a bed of fresh seaweed is a classic and elegant Martha presentation.

Like other types of seaweed, kombu has a briny, umami flavor that works well in Asian-style dishes or when served with seafood. Dried kombu can also be used to make dashi stock or to flavor stews. Seaweeds like kombu are also highly nutritious and contain glutamine, an amino acid associated with improved brain health.

Sambal oelek is a traditional Indonesian chili paste that is also common in Malaysian and South Indian cuisine. It seasons some of the best Indian dishes, and you should try them at least once if you love fiery flavors. Sambal is usually made from a mixture of ground dry spices and chilis and is used to balance dishes by enhancing sweet, spicy, and sour flavors. It's also an ingredient that pops up again and again in Martha Stewart recipes and forms the base of her spicy sweet chili sauce – a blend of sambal oelek, lime, juice, and honey — that she famously serves with pan-seared fillet beef or with shrimp.

Since serving fresh shellfish with cocktail sauce is one of Stewart's classic hosting tricks, it's unsurprising that sambal is a major player in her repertoire. Stewart also recommends using sambal oelek as the chili base to make her spicy hoisin dipping sauce and uses it in many of her Asian-inspired recipes, such as shrimp chow mein and chili-glazed fried chicken.

Sanding sugar, or sparkling sugar, is a coarse white sugar often used to decorate baked goods and gives cakes and cookies a glittery appearance. Always one to add some razzle dazzle to a dinner party, Martha Stewart frequently uses sanding sugar across her baking recipes to dust sugar cookies and brown butter cookies. Stewart helps sanding sugar stick to the cookies before baking by swiping a little bit of water over the top with a baking brush. When the cookies come out of the oven, they have a shimmery, frosted finish that makes them perfect Christmas party snacks.

Stewart also uses colored sanding sugar, which can be made at home by adding a few drops of food coloring to sugar in an airtight container, putting on the lid, and shaking it. Stewart sometimes rolls cookies in pink and gold sanding sugar to give them a sparkly outer crust. You can also use sparkly cinnamon sugar to decorate fall treats. 

Olive paste is one of Martha Stewart's pantry essentials. This is hardly surprising for someone who's hosted as many gatherings as Martha. If you've got Italian charcuterie, olive paste, a few small slices of toast, and a refreshing Aperol spritz recipe nailed down, then you have pretty much everything you need for an aperitivo party. While olive paste may seem like a curveball — doesn't Martha Stewart like to have everything made from scratch? — it actually makes a lot of sense when you learn about one of her favorite make-ahead picnic sandwiches.

Stewart makes a pressed ciabatta sandwich with goat's cheese, peppadews, sautéed broccoli rabe with garlic, and a salty olive tapenade, perfect for picnics. Stewart recommends putting some weight on the sandwich for a short time to press all the ingredients together and help it hold its shape. The olive paste is an excellent ingredient for this recipe as its dense, moist texture helps the ciabatta stick together while enhancing the other rich, salty flavors. 

Despite being an American culinary icon, Martha Stewart frequently pays homage to her family's Polish heritage and the food culture she grew up surrounded by. She's been known to take her famous pierogies – a type of Polish dumpling — as a gift for the host when she appears on talk shows, and her galumpki stuffed cabbage leaves recipe is inspired by her Polish roots. Another Polish ingredient in her recipe collection is kielbasa — a type of Polish smoked sausage. Kielbasa is robust and meaty with a slightly snappy texture, much like a German bratwurst or frank. 

Martha demonstrated – with her mother Martha Ruszkowski Kostyra, or Big Martha – her preferred way to make kielbasa for a traditional Easter Sunday breakfast. This simple preparation involves par-boiling the sausage — like many smoked sausages, water is the best way to cook this food – before baking the sausage to brown the outside.

The two Marthas then serve the kielbasa with homemade horseradish sauce and a traditional Polish breakfast spread. As Martha Stewart says, "You have eggs, you have butter, you have beets, you have kielbasa, and you have rye bread—what else could you ask for on Easter morning?" (via YouTube ).

Using the same old greens can get boring, even for green juice enthusiasts like Martha Stewart. While spinach, broccoli, and kale tend to get most of the attention when it comes to healthy greens, Stewart suggests switching things up with this underrated Asian vegetable. Stewart recommends going in a different direction and using bok choy sautéed with ginger, garlic, and soy sauce.

Bok choy is native to China but is eaten widely across Asia and can also be grown in the U.S. It's packed with fiber, vitamins, and antioxidants. The leaves have a strong, iron flavor similar to kale or chard, while the stalks have a sweet, juicy crunch when cooked. Bok choy is delicious when boiled in Asian-style soups and stews. Martha Stewart also cooks a range of Asian-inspired dishes that incorporate bok choy, such as coconut and salmon curry and inside-out pork dumplings.

Clarified butter, which is very similar to ghee, had a bit of a moment in 2016 when lifestyle influencer Kourtney Kardashian wrote on her blog that "ghee is the first thing I put in my body every morning [and] drink it out of a cute little white ceramic cup," (via Glamour ). Well, it turns out the original lifestyle influencer, Martha Stewart, is also a big fan of clarified butter, but rather than chugging it straight, she actually cooks with it. 

In an episode of "Martha Stewart Cooking School" (via YouTube), Stewart explains that clarified butter is "unsalted butter that has been melted and separated from any of the whey or milk solids that are found in butter [and has a] higher smoking point," which means that the butter won't brown when heated because there are no solids to burn. Essentially, the butter at this stage behaves more like cooking oil, which makes it ideal for frying.

Clarified butter is also an important ingredient in Martha Stewart's cabbage pierogi recipe. This simple Polish preparation involves filling pierogi dumplings with steamed cabbage and cream cheese, then drizzling golden clarified butter over the top.

Martha Stewart is well-known for her elegant table decor and stunning presentations. One ingredient that she uses to enhance her designs is edible flowers. Stewart's blog features many creative ideas and suggestions on using edible flowers, from decorating cakes and pastries to sprinkling them on a salad to distilling them into floral syrups.

Stewart, of course, likes to make sugared flowers from scratch, which she does by glazing the individual petals with a wash of egg whites and water and then sprinkling fine sugar over the top. When the petals are dry, they take on a stiff, slightly glittery appearance that looks beautiful placed among marzipan cake decorations or as a crème brûlée topping. With her extensive garden, Stewart also offers plenty of advice on growing flowers and cultivating a beautiful outdoor space that includes common edible species, such as violas, nasturtiums, and pansies. You can also use flower petals or buds as cocktail garnishes.