10. Using Spices

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Spices are one of the best tools that home cooks have in their toolkit— they’re a super easy way to add a ton of flavor to your food and customize the flavor profile of what you’re cooking. All with almost no additional effort!

Think of a roasted chicken. You could add cumin + coriander for a Middle Eastern vibe, smoked paprika + garlic for a Spanish profile, chile powder + cumin + garlic + oregano for a Mexican spin, or turmeric + ginger for something South Asian. Same core ingredient, totally different flavor profiles. That’s the magic of spices.

Spices are an incredible time-saving, flavor-boosting resource for home cooks. They add flavor, enhance existing ingredients, and help to define the identity and flavor profile of a dish.

In this lesson we’ll explore how spices work, which ones to keep on hand, and how to use them to transform your cooking.

Before we dive into the world of spices, there’s one thing that I think is really important to understand, and that’s the difference between spices and salt.

There’s a pervasive myth in cooking that everything should be seasoned with salt and pepper—they’re treated as a kind of all-purpose pair. This couldn’t be further from the truth.

As we’ve gone over already in this course, salt is a mineral. It’s in a category of its own. Salt enhances existing flavors in food and makes food taste more like itself. Foods that are unsalted often taste flat, whereas foods that are properly salted have sharper, more acute flavors. Pepper (aka black peppercorn) is a spice. It belongs in the same category as cumin, turmeric, paprika, bay leaf, and hundreds of other spices. The key difference you need to understand is that salt enhances existing flavors in food. Spices add flavor to food.

Spices each have distinct flavors, and they impart those flavors onto the food they’re paired with. Pairing salt & pepper is like pairing salt & paprika or salt & cumin. Sure, there are many dishes where they’re both used, but they serve completely different purposes. When you add salt and pepper to a dish, you’re simultaneously enhancing existing flavors (salt) and adding new flavor (pepper). You might occasionally want to do this, but it’s much better to add them separately, since you have more control over how each one is used! This is a big part of the reason why I try to seek out spices and spice blends that don’t have any salt added. I like to wield those tools separately.

Salt is a tool that you use on its own every time you’re cooking something. It’s the key ingredient that we use to draw out and enhance the flavor of the food we’re cooking. Spices are optional, and they’re something you use when you want to add a specific flavor profile to food.

There are two factors that you need to consider when buying spices— quality and freshness. Spices will transform your cooking, but you’ll only get the best results if you buy good spices that are fresh.

I actually started a spice company with my brother several years ago, so I’m quite familiar with how the spice industry operates. Unfortunately, the vast majority of spices that you’ll find in most grocery stores are low-quality, stale spices that are often irradiated or sprayed with chemicals. A lot of these spices are mass-produced, sourced at scale, and generally lack any depth of flavor. If you contrast those with some of the single-origin, small-scale spices sourced from really good farms, you’ll be blown away at the difference. This isn’t to say that you have to break the bank to source spices— there are many good companies that sell at reasonable prices. But the difference in flavor between high-quality and low-quality spices is huge, and you will notice it in your cooking.

The other factor is freshness. While spices are shelf-stable, they’re still a fresh product and their quality degrades significantly over time. This is especially true of pre-ground spices since they oxidize faster. With the big spice companies, you don’t know how long those spices have been sitting in storage or on grocery store shelves. Sourcing from the right places ensures that you’re getting fresh product.

My Favorite Places To Buy Spices:

• Burlap & Barrel

This is my personal favorite source for spices. Almost everything is single-origin and extremely fresh, and they track down incredible heirloom varietals of spices whose flavors are unmatched.

• Diaspora Co

Diaspora is another great company whose sourcing is on point. Their spices primarily come from India, and they have a great selection.

• La Boite

Lior Lev Sercarz, the owner of La Boite, is a chef who has dedicated his whole career to spices. He makes some of the best blends I’ve tried— he’s even crafted custom blends for the likes of Eric Ripert, Mike Solomonov, and a bunch of other top chefs.

• Smith & Truslow

Smith and Truslow’s selection is 100% organic, and they put a big emphasis on the fact that all of their spices are freshly ground prior to shipping. When I tried them I noticed a significant difference in flavor and pungency as a result.

• Spicewalla

Spicewalla is out of Asheville, NC, and they have a great selection. They generally grind fresh before shipping, and they also have some great blends.

• SOS Chefs

SOS Chefs is an OG shop that caters to the NYC chef scene. I haven’t purchased much from their online store, but I visit their brick and mortar every time I’m in NYC. If you happen to be in town, it’s a super fun place to check out.

Given that spices degrade over time, it’s important to store them properly and to actually use them. Those three-year-old spices in the back of your cabinet are, unfortunately, not viable. Old spices won’t make you sick, but their flavors will go almost completely flat.

In general, whole spices stay good for about 1-2 years, while ground spices are good for about 6 months (provided these spices are properly stored).

Light, heat, moisture, and oxygen are the enemies of spices. Keep them in a cool, dark place in airtight containers (ideally glass ones) and they’ll store well. Proper storage is especially important for pre-ground spices, since they start to oxidize more quickly after being ground.

The question of whether to source whole or ground spices mostly comes down to convenience. Whole spices offer slightly better flavor, but pre-ground spices and blends offer a lot more convenience.

If you want to experience spices at their absolute best, you should source fresh, whole spices and grind them yourself right before use. This is worth doing at some point in your life— the flavor and aroma you get from freshly ground spices is incredible, and it’s worth seeking out some really good stuff to give it a try.

However, convenience is also a big factor here. As I mentioned before, one of the things I like most about spices is that they’re a low-effort way to add flavor to your food, and they give you an easy tool to explore different flavor profiles. This ease of use really only comes from pre-ground spices. And there is no shame in using them— as long as you source fresh spices from reputable companies and use them in a reasonable amount of time, you’ll get plenty of flavor from pre-ground spices.

I’m also a huge fan of blends. Bang for your buck, they are possibly the most useful and low-effort tool for home cooks to easily add complexity and new flavor profiles to their food. They add almost no overhead to the cooking process, but they allow you to add a bunch of flavor and customize the flavor profile of whatever you’re cooking. You can make these yourself or just buy pre-made blends— there are plenty of great options out there.

My suggestion for starting out is to find a few great blends from places like Burlap & Barrel or La Boite. Pick some flavor profiles you like and learn to use them in different ways. I personally prefer blends that don’t have salt in them— that allows you to use a lot more of the blend and manage your salt separately.

Don’t Overthink It

My first piece of advice for using spices is to not overthink it. Oftentimes a recipe will call for a specific spice blend, and people think they need to use those exact same spices in those exact same proportions. This is rarely the case. Instead, just focus on using what you have and matching the general flavor profile of what you’re cooking (see the section below for some ideas).

This is another reason to use spices and salt separately— as long as you’re not adding salt at the same time as you add spices, you rarely need exact measurements.

Taste As You Go

The above being said, this only works if you taste as you go! Don’t add all of your spices in at once. Add in a bit, taste the dish, and adjust as needed based on what you perceive.

Spice In Stages

Similarly to salt, spices need time to permeate the food that you’re cooking. In addition, the flavor profile of spices develops and changes as they cook. By adding them in stages and tasting throughout the cooking process, you’ll land on a better final flavor profile.

Adding spices earlier in the cooking process tends to result in more developed, stronger flavors.

Blooming and Toasting

There are two additional things you can do to really dial up the aroma, flavor, and intensity of spices— blooming and toasting.

Blooming is the process of briefly cooking whole or ground spices in hot oil. The heat unlocks additional flavor, and the oil unlocks a whole array of fat-soluble flavor compounds. Whenever I’m building a base of aromatics for a dish, I like to add my ground spices directly to the aromatic/oil mixture to allow them to bloom. For example, if I’m starting a dish by sautéing some onions and garlic, I’ll add the spices directly to that mixture. This allows the spices to bloom in the heat and oil. You can also bloom spices directly in oil at the start of the cooking process. This both unlocks additional flavor and aroma and infuses the oil with the flavor of the spices. Just be careful because spices can burn easily.

The other way to activate these additional flavors and aromas is through toasting your spices in a dry skillet. Any heavy-bottomed pan will work— just heat it over medium heat and toast your spices briefly until give off a toasty aroma and start to darken slightly.

One thing to note here— if you’re toasting multiple spices at once, make sure to add the larger spices first, as they’ll take longer to toast than the smaller ones.

The spices you use on a regular basis, like the rest of what’s in your pantry, is deeply personal and reflective of the flavors and cuisines you most prefer. There are so many different spices out there, so there’s a lot of room for experimentation and trying new things.

I personally like to keep a set of core spices around that I find myself using often, and then I’ll usually grab something new every time I place an order so that I can experiment with some different flavors. In addition, I always have a few good spice blends on deck for easy flavor building.

My Personal Favorite Spices

• Black Pepper: Adds mild heat and depth. Very versatile.
• Cumin: Warm and earthy, it's a staple in Middle Eastern, Indian, and Mexican cooking.
• Paprika: Comes in sweet, smoked, or hot varieties, all of which are delicious.
• Cinnamon: Warm and slightly sweet, great for savory and sweet dishes.
• Turmeric: Earthy and slightly bitter.
• Chili Powder or Flakes: For heat and complexity.
• Garlic Powder: Perfect for adding depth when fresh garlic isn't practical.

Spice Blends

As I mentioned before, I think that spice blends are the holy grail of convenience for home cooks.

• Burlap & Barrel (I love Smoke & Garlic, Adobo, and their Chile Blend, among many others).
• La Boite (I love Za’atar, Bluegrass, and Ararat, among others)

Spices By Cuisine

This list is not exhaustive, by any means, but it can be a helpful resource as you think about general flavor profiles (either for making your own blends, or when substituting various spices in a recipe).

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