The Lazy Genius Podcast - #183 - The Lazy Genius Guide to Spices

Episode Date: November 9, 2020

Spices are pretty important in cooking obviously, so let’s demystify a few things — what they’re good for, what to have on hand, how to use them, and how to store them. And we’ll run through what could be your essential spice cabinet. Stuff Mentioned Here’s a guide to spices by cuisine that can help you as you determine what needs to be in your spice cabinet. Lazy Genius Change Your Life Shawarma Download a transcript of this episode. This podcast is hosted by Kendra Adachi and executive produced by Kendra Adachi, Jenna Fischer and Angela Kinsey. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey everybody, welcome to the lazy genius podcast. I'm Kendra Adachi and I am here to help you be a genius about the things that matter and lazy about the things that don't. Today is episode 183, the lazy genius guide to spices. I get asked about spices so often, so we're going to tackle all the essential things in this episode. Spices are pretty important in cooking, obviously. So I just want to demystify a few things. It's a hard word. And also run through what could be in your own, like, spice cabinet. Okay. So today we are going to talk about what spices are good for, what you should have, how to use them, how to store them, and then a couple of, like, final tips. So first, we're talking herbs and spices. What are they good for? Three main things. Flavor, color, and variety.

Flavor makes sense, right? The stuff in your spice cabinet makes food taste a certain way, which definitely comes in handy when you're cooking. The second one is color. I think this one gets overlooked, but it is super important. We all know or have heard at least that we eat with our eyes too. And a lot of the vibrant color that you might get in certain foods, it comes from spices like chili powder or turmeric. Also, those little flex of oregano and a red spaghetti sauce, it has the tiniest bit of color contrast. It's just kind of pleasing to the eye too, unless you're my kids. And then you think that, like,

flex of anything are essentially my attempts at destroying all that is good in this world, but that's okay. And then the third thing that herbs and spices are good for is variety, as in adding variety to the same ingredient. Okay, so a piece of chicken that is seasoned with cumin and coriander is very different from a piece of chicken seasoned with fennel seed and black pepper. You could cook the chicken in the exact same way. But changing out those spices, it adds so much variety, right? So that's the basics of like what spices are good for. No big surprises there. All right. So second, what spices should you have? All right. I think this is probably where you're expecting to get a list, right? I'm not going to give you one. Sorry. Actually not, but let me tell you why. You like different things than I do.

like you and your people enjoy different flavors than the people who live next door to you. So it's really important that you choose your own essential spices. It's only essential if you use it. We've learned that with kitchen tools and ingredients and all kinds of things. It doesn't matter if someone else says something is essential. It's only worth storing it if you're going to use it, which is why it's good to make your own list. Okay. Now, I will tell you how to do that or how you could do that. I want you to think about the cuisines that you like to eat. Okay. If you cook a lot of Mexican food or Indian food or Chinese food or Italian food, you need certain herbs and spices to adequately capture the flavor you're going for. So if there is a cuisine that you just like don't do very much, don't store spices for that cuisine, at least not like the full spectrum, right? You don't need

every single kind of chili powder if you barely use one. So here's what I would recommend. There is a link in the show notes from a like a spice blog or whatever. It is a resource that has spices listed by cuisine. Okay. What I would encourage you to do is to scroll that and note what kinds of cuisines that you enjoy cooking and see what spices are good to have on hand for that. So it could be that you have what you need for what you already cook and then you can just let go of the pressure that you feel to have more than you have. It could also be that you learn something like you've always wanted to cook Chinese food, but you can't figure out why your stir fry just tastes like soy sauce. And maybe it's because you've never gotten Chinese five spice, which is pivotal. It's like the main spice blend used

for Chinese flavors, but you don't have it. And so your food's not going to taste like what you think. So this resource, I feel like, could be really helpful to name what you need based on what you already cook and enjoy eating. So again, that link is going to be in the show notes. So for example, for my family, we go pretty hard for Indian food. So I have all of those spices. I've got cardam, allspice, coriander, paprika, cumin, turmeric, all of it. Sometimes you guys hold fast. I even toast and grind my own seeds sometimes. But that's because we love Indian food and make it a lot. And the flavor of that matters, right?

Now, half the cuisines on the list that I just mentioned, I never make them. And I probably won't for a long while. So there's no need for me to have most of those spices around. Like Thai food, for example, I personally really love Thai food. But peanuts are so integral to Thai cooking and my son is allergic. So we just like, we just don't cook Thai food. So I don't need to have lemon grass around, you know? So you choose what is essential to you.

If you use it, it is essential. If you don't, it is clutter. Next up. How to use herbs and spices. One thing that I feel like doesn't get talked about enough is that herbs and spices really need fat to make the biggest difference in your dish. If you put a handful of dried oregano into a pan of tomato sauce, like just straight into the tomatoes.

It'll make the sauce taste like oregano for sure. That's great. But if you put it into the olive oil, along with the garlic and the red pepper flake, before you add the tomatoes, it's different. You create a depth of flavor that kind of permeates the entire sauce,

you know, sauce pan. Fat is a flavor distributor. It brings everything to life. So I want you to think about how you can add herbs and spices to recipes directly into the fat. That alone is like the most game-changing tip when it comes to herbs and spices. Another question that comes up a lot in how you use herbs and spices is fresh versus dried. Okay, so fresh leafy herbs like basil, parsley, that kind of thing, versus their dried counterparts.

Or you could think about it like fresh whole spices, like whole cumin seeds or cardamom pods or peppercorns as opposed to spices that have already been ground, okay? Thinking about that fresh versus dry. Here's what you need to know about that. Fresh, fresh always has a better flavor than dried. I think like always. Freshly ground cumin seeds taste better than what comes ground straight out of the jar. Adding fresh basil to a tomato sauce as opposed to dried basil is a different ballgame, right?

but does that mean that the dried or ground version is worse and you should never do it? Not even close. I use cumin and spices out of the jar 95% of the time. Occasionally I will toast and grind my own when I really want the flavor to feel special or have the time or whatever. But that doesn't mean that the alternative isn't special. It's still delicious. It's still great. So here is your permission to use whatever you have and whatever makes you get into the kitchen with confidence. I think that's the key. If cooking with fresh basal brings you joy because it's so pretty, it's, you know, you like, it's like fresh and vibrant and you like chopping it or whatever, then you use fresh basil. If cooking with dried basil brings you joy,

because it's easy to open a jar and be done with it, then use dried basil. Name what matters about how you cook before making big judgments or decisions on fresh versus dried herbs and spices, like all the time always. Like, I'm only always going to use fresh. I'm only always going to use dry. Name what matters about it. You can do that about spices too. Great news. The federal EV rebate is back.

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Okay, three parts fresh for one part dried because the dried is just stronger. So one, and it's smaller. If you think about it, like if you cram fresh basil into a tablespoon measure and then you do a tablespoon of dried basil, it's like not, it's not even the same. So it's three to one. So that would mean one tablespoon of fresh basil equals one teaspoon of dried basil since there are three teaspoons and one tablespoon. Three to one. Now, if you toast and grind your own spices, like I just said, the amounts stay the same, right, as if you're just spooning it out from like a jar. You just get a bigger punch of flavor. So there's no ratio for the spices. There is for the herbs.

Okay. Next up. How to store them. All right, there are a couple of rules here, and then you get to decide from there. So first, they need to be airtight to get their longest life. Really, you guys, just keeping spices in their jars is your best bet in most cases, because they're already packaged in a way that prolongs their life as much as possible. Sometimes it feels like you should have some beautiful bespoke spice container

and a wooden mortar and pestle on your counter to be a real cook or for it to count. But you don't. Like you don't. Spice jars can be mismatched and in a drawer or a cabinet and be as good and helpful as anything else. So just keep them airtight. Really, their jars that they come in are great for that. Now, a couple of other storage thoughts for you because the biggest rule here is access.

You have to have access to your spices. You want to be able to find what you need. when you need it and see what you need when you need to see it. So many of us have double and even triples of spices because we can't find the one we already have. So a couple of things to think about for this. Wherever your spices are stored, try and make it so that you can see them all and what they are at about the same time, like at a glance, right? So let's say you have all your spices on like a lazy Susan spinning in a cabinet, you know, you spin them and see them. So you can see the ones on the outside as you spend, but you can't see the ones on the inside of the circle, right?

So they get lost. You need to make them so they're not lost. You need to see everything. Maybe you have them, your spices, like in a drawer like I do, like a pull-out drawer. And so they're like sitting on their butts. They're not label up. They're not lying on their sides. They're just like, you know, stacked like you'd buy them in the store.

So you open the drawer, but you have to pick each one up to know what it is, which can drive. a human crazy pants. So for that, for access for that, you can write on the cap with a Sharpie what the spice is so that you can see what it is at a glance. Another great kind of at a glance idea is to use a clear shoe organizer, like one of those little pocket things over the back of a pantry door if you have a pantry so that you can see all your spices at once and see the label. See, that's the thing. That's the rule here. You want to be able to see what you have at a glance so you can find what you need easily and then not buy something that you already have or think that you don't have it because you can't find it. So within that system, you can organize by

cuisine like we talked about alphabetically, not at all. You know, like it doesn't really matter how they're organized in that way. It just needs to be what serves you well within the rule of you need to be able to see what it is without picking everything up at the same time. And then just a couple of final tips before we go that don't really fit in any of those categories. I think that it is better to spend more per ounce on a smaller jar of like a lesser used spice than it is to spend more money and get a better deal, but also have to store a larger jar of spices that's probably going to go old before you use them all. We are trained, and I think hopefully so in a lot of ways, to check the cost per ounce of something. That's why we love Costco, you guys. Everything is so cheap per

ounce or per unit compared to other stores. But also, now you have to store a five gallon jug of oil that was 20 cents an ounce instead of 24 cents an ounce for something that actually fits in your cabinet, right? Sometimes it's better to spend less money on like a smaller, item that is not as good of a deal, right? It's more money per ounce, but it's less money and it takes up less space than to spend your money on a big one and get a good deal. I think that's just the lesson we need to remember because you're not really saving money if you're spending more on something cheaper, you know, quote unquote cheaper and then throwing it away or forgetting it's there because it's too big to fit with all the other things that go with it, right? So maybe spend more per ounce on a smaller

jar of something that you're not going to use as much. And then one final tip. When when you are making a recipe that calls for an herb or a spice that you do not have, just Google a substitution for that thing and see if there is one. It could be that you could use something different or even just leave it out. I think this is true in my Change Your Life Shwarma recipe. There is a spectrum of spices that you could use to make this recipe work. And some of them you shouldn't leave out, like cumin, you shouldn't leave out, but others you can, like all spice. So notice maybe how much of the spice is called for in the recipe you're cooking and see if you have something that could be a stand in. This is when Google is your friend, you guys, because you're asking it something specific.

You don't always have to buy the new spice to get the recipe to work well, is what I'm saying. Salt and fat do wonders for a recipe. That's really where everything happens. The spices are fine if you fudge it a little. So just kind of feel free to do that if you need to. Rather than filling your drawers and cabinets with things that you don't really need. And that's it, man. That's the lazy genius guide to spices. You had to know, I would not give you a list of spices because that just rarely is a thing universally across different kitchens. So there's one list that works for everybody. It just doesn't work that way. I want you instead to have the tools to use and store the spices that you have and understand what you need to cook the meals you like to eat rather than just like giving

you an arbitrary list of 25 spices you have to go by. That's lame. Let's not do that. So think about your own kitchen, your own essential kitchen, and what you need for it, what you use in it. And I think it's just going to be a lot easier for you. You don't have to store the entire spice aisle to be a real cook, you know? Just keep what you need. Thanks so much for being here. And until next time, be a genius about the things that matter and lazy about the things that don't. I'm Kendra. I'll see you next week. Have you ever felt like you were living just a B or B plus life? It's so dangerous to live that.

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