Keep Your Spice Nice

If you’re like most, you probably have spices in your cupboard collected in various sized jars and bottles that date back somewhere before the Homos Erectus era. Contrary to popular belief, spices, unlike plastic Pepsi six pack holders, will not keep indefinitely. Spices, like any other ingredient, should be as fresh as possible to produce the optimum result in your cooking. To test this theory, you need only find a source for fresh spices and compare them to those old friends gathering dust in your cupboard.

A wonderful habit to develop is to replace all your spices once a year. You could make this an annual New Year’s, or even spring cleaning event. This may sound like a wasteful practice, but the noticeable difference that fresh spices will bring to your cooking will soon convince you of the merit of this little extravagance. If you need more convincing on how to rationalize an unrational act, consider the cost of the other ingredients in the foods you prepare and the care and effort you put in to the meals you serve. Surely your family and friends deserve the full potency of flavors that fresh spices can contribute. It works for me.

I have found a great source for fresh spices at my local gourmet kitchen shop. The spices come in small plastic bags and are delightfully aromatic and brightly colored. I save the grocery store spice jars when I replace spices and use these jars to hold the new spices. Add a label, and your back in business.

Some spices are better in their original form, like nutmeg. Nutmeg should be purchased as whole nuts and grated when needed. The difference in flavor between fresh grated nutmeg and nutmeg from a jar or can is remarkable. Nutmeg nuts are readily available and will never get stale or lose their potency when kept in nut form.

Pepper is also much better if home ground or crushed from whole peppercorns. Grinding or crushing your own peppercorns will give your food all the flavor of pepper without all the ‘hot’.

Finally, I feel I must include salt, although not a spice, rather a seasoning, salt is a key player in maximizing the flavor in your cooking. Just as fresh spices can make all the difference, so can the type of salt you use. We recommend kosher salt, and specifically Diamond Crystal Kosher Salt. This salt is coarser than typical table salt and dynamic in flavor. I know it may be difficult to imagine how a particular type of salt could make a substantial difference in taste, but it does. Kosher salt is more flavorful but not as salty as regular table salt. Use a quarter to a half teaspoon more for each teaspoon of regular table salt in recipes. This is one of those wonderful ‘secrets’ that will improve the taste of all that you cook. I fill a small bowl with kosher salt and sprinkle it by pinchfuls as I cook. I also fill a large holed shaker bottle, like a Parmesan cheese shaker, with this salt for sprinkling- it’s terrific on popcorn!

I have found that most spices are gluten-free. As a Celiac, it is of course always necessary to check the label of anything before you buy or eat it. Another advantage of buying specialty spices, is that they are generally pure.

The one spice to check carefully is garlic salt. Many garlic salts are combined with other ingredients. You can find garlic salt with no other added ingredients.

So freshen the spices in your cooking and free yourself from the land of bland.

– Glutenfreeda