Thoughts on Spices

Nutley's Spice Jars

I have always been a little bit intimated by spices, and I didn't know much about them aside from a handful of recipes that I knew with very common spices. I am happy to now have the space to store more things, but I still did not want to buy all of the herbs and spices that I could find straight away. The main reason for this was that I knew that spices became less pungent over time, but also I did not want to become intimated by too many spices that I did not know how to cook with. So when I started building up a collection, I decided to buy my spices as and when I needed them.

Seedy

I like to get my spices from a world food shop (or the world food aisle in Sainsbury's), as they are much cheaper and have better variety. I made the mistake of buying a couple the small jars of spices from the spices and herbs section of my supermarket, but these are much more expensive than the bags of spices and in my opinion you are mainly just paying for the jar and brand. I purchased a set of 12 Nutley's 156ml spice jars from Amazon and a full pack of vinyl herb and spice labels, so that I could buy and store the cheaper bags of spices.

The spices in my kitchen that have been continuously used up and repurchased are black peppercorns, salt, chili powder, paprika and cinnamon. Then there are other spices, that maybe because of my taste, have been far more neglected and used only 2-3 time, such as cloves and fennel seeds. I think that decanting the spices into the same jars is a good way of realising which spices are used more and less.

I have become a massive spice geek and wanted to talk about them before I went on to any recipes, but I am still a bit of a novice and would love any advice on getting the best quality and spice.

Happy cooking xx