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The ABC’s of Storing Dried Spices

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Hey everyone!  Hope you’re all enjoying the beginning of your weekend!!

It’s a dreary day here …so it feels like a day to do some “tidying up”.

Trust me…it doesn’t happen often!  But, I was cleaning up some kitchen drawers and filling up my spice jars when I realized maybe I should do a quick post about this.

When I moved out here to farm country, my new kitchen had these narrow pullout drawers that seemed perfect for spices but I just couldn’t figure out how I wanted to store them.  Then, when I was picking up some ribbon at the local Dollerama, I found these cute little jars for $.50 each.  I bought a few because I knew I would find something to do with them (AND I’m a bit of a dollar store shopper!).

When I brought them home, I realized that they fit perfectly into my narrow drawer.  When I used my labeller to label them with the spices, I found it was a perfect vessel for them.

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Aren’t they cute?

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And they line up so nicely!  If you need to put them in a pantry, you could put them in a basket and label the top instead.

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And since we’re talking about spices, let’s talk about how long to keep them.  Most of the time, foodies will tell you that you can only keep dried spices for 6 months.  If that was the case, I would be throwing away a lot of spices. That being said, I don’t keep them forever either.

What I do, though, is when I need them, I use my trusty old nose to guide me.  If you open up the container and you don’t smell much, “toast” the spices in a dry skillet for a minute or until you start to smell the fragrant spice aroma.  What is happening here is that the essential oils hit the heat and are released making the spice more potent.  Now, whatever you don’t use after you heat it, just throw that away, but it is definitely a way to get more out of your spices!

Now, excuse me while I go clean out my fridge….arghhhh!!!