Keeping Your Indian Curry Spices Fresh

Spices are not cheap, so you need to look after them.

You are probably aware that a spice will lose its power and flavour as time goes by, even when it is stored in an airtight container.

Air gets into a spice container every time that it is opened and the air reacts with the spice, causing it to lose a little of its strength and pungency

What steps can you take to protect your spices?

If you grind spice seeds then you can make only enough powder to last for about a month.

Ground spices can often be kept for three months but you shouldn’t keep them for too long. Aim to use your spices, not to throw them away.

And you can keep your spice seeds for too long as well. Seeds last longer than ground powder but they still lose their power over time.

Try not to buy too much spice at a time. It may be appealing to buy a bumper pack of spice to save money, but it won’t be much of a bargain if you have to throw half of the spice away because it has passed it’s effectiveness date.

Try to buy your spices in airtight jars or containers. My local supermarket sells a wide range of spices in jars, each having about one ounce of spice.

But my local Indian supply store sells their spices in small plastic bags that have about four ounces of spice. And the range of spices in my Indian store is huge – I can’t think of any time when I wanted to buy a spice and it wasn’t available in the store. And the spices from the store cost less than buying them from the supermarket (hardly any packaging to pay for – you just buy the spices).

I go through some spices faster than others. I buy my most often used spices, such as cumin, garam masala, chilli, turmeric and fenugreek from the store and put them into clean recycled jars that I keep in a kitchen cupboard (I never throw away glass jars unless they are really badly contaminated, or broken). And it’s simple to write a label and stick it on the jar to remind me of what’s in there. I’ve got an assortment of jars, at present, which contain ground turmeric, cumin, fenugreek seeds, cloves, cardamom pods and cinnamon sticks.

Always keep your spice containers in a dark dry place. Water is bad for spices so make sure you don’t allow any moisture to get into the spices. Always measure your spices in teaspoons away from steam from the frying pan or boiling water. And ensure the teaspoon is dry when scooping spice from a container.

To summarize. Always buy your spices in small quantities and keep the spices in airtight containers. Keep the spice containers in a dark dry place, such as a cupboard. Make sure that moisture does not get into your spice containers.

You’ll get the most use out of your spices if you keep to these simple rules.