Herbs and Spices
The quick answer: Improve the taste of wholesome foods by mastering the use of spices.
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Spice Traditions
It’s not necessarily a good thing, but the food companies are quite inventive. Walk the aisles of your grocery store and you’ll find many new food-like concoctions. The rate at which new foods appear is a phenomenon of our time. But there’s one aisle that for millennia is little changed—the spice aisle.
The spice aisle fascinates me. It brings to mind caravans of camels treading the ancient trails of the Silk Road. Most everything in the spice aisle meets our century rule: Avoid processed food products that haven’t been around at least a century.
There’s a book, The Flavor Bible where the spice affinities of famous chefs have been summarized. I turn to it when composing recipes. Want to bake pears for dinner? The book suggests these complementary flavors: almonds, blue cheese, cinnamon/cloves, dark chocolate, honey, or orange.
As a novice cook, spice combinations fascinate me: You can’t make a bad soup with bay leaf, thyme, and parsley. Curry (a blend of cumin, coriander, ginger, and turmeric) is the dominant spice mixture for Asian cooking. The French have their Herbs de Provence (marjoram, basil, rosemary, fennel, sage and savory). How about our use of vanilla, cinnamon and nutmeg for desserts? We’re going beyond salt and pepper here.
The use of spices is one measure of a cook’s skill. It’s easy to flavor food with sugar, salt, or a hunk of meat. But it’s the exceptional cook who can create flavors by combining spices. The goal of this post is to encourage you to expand your use of spices.
McCormick’s Folly
McCormick won the spice war but they got too greedy. Walk through the spice aisle of any supermarket and it’s all McCormick. I suspect their dominance is due to the practice of “slotting fees,” where the stores basically rent their shelf space. Little guys can’t afford to play this game so the big guys win and when that happens, prices start rising.
But visit Trader Joe’s, Sprouts, or Whole Foods. You won’t find McCormick. It’s a new world, there are different brands, and spices are much cheaper. So buy your spices at the alternate markets. Or if you want a lot of cinnamon, like 10.7 oz worth, try Costco. We talked about spices in this aisle visit.
Benefits of Spices
Spices are rich in antioxidants and anti-inflammatory compounds beneficial to health. The spices with the most proven health benefits include cinnamon, chili peppers, turmeric, garlic, oregano, basil, thyme, and rosemary. Though the health benefits are not fully researched, it seems a wise thing to include a variety of spices in your diet. For one thing, they can make vegetables tastier and one of the challenges of healthy eating is to consume more veggies.
Healthy Change
Please comment: Share your experience with adding spices to your diet. Have a favorite spice? Let us know about what you’re doing.
Friday, November 23, 2012 at 2:39PM | by Skip Hellewell | 10 Comments | 9 References | Share Article | in healthy change | Email Article
Reader Comments (10)
If you really want to save a bundle on spices, try your local health food store. If the store is busy, the spices will be fresher (more turn-over) and MUCH cheaper than what you buy in the little bottles at the store--even Costco! You can even reduce waste by bringing your own old empty spices jars or bottles, having them weighed ahead of time, then filling and paying the difference in weight at the checkout line.
Up until a few years ago I had never really used spices other than salt. Occasionally I pulled out some oregano or basil for recipe, and rarely some curry. Now I am using spices far more often. I am still learning the different tastes and how they blend together, but it is fun! We are expanding our taste for spices and new foods. Last night I made a broccoli cheddar soup and it called for a touch of nutmeg added at the end. It did add just a bit more flavor to it.
We have Penzey's locally and mail order, and a Colorado Based company, Savory Spice ( local and mail order) that we can buy from. I appreciate being able to buy as little as a quarter of an ounce for many of the ones I only need once or very little of.
I keep a recycled container of my own "house spice" mix. It's one part black pepper, one part granulated garlic, one part smoked paprika and two parts sea salt. I use it on most everything, and mixed it with a equal part of a Mrs. Dash Lemon Pepper (no salt added) to season our Thanksgiving turkey inside and out this year. It was my best bird to date!
I really love Costco's Organic No-Salt Seasoning blend. It tastes great on everything. Last night I put it into a simple soup with homemade chicken broth and veggies and couldn't believe how good it tasted. It's similar to Trader Joe's 21-Seasoning Salute.
I've mentioned this before, but it's important to be aware of hidden ingredients in the spice isle. A lot of spice blends contain MSG hiding under names like, "Hydrolyzed," "yeast extract," "natural flavors." The seasoning packets are particularly bad. It's frustrating because people thinking they're cooking something healthy from scratch but they're actually adding the same harmful ingredients as the food processors.
This was a really good post. I've been thinking a lot about spices lately. I'm trying to use a lot of mine up because they're not that fresh after a while and most of mine I bought when I was first married. (Only 4 years ago, but still.) What I'd like to start doing is buying fresh (when in season), growing some of my own and in either case drying them myself or buying the tougher to find/grow ones whole and grinding them up myself. I once read a post about the fact that the FDA does not have regs on spices. So often in the case of ground spices bits of dust and even hair can be found. (Hence why I'd like to do this myself!) Plus I don't have any clue how long those expensive little jars have been on the shelf anyway before I even bought them!
I grate fresh nutmeg into hot cereal along with cinnamon, cardamom, and a pinch of sea salt.
I just did a thorough purge of my spice collection and am excited to have the timely recommendation of forgoing the grocers and purchasing at the health food store. Thanks!
I discovered tarragon this summer - so good with carrots, chicken, pasta and parsley casserole. I think it also calls for chopped onions and garlic cooked in butter. We tried saffron for the first time for Valentine's Day; a huge dissapointment. Used a recipe from online that varied widely from traditional uses. I read in a book about turn of the century cooking (1890's) that lentils should always be cooked with a bit of marjoram. I think it was marjoram. Haven't tried it yet though. Another new to me recipe for pizza soup calls for freshly crushed fennel seeds - so good, and the smell is wonderful. I get busy with other things though and forget to use these great herbs sometimes. I've use a mortar and pestle to squash ginger root and then squeezed the juice out of the pulp over a pan of stir fried vegetables, but you get more flavor if you just chop the ginger root finely and add the whole pieces to the food. We have rosemary, chives, sage, and (little leaf that is so good in chicken pie? Thyme.) in the backyard and would like to add more herbs to the collection. They come up every year. The rosemary is especially hardy. Raspberry leaves when dried make a nice tea.
So I am a latecomer to your site, but my husband and I are trying to adopt some healthier living practices to better follow the word of wisdom and I have just been loving your site. Maybe I am just missing it, but is there somplace you have a simple list of the Healthy Changes? Or do we just need to read through the articles. I appreciate all the work you hve put into this- thank you so much!
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