Great tasting food has to be seasoned and seasoned well. To achieve that, very chef and great cook has to have some good spices on hand. Freshness and quality of your seasonings, as with coffee, go a long way in determining the quality of your dried herbs and spices. Sure, you can save a little money by buying a huge container of paprika or ground cumin (or, *gasp*, pre-ground pepper), but you'll pay dearly in terms of quality.
It is very difficult to tell how fresh those spices are when you buy them, and unless you're cooking for a moderate-sized army, it's very easy to tell how fresh they'll be by the time you reach the bottom of the container: you might as well season your food with sand and sawdust. Thus, buy smaller containers more frequently, and when it's reasonable, try to buy whole products that you crush or grind yourself. Pepper mills (grinders) will grind more than pepper, if you have a few of them around to prevent mixing the flavors up, and a mortar and pestle or spice grinder (coffee grinder that doesn't get used to grind coffee but instead spices) can fill in every other gap.
Here's a list of twelve dry seasonings that belong in every kitchen where good food is being prepared:
- Cumin (whole and ground): Cumin seed is packed with flavor. A huge variety of Mexican, Indian, Moroccan, and Cuban dishes rely on cumin to deliver its mildly pungent, almost slightly smoky flavor to the dishes. It's very convenient to use in its ground form, allowing you to make incredible tacos without having to buy a spice packet filled mostly with salt, cumin, and chili powder, and so it's nice to have that on-hand. Whole cumin seeds, however, can be easily ground up or make an excellent addition to any kind of dish where they'll have plenty of time to cook and soften up: add them to soups or, particularly, to rice. By the way, cumin and black beans get together so well in the flavor department that you might not ever make black beans without them again once you try it.
- Ground cayenne pepper: This stuff is hot and has to be used with some caution! Since it's so hot, it's very unlikely that you'll use much of it at a time, and so definitely don't "save" money by buying a huge tub of it. It can be used to spice-up almost any dish (think again about those tacos!) without adding an overwhelmingly characteristic flavor. Used cautiously and very lightly, it's even good in hot cocoa (see this homemade hot cocoa recipe be able to save a little money and make your own).
- (Good) chili powder: Chili powder is a blend -- usually of dried chilies, maybe a variety of them, and ground cumin. It adds a beautiful depth of flavor to a wide variety of savory dishes, and as long as those tacos are in mind, good chili powder, ground cumin, a little black pepper, a little ground cayenne, and salt are pretty much all you need to make great tacos. If you add some dried oregano to that mix, they'll be perfect. The same basic idea, using far more chili powder than the other ingredients, serves as a fantastic base for unbelievably good chili. Very cheap, not very good chili powders are available out there (often in bulk quantities that will have very little flavor by the time you're done with them). Don't skimp, though. The Fresh Market's bulk chili powder is actually quite good (for fairly low prices), and despite the "bulk" word there, it tends to be quite fresh and comes in fairly small plastic bags in their spice rack.
- Seasoned salt: It seems weird and non-gourmet to recommend seasoned salt (like Lawry's) as a must-have seasoning, but think about it this way: someone that knows a thing or two about blending spices has already come up with a good blend and offered it to you. It makes up in convenience what it lacks in glamor or even in freshness (though being mixed with salt helps that issue somewhat). It gives food that little something extra sometimes without having to work too hard on it. You could, of course, make your own too. Most seasoned salts are just mixtures of paprika, salt, garlic and onion powders, and possibly some ground herbs or cayenne pepper. Play with the proportions until you get a blend you like and use that instead. If you get it right, it will be better than any commercially available product.
- Red pepper flakes: Usually these are made of cayenne pepper, but their use is different enough to make them land in a category all their own. If added early-on in a dish, the effect they create is quite similar to that of ground cayenne pepper, but if added just at the end or sprinkled over the top of a finished dish, they add little piquant bites into the experience that can be quite good. These are also available in specialty types as well, featuring certain peppers such as chile de arbol, habanero, and chilpotle (smoked jalepenos) for examples. These are an absolute must-have. Even if they don't make food spicy hot (by using them lightly), they add an important depth to the flavor.
- Garlic powder: Garlic is great and should be used in many, many dishes, but garlic powder doesn't taste quite the same as fresh garlic and has uses that fresh garlic has a hard time competing with -- plus it is one of the most convenient flavor enhancers to have on-hand -right now-, particularly when you're trying to adjust the flavor of a great soup at the end and feel like it just needs that little something extra to be perfect. Don't discount this stuff!
- Cinnamon (powder): I can't imagine a kitchen without cinnamon, even though its use in many savory dishes is quite limited (there are some good ones). It makes appearances in desserts of almost every variety and is a beautiful accent to gourmet coffee, hot cocoa, and even plays well as the center stage in nice, cold milk-based drinks (cinnamon smoothie or milkshake, anyone?).
- Various dried herbs: Dried rosemary, thyme, basil, and oregano are very nice to have around when trying to make almost anything. Fresh herbs are great, better in many respects even, than their dried counterparts, but they're typically seasonal (except rosemary) and expensive to buy fresh if you don't grow your own. They are powerful flavor-boosters, and should definitely find their way into every spice rack.
- Bay leaves: Bay (laurel) leaves add beatiful flavor to every sort of soup or stew, but don't forget to remove them when you're done cooking since they're very tough (even after boiling for several hours) and aren't too friendly in the mouth or if swallowed in large pieces.
- Good paprikas: Examiner.com readers already learned quite a bit about good paprika(s) in a recent article on the topic (see the link). Paprika is a special kind of pepper, so this spice is akin to ground cayenne, but its flavor is very different and distinct. It is available in a variety of ways as well: sweet, bittersweet, and hot, and any of those can be smoked or not. Definitely see the article in the link and don't be cheap with this stuff. You'll thank me later.
- Whole black pepper: Obvious. You can and should be grinding this yourself with a hand-held pepper mill as it needs to be used. The difference is subtle but important because many of the peppercorn's volatile oils (which give it its flavor) evaporate very quickly, leaving your pre-ground pepper tasting flat and sandy. For a special treat, pick up some Tellicherry black pepper (available at The Fresh Market and at other upscale grocery stores). It is quite famous for being near the top in quality of black pepper. Other colors of pepper, incidentally, come from the same plant but see different processing and have very different flavors (much like the various kinds of teas).
- Salt: This last item on the list is so overwhelmingly obvious that it was almost left off. Salt makes everything taste better, as long as it isn't overused, because the salt solution in your food actually increases the ability of your taste buds to taste the flavors of your foods! In other words, salt makes your food taste more like your food! Salt also comes in a variety of types as well, ranging from table salt (often iodized, which changes its flavor slightly), to Kosher (which is great for sticking to meats and which is not iodized), to colorful gourmet salts from oceans and mountainsides all across the world. While each of these tastes a little different, the reality is that they all taste predominantly very salty, so pick as you will, primarily for garnishing (although different salts contain different trace minerals that may or may not have a marginal health benefit justifying costing twenty or thirty times as much).
Buy them locally! Most of these spices can be obtained locally at either Knoxville's upscale grocery stores like The Fresh Market or Earth Fare, and many of them can be purchased in good quality at Knoxville-area grocery stores. The smoked paprika, in particular, is available at the upscale groceries. As a worthwhile note, the Knoxville-area T.J. Maxx stores frequently have a selection of premium and gourmet dry seasonings in their small gourmet-foods area, which is a must-check part of the store on every visit. The great paprika and excellent-quality gourmet red pepper flakes (as well as gourmet salts, peppercorns, and spice blends) are frequently available at great reduced prices. Whole spices and those sealed in a can require a very long time to go lose their potency, so don't be shy about how T.J. Maxx gets their merchandise.
For more great recipes and cooking ideas, follow the Knoxville Gourmet Food Examiner by subcribing at the top of the page. You can also read more on his personal cooking blog: The Untrained Gourmet.
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