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by joseph | Oct 6, 2018 | Uncategorized

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Spices and Herbs 101

Are you looking forward to enhancing the taste of your recipes? Or are you a cooking enthusiast who would love to include something new and unique to your next recipes? If your answer is YES! Then you should think about getting your hands on some spices and herbs when next you visit the grocery store near you. The thing is, spices and herbs are not just unique for being 100% natural alone but they can also add the uniqueness both to your cooking and tasting experiences through their unique natural scents and flavors. These unique wonders of cooking come in different varieties which are readily available and at your finger tip in the market. They are in a position to provide you with amazing cooking results and dining table experience. In addition, you also get to enjoy a whole lot of additional health benefits attached to consuming spices and herbs along with your food. These are some of the primordial reasons why you should go for spices and herbs available for purchase in the market when next you shop. Try something new today!

What are spices and herbs?

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It might seems new to you but spices and herbs have been around and been used by a lots of people for thousands of years. They are some of the most convenient and highly medicinal natural cooking ingredients available for you to add depth, creativity and flavor into your food. And the most fascinating part about using herbs and spices is that it doesn’t only add unique flavors to your cooking, it also adds complexity to the foods that you consume in terms of nutritional and health value. Although nothing is infinite as we all know but being creative with different varieties of spices and herbs available in market can easily make you the master chef of your own kitchen. This is because when you brilliantly combine different species of spices and herbs available, what you get is close to pi meaning infinite possibilities as far as adding flavors to your food is concern. Therefore spices and herbs, although limited in species, the resulting flavors from combining them has no bound while you are trying to use them to enhance your dish.

However, spices available for you in market are in two categories. While some are fresh and juicy spices, other are dried in nature. It is now up to you to choose the most suitable type according to your occasion and menu. With this, you should be able to season food and add more unique flavor to your cooking. This method of enhancing the flavor of food is not in a position to create any negative impact on the nutrition, but to take you diet and creativity in cooking to a whole new level by adding the uniqueness that only spices and herbs can bring. With spices and herbs at your disposal while cooking, you will be able to retain the nutritional value of your food without coming across any frustrating side effects.

If you can play around with spices and herbs, you will surely end up having amazing results. You just need to have that gut to try and add the spice into that very dish when it is cooking. By so doing, you will be able to entirely improve the flavor of your next dish. So you see! The ability of spices and herbs to layer and balance the flavor while you cook can provide you with amazing results.

Storing spices and herbs

Remember that mostly all spices and herbs are 100% organic and therefore are susceptible to easy decay when not properly stored. So when you purchase spices and herbs to improve the taste of your food, be ready to take some appropriate steps to store them in order to avoid this. Usually, you might be able to store whole spices for an extended duration of time when compared to the ground spices.

However, you can easily do a quick quality check to determine whether the spice or herb is good enough to be used or not. The differences lie in the texture and aroma over time, all you need to do is to take a quick look at the natural aroma of the stored spices or herbs. If you cannot detect that aroma, your stored spices and herbs need to be replaced. In general, crushed spices last for a period of six months, whereas whole spices can last for about two years. Hence, it is preferable for you to live spices and herbs that you are not going to be using for long whole.

Additionally, your spices and herbs are better stored in dry and air tight Tupperwares or containers to ensure their protection and preservation for a long period of time. Also, fresh and juicy spices should be treated similarly before retiring them to the fridge.

How to use spices and herbs when cooking?

There are simple but specific techniques that you need to understand when playing around different spices and herbs at your disposal while cooking, in order to achieve amazing results. By following these techniques, you will surely be able to bring out the best results.

First of all, think about adding a pinch or a quarter teaspoon of spice per one pound of meat that you are about to prepare. And in a similar way, the same amount of spice is ideal to be added into a pint of liquid you need to cook the same volume of meat.
While using stronger seasonings such as garlic and red pepper, it is advisable for you to reduce the amount that you will be adding to your recipes. In such instance, you can use 1/8th of a teaspoon.
You should also keep in mind that grinded spices are in better position to release the flavor faster when compared to the whole spices. Therefore it is also advisable to take note of this in order to balance it out when you cook using either of the two.
If you are engaged with long cooking, it is recommended to use strong spices. In addition to that, you can also think about using mild herbs. However, herbs should be added at the end of cooking to get the best results.
When you are cooking, you should also understand that adding more of the spice is easier but fixing a messed up recipe when you have added too much of the spice is almost irretrievably difficult. You really need to be mindful of this so that you won’t mess things up and eventually get tired of the whole thing. For example, when you make the decision to double the recipe, you need to increase the amount of spices and herbs that you include by 1 ½ times. Then you will be able to add more taste to your recipe. That’s because cooking spices and cooking herbs are in a position to increase the overall volume of the recipe.

Now we both believe that you have a basic understanding about spices and herbs. With that in mind, you are encouraged to experiment cooking with them because the more you experiment the more you explore and the more you explore, the more you discover more new and unique flavors only spices and herbs can give to your cooking. To cap it all up, you get to experience large number of underlying health benefits, while you’re simply just trying to boost the flavor of foods that you consume. Isn’t that worth trying? Get started now!