Ingredient expert Jack Bishop tells you everything you need to know about buying and storing spices.
Learn more about our favorite spice storage:
ABOUT US: Located in Boston’s Seaport District in the historic Innovation and Design Building, America’s Test Kitchen features 15,000 square feet of kitchen space including multiple photography and video studios. It is the home of Cook’s Illustrated magazine and Cook’s Country magazine and is the workday destination for more than 60 test cooks, editors, and cookware specialists. Our mission is to test recipes over and over again until we understand how and why they work and until we arrive at the best version.
If you like us, follow us:
22 Comments
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
The “sniff test” is actually inversely proportional to the size of the schnoz…
The way he almost died sniffing that ginger too hard made me crack up. I felt that way too often. It's instant regrets in a jar
The thumbnail leads you to believe there will be a comparison of grinder models.
2:21 Tip: never use a blade grinder for coffee unless you're super hard up. Invest in a good burr grinder for a consistent grind size – especially if you buy quality beans – because those blade grinders are atrocious for that purpose. You'll have everything from dust size powder to large chunks, which means some of your coffee will be over extracted and some will be under extracted, and you'll be prone to clogging and inconsistent flow through the coffee bed.
Another way to keep fresh spices on hand is to buy them in small quantities. I’m never going to empty a whole spice jar’s worth of some spices like cloves that I love but infrequently use. I don’t know how available they in other parts of the country, but Spicely sells a wide variety of quality organic spices in small 0.45 oz boxes. It’s a pricey way to buy herbs and spices you use all the time like oregano and cinnamon, but it makes more sense than buying a whole bottle of something used so infrequently that most of it is bound to go stale. I just dump my Spicely box contents into an old jar I’m refilling or into a new one.
What's the difference in quality between a $1-2 jar vs a $10 jar?
The rice-cleaning method is clever!
When shopping how do I know that they haven’t been siting on the shelf in store for a year?
I lost my sense of smell last year. I love cooking and don’t know when I’ll be able to smell spices again. I threw away a new bottle of Italian seasoning because it didn’t have any smell. (My friend got it out of trash and passed it around so everyone could see it was fine.) for now, I’ll go by the date.
The big rule when cracking spices, don’t think of your ex while doing so. 😎
Lame
and been unable to tip out as the entirety has moved as a block within the "Plastic" … Egads!!
Popped out quick and bought a new "Bottle" of fresh for my sweet Nana …none the wiser- phew!
Have you ever opened a stored jar of, let's use Ground Ginger as the example,
If I did the sniff test like Jack did with the ginger, I'd be sneezing up a storm.
Great advice (as always from ATK). I'm wondering if there is another alternative to the plastic-lidded spice grinder like the Krups that you show in the video. If you're grinding anything hard, these things add some of the plastic your grinds. I don't worry about that for coffee because with a filter or even a press, little if any of it ends up in my cup. But with spices it goes right into the food. A morter and pestle is ideal but just too tedious for weeknight meal prep. Any ideas?
I just use a small natural bristle brush to clean out the grinder and maybe a damp cloth as well… my brush is round in shape.
Love the rice cleaning tip!!!! 😀
if you are using that crappy grinder for coffee… you are doing it wrong. That is a spice grinder.
Love this. Great tip to date your spices! Thank you. If you think your spice grinder is dirty you should see my coffee grinder! Lol
Another Repeat
mortar and pestle are the best assuming you don't mind the physical work
Can you do a video on the difference between all the different chili sauces because theres a lot of them on the market and it’s hard to tell the difference between Thai sweet chili homemade style chili sauce Hines has they’re own sauce brand chili sauce and a million more I would love some help with this! Love y’all’s videos!