A few useful tips to preserve your spices and lock their flavours

Here I provide a few simple tips to preserve your spices for long days without losing the flavour or taste. Along with it, I provide a few spices tips too. Spices include – Red chillies, coriander, cardamom, cinnamon, black pepper, nutmeg, mace, cloves, fennel seeds, kuskus, shahi jeera (caraway seeds) and star anise. 

1. If you keep cinnamon, black pepper and cloves together in one single container, they stay fresh for a long time. 

2. If you are powdering chillies at home, add a small spoon mustard oil to it while doing the process. Chilli powder will get brilliant red colour and stays fresh for long days without damage.

3. Preserve garam masala (spices) in glass air-tight containers in some dark place of kitchen. Keep these containers away from sunlight attack. If so, they retain their flavours for long period.

4. Garam masala mixture can also be used for decorative purposes in kitchen, if they are kept in beautiful glass containers in kitchen windows or shelves.

5. Bind different ingredients of spices in a cotton cloth and when you boil water, put this bag in water. Your drinking water will have pleasant aroma and is healthy too. 

6. Put a piece of asafoetida in your chilli powder container. It stays fresh for long days without damage.

7. Spices like pepper, cardamom, coriander seeds etc tastes better if you powder them little by little. It locks the aroma and flavour. Don’t store those powders for long days. Dry fry coriander seeds before grinding to get a pleasant aroma. 

Now a few matters related to dry herbs and leaves

1. Herbs like mint leaves, coriander leaves, rosemary, basil etc include Phytoestrogen contents which act as health protectors, though they are best known for the power to enhance taste and aroma of dishes. 

2. Dry herbs give better results than fresh leaves. In fact 1 spoon dry herb is equivalent to 4 spoons of fresh herbal leaves.

Image source: Pixabay

Read a few more interesting articles related to how to preserve vegetables, fruits, other food products and much more. Here is the page link. Click on the images in the gallery to read.