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.