Quick Guide to Spices

  Posted on February 23, 2010

My goal this year is to experiment a lot more with flavors I haven’t really used in recipes.  I feel like I am kind of in a rut and tend to stick with the flavors I am most comfortable with.  We’ll see if my little experiment results in a coup attempt in my family at dinner time.  More on that later…

One of the best areas to experiment is with spices.  A simple grilled boneless chicken breast can be made into something awesome with the right combination of spices that you should have in your cupboard at all times.  Last night I made a quick Southwestern rub for chicken with chili powder, cumin, garlic powder, salt and pepper.  Simple, delicious!

The key to successfully experiment with such spices is knowing what each spice brings to the mix.  To that end, the Kitchn wrote up this awesome quick guide to the most common spices.  There is no substitute for sticking your finger in there and TASTING the spices, but this is a good start.  Funny, I just followed a recipe the other day for yellow rice.  I hadn’t really used Tumeric before and once I was done with the recipe, couldn’t really taste it in the dish.  According to this guide, it’s used more for the color than flavor…makes sense.

Check out the great spice quick guide from theKitchn.com.