Cooking Tips

10 tips to spruce up your spice rack

Syeda Farid, a registered dietitian at Swedish Covenant Hospital, not only teaches other the benefits of a balanced diet and healthy foods, she also lives by these rules.

Here are some spicy tips that she has picked up both on the job and in her kitchen:

1. Always store herbs and spices in tightly sealed glass containers.

2. Keep them in a cool, dry, dark spot to retain their freshness.

3. Put a piece of masking tape on your containers with the date the spice or herb was purchased, to keep track of freshness.

4. Throw out and replace any dried herbs and spices with little or no distinct fragrance.

5. To release more flavor and aroma from dried leafy herbs, crumble them between your fingers or use a mortar and pestle or a coffee grinder.

6. In dishes that require a long cooking time, such as soups or stews, add fresh herbs toward the end of cooking.

7. For chilled dishes, add fresh herbs several hours ahead of chilling time so flavors blend well.

8. When measuring quantities of herbs for a recipe, the general rule is three parts fresh equals one part dry.

9. For fresh, leafy herbs, like basil, tear the leaves, rather than chopping with a knife, to prevent blackening.

10. Avoid overwhelming a dish with seasonings. A few simple herbs bring out the flavor of food without confusing your taste buds.

Fresh v. dried; Spice v. herb — What’s the difference?

Seasonings
Technically, seasonings are dehydrated vegetables, but seasoning blends sold in stores tend to be mixtures of spices and herbs.

Spices
Spices come from the bark (cinnamon), root (ginger, onion, garlic), buds (cloves, saffron), seed (yellow mustard, poppy, sesame), berry (black pepper) or fruit (allspice, paprika) of tropical plants and trees.

Herbs
Herbs are leaves of low-growing shrubs, like parsley, chives, marjoram, thyme, basil, caraway, dill, oregano, rosemary, savory, sage and celery leaves.

Dried herbs
Dried herbs are less expensive than fresh herbs. They last a long time in airtight jars and a large variety are available year-round. They also are easily combined to make a unique seasoning blend and are ready to use right out of the jar. However, they have less flavor, aroma and nutritional value than fresh herbs.

Fresh herbs
Fresh herbs are usually very fragrant, pungent and add a great deal of flavor to the dishes they season. They also have very high vitamin values. However, they come in fewer varieties, are only available at certain times of the year, tend to be expensive and have a short shelf life. They must also be prepared before eating; many varieties require roasting, crushing, plucking from stem, washing or chopping.

This article was originally printed in Well magazine, the precursor to this site, in May 2009. Written and edited by the editorial staff of Well magazine and Well Community.

• Login
• Comment