I've already posted on here a few times that I'm getting ready to move. Loosing the home I've inherited and all that. I'm past the point of this bringing me down anymore, I'm actually looking forward to a move as a fresh start and all that jazz.
One of the things that I really want to work on is expanding my cooking ablities. Not to gloat, but I already have a pretty well rounded skills set. As the only child (son) of a single mom, I had to learn to cook at a young age. I was hungry and mom was tired from working all day! So I did what most do and chipped in with the cooking chores. I have to say I actually learned from the "best". Before my mother bought her first house, we lived with my grand parents. At the same time so did 3 of my great grand parents as well. So while my grand father and his father sat in the living room watching the news, something a young child would not be interested in at the time, I sat in the kitchen table watching my mother, grand mother and my two great grandmothers cooking. Oh the debates and down and out arguments on how do do things. Imagine 3 generatations of women cooking the same meal together!
The arguments weren't all that bad. But most importantly the food was excellent! The gut that I still have to this day (I'll be 45 in August) is proof of this. To this day I still don't like convience foods, fast foods or even common "munchy" type stuff. Give me that good ol' home cooking any day!
While I enjoyed learning from my family in this way, there's one thing that I didn't learn from them. And that was the use of spices and herbs. Each one of these women had a "go to" spice that they used in just about everything. For my grand mother and her mother's part, that was simply, "if it don't taste right, it needs more black pepper!" My other great grand loved rosemary, and finally my own mother relied heavily on bay leaf. And that was pretty much it. That is until I got into boy scouts.
Most of my scout leaders were ex-military. Because of the nature of how rations for our service men were done in the past was rather bland, most of these men often talked about their one chief complaint was the lack of flavor, or spice. So they them selves would experiment with this and that to enhance their rations. This willingness to experiment was then passed on to me in later years. I would say our scout troop was proably the only one to have a dedicated spice box that was nearly the same sized as every other troops standard patrol box!
Where this leads me today... I cannot get my hands on enough different spices and herbs! But this is my quadry. When seeking the "ultimate" spice collection via google, I see spice and herb sets or holders that are limited to 8..10...16 herbs. IMHO that's nothing to what's out there! How can any company call a 16 bottle spice rack an "ultimate" anything is beyond me when I can name easily 50 spices/herbs just off the top of my head! The largest rack I can find on the internet only holds 120 bottles!
So, what I'm trying to determine is developing a long list of what spices and herbs everyone uses. For arguments sake I cannot say these would be "must have" or such. because that all depends on each individuals style and interests in cooking. So what I would like to do is gather a list of suggested herbs and spices that here use.
Before posting though there's a few issues I wish to mention. I don't belive anything with the word "salt" in it is either a spice or herb. If I want more garlic and salt in a dish, I'll add more garlic and salt, not garlic-salt. I'm actually trying to avoid salt as much as possible for heatlh conciderations. Same goes for combo spices that we see more often in local grocery stores. I don't need McCormic to sell me a bottle of "italian seasonings" when I already have oregano, rosemary, thyme and garlic on hand. On the flip side of the coin, I can see having "curry" "red curry" and "madras curry" on hand, depending on what I'm making, even though the word "curry" just means a mixture of spices. This seems to be one of the exeptions to the rule, I doubt I could make the same by combining other herbs and spices together.
Futher concideration. Fresh herbs/spices are always best. When this isn't feasible, the next best is dried whole. To either be crushed in a pistol/mortor or coffee grinder. Futher more something like garlic, I have on hand diced, granular and powdered. While using clove is usually the best option this sometimes is not practical when using smaller quantities. Speaking of smaller quantities. Obviously if we were to come up with a list of several hundred spices/herbs, one would never be able to use that all within the time before some of them would begin to loose their freshness. For those spices and herbs that have some medicnal values above and beyond just tasting good, they also slowly being to loose this as well. So while I may end up assembling a list and evntaully building my own custom spice rack to hold them all. Ones that I don't use all that often will be purhcased in smaller quantities.
So without rambling on any longer, I've already done enough of that....what spices do YOU have in your spice rack?
Thanks,
Jax
One of the things that I really want to work on is expanding my cooking ablities. Not to gloat, but I already have a pretty well rounded skills set. As the only child (son) of a single mom, I had to learn to cook at a young age. I was hungry and mom was tired from working all day! So I did what most do and chipped in with the cooking chores. I have to say I actually learned from the "best". Before my mother bought her first house, we lived with my grand parents. At the same time so did 3 of my great grand parents as well. So while my grand father and his father sat in the living room watching the news, something a young child would not be interested in at the time, I sat in the kitchen table watching my mother, grand mother and my two great grandmothers cooking. Oh the debates and down and out arguments on how do do things. Imagine 3 generatations of women cooking the same meal together!
The arguments weren't all that bad. But most importantly the food was excellent! The gut that I still have to this day (I'll be 45 in August) is proof of this. To this day I still don't like convience foods, fast foods or even common "munchy" type stuff. Give me that good ol' home cooking any day!
While I enjoyed learning from my family in this way, there's one thing that I didn't learn from them. And that was the use of spices and herbs. Each one of these women had a "go to" spice that they used in just about everything. For my grand mother and her mother's part, that was simply, "if it don't taste right, it needs more black pepper!" My other great grand loved rosemary, and finally my own mother relied heavily on bay leaf. And that was pretty much it. That is until I got into boy scouts.
Most of my scout leaders were ex-military. Because of the nature of how rations for our service men were done in the past was rather bland, most of these men often talked about their one chief complaint was the lack of flavor, or spice. So they them selves would experiment with this and that to enhance their rations. This willingness to experiment was then passed on to me in later years. I would say our scout troop was proably the only one to have a dedicated spice box that was nearly the same sized as every other troops standard patrol box!
Where this leads me today... I cannot get my hands on enough different spices and herbs! But this is my quadry. When seeking the "ultimate" spice collection via google, I see spice and herb sets or holders that are limited to 8..10...16 herbs. IMHO that's nothing to what's out there! How can any company call a 16 bottle spice rack an "ultimate" anything is beyond me when I can name easily 50 spices/herbs just off the top of my head! The largest rack I can find on the internet only holds 120 bottles!
So, what I'm trying to determine is developing a long list of what spices and herbs everyone uses. For arguments sake I cannot say these would be "must have" or such. because that all depends on each individuals style and interests in cooking. So what I would like to do is gather a list of suggested herbs and spices that here use.
Before posting though there's a few issues I wish to mention. I don't belive anything with the word "salt" in it is either a spice or herb. If I want more garlic and salt in a dish, I'll add more garlic and salt, not garlic-salt. I'm actually trying to avoid salt as much as possible for heatlh conciderations. Same goes for combo spices that we see more often in local grocery stores. I don't need McCormic to sell me a bottle of "italian seasonings" when I already have oregano, rosemary, thyme and garlic on hand. On the flip side of the coin, I can see having "curry" "red curry" and "madras curry" on hand, depending on what I'm making, even though the word "curry" just means a mixture of spices. This seems to be one of the exeptions to the rule, I doubt I could make the same by combining other herbs and spices together.
Futher concideration. Fresh herbs/spices are always best. When this isn't feasible, the next best is dried whole. To either be crushed in a pistol/mortor or coffee grinder. Futher more something like garlic, I have on hand diced, granular and powdered. While using clove is usually the best option this sometimes is not practical when using smaller quantities. Speaking of smaller quantities. Obviously if we were to come up with a list of several hundred spices/herbs, one would never be able to use that all within the time before some of them would begin to loose their freshness. For those spices and herbs that have some medicnal values above and beyond just tasting good, they also slowly being to loose this as well. So while I may end up assembling a list and evntaully building my own custom spice rack to hold them all. Ones that I don't use all that often will be purhcased in smaller quantities.
So without rambling on any longer, I've already done enough of that....what spices do YOU have in your spice rack?
Thanks,
Jax