I’ve got some bad news for you, and I’m going to give it to you straight. You know those old jars of dried herbs and spices in your cupboard? They DO NOT keep for ever. Using old jars that have sat at the back of your cupboard for years might be ruining your enjoyment of any dishes that you use them in.
What’s hiding in the cupboard?
If you’re anything like me, you’ll have a cupboard full of little jars of spices bought over the last 10 years or more. You buy a small jar or bag for a specific recipe, then don’t use it again for years. The big problem is that whilst these jars sit in your cupboard, or in your spice rack, they are slowly degrading, which means they ultimately become flavourless and hold about as much culinary value as sawdust.
Actually, that’s unfair on sawdust, as you can moisten that and then use it to smoke other ingredients on your BBQ, which is quite useful. So apologies, sawdust.
Spring clean your spices
If you take a moment to consider the reason why we add herbs and spices to food, you’ll realise their role is to impart a concentrated burst of flavour to your food. When they lose their ability to do that, they are no longer fulfilling their role within your cooking. Furthermore, this means that if you use these old spices in your cooking, there’s a good chance you’ll be disappointed with the results.
Time, plus exposure to light and air, degrades your herbs and spices meaning that over a couple of years they will probably lose the very essence for which you own them. As time marches on, using them in a recipe becomes progressively more and more pointless. Unlike fresh food, they will never ‘go off’, in the sense that they will become bad for you, they won’t go mouldy, swell up, turn green or make you ill. Which all adds to the temptation to leave them in the cupboard ‘just in case’.
What you really need to do is open those jars or packets up and have a good sniff. And before you say “I don’t know what they should all smell like”, that’s not the important thing here, you just need to check if there is a smell, scent or aroma of any kind. If you don’t think there’s anything there, then you can crush or grind some of it and see if that allows it to release any scent. You’re not just looking for a faint hint of it, you want a nice, strong burst of flavour.
If you don’t find that, then sadly, it’s time for the bin.
So, next time you go for a spice you’ve not used in ages, make sure you open it up, smell it, and if there’s nothing there, then CHUCK IT IN THE BIN! And for this small sacrifice, you will be rewarded with your food tasting even more fantastic than normal.
One last thing…
My last piece of advice is to look for a local independent food shop and see what spices they offer. Where I live there are lots of small grocers nearby whose range of herbs and spices is better quality and value than the big high street stores. These guys are all worth supporting.
Your dried herbs and spices checklist
