Global Spices and Their Use

Spices are used in every cuisine to season, and sometimes to color or preserve, food. Knowing global spices and their use will help you craft restaurant-quality meals your guests will love.

The World in Your Supermarket

I’ve experimented with spices for a long time, learning what things taste like, and what just doesn’t work with my family’s palate.  I love trying to replicate favorite ethnic foods found in my local restaurants. I’m not always successful, but understanding what spices taste like, and what’s typically used by which culture, is a great help. At one time, many global spices were hard to find in my neck of the woods, forcing me to search online and hope for good quality. Today, every supermarket carries a huge selection of common, and not so common, spices to help me bring the world to my table. I also have the luxury of several direct import stores where I can sniff and taste to my heart’s content!

Key for Every Kitchen

When you’re looking to dive into the world of spices, there are some key ones that belong in every kitchen.

Allspice

These little balls are similar to cloves but more peppery, and are used in many cuisines around the world. You’ve probably tasted this in pumpkin pie, and more likely use it ground!

Bay Leaf

These come from the laurel trees in the Middle East and elsewhere, and are used in Italian and other European cuisines to give a depth of flavor to soups, stews and tomato sauce. Use whole and do not eat. It’s a wonderful flavor-enhancer to chicken soup, too!

Caraway Seed

These anise-tasting seeds are used in traditional Jewish (Eastern European) rye bread, Irish soda bread and German sauerkraut and potato salad. They’re also sometimes used in sausages and brats (as in bratwurst – hey, I live in Wisconsin…no one calls them bratwurst!).

Cardamom

The pods are used whole in Indian cuisine. Remove before eating. The ground-up small black seeds are used sparingly in Scandinavian baked goods to add a savory quality and complement other spices like cloves and cinnamon.

Cayenne Pepper

This is made from dried and ground red chili peppers and adds a bit of heat to Mexican and Indian food. If you’re not used to cayenne, use sparingly and add a little at a time. It can go from zero to blow your head off hot in no time!

Cinnamon

This is used in savory Indian dishes and sweet Western dishes and baked goods. This is probably the most common of warm spices in American cooking.

Cloves

These small, twig-like items can be used to add flavor to a roast ham or applesauce. They are also tasty when boiled with hot water and added to mulled wine or cider. They are ground for baking. And, this is the secret to my amazing Beef Stew! You might even see oranges “studded” with loves at Christmas time, not only for decoration but for the scent.

Coriander

These seeds are usually ground into a powder and used to add a peppery lemon taste to Mexican, Indian and Thai dishes. To have an idea of what this tastes like, coriander is also known as “cilantro”, where cilantro is the leaves and stems of the coriander plant…similar flavor but coriander is much stronger in my opinion.

Cumin

This has a peppery taste and is often used with coriander to season the same dishes. It is also popular in North African, Middle Eastern, and Tex-Mex dishes. Cumin isn’t spicy hot like a chili or pepper, per se, but gives a warm flavor to dishes.

Fennel Seed

The seeds are what gives sweet Italian sausage its unique flavor, with a hint of licorice. Fennel, the vegetable, comes in bulb form topped with delicate fronds that look like fresh dill. The bulb is delicious sliced into salads or soups, and it’s wonderful roasted. The fronds are a wonderful addition to dishes as well.

Garlic

Garlic is used in almost every cuisine in the world, but is most notable in Italian recipes and on garlic bread. Super fun to grow, too. Just plant the cloves and let them go!  Aim for “giant” or “elephant” though, so your cloves have some size to them or you’ll be chopping garlic forever! I think garlic runs through my veins and I don’t think I could live without it…

Ginger

This root can be used raw or dried and powdered. It is a mainstay of Indian and Chinese cooking and the base for gingerbread, ginger snaps and ginger beer, all very popular in England and the Caribbean. Found fresh in the produce section, it’s often called “knobs” and I recommend peeling for use. The skin is papery thin, and the easiest way to peel is to simply scrape the outside of the knob with a spoon.

Nutmeg

This a sweet spice with savory notes. It is mostly used in baked goods but is also an essential ingredient in potato pancakes, popular in Jewish cuisine. There is nothing like fresh ground nutmeg as a topper or final finish to dishes. Get the nutmeg in nut form, and simply use a rasp to scrape on your dish.

Oregano

This light, fragrant herb is a must for all Italian food, from sauce to pizza. It is also used in Mexican food. Super easy to grow in a kitchen garden or garden pot. Just be sure you get the spice plant, not the flowering perennial.

Paprika

This is a standard in Eastern European cuisines such as Jewish and Hungarian. It has a mild flavor and a gorgeous red color. It is used in soups and stews, and in noodles with sour cream sauce or atop deviled eggs and potato salad. If you’ve not tried any paprika other than the “plain old paprika”, you MUST! Hungarian has an amazing, smoky flavor that can’t be beat!

Peppercorns

Peppercorns come in a variety of colors, such as black, white, pink, and green. They’re a staple on the table of most households, along with salt. An easy way to add a lot more flavor to a dish is to use a fresh cracked peppercorn blend. Believe me, fresh cracked blend has a flavor nothing like regular black pepper I’m guessing you’re using now. You need to try a blend…trust me on this!  This is the one I use.

Rosemary

This is popular in European and Middle Eastern cuisine and goes well with lamb and roasted vegetables. This also grows easily in a kitchen garden or garden pot. In many climates, it’s a perennial shrub-like plant. You can buy dried rosemary either ground or in leaf form. If you’re using the leaf form, I suggest you grind it down with a mortar and pestle or chop it really fine. There’s nothing worse than getting a big bite of rosemary, in my humble opinion. If you’re using fresh, be sure to chop the leaves very fine. Or, for more delicate flavoring to your dish drop the whole sprig in then pull it out before serving. They don’t chew well (insert grimace here)…

Saffron

Saffron is the most expensive spice in the world, and comes from the “saffron crocus” flower. It has a wonderful flavor in rice dishes and colors everything a lovely yellow. It’s super expensive because only three threads come from each saffron crocus. It takes 80,000 saffron crocuses to make up a pound of saffron!

Sage

Sage is used in a lot of savory pork dishes in Europe and in bread stuffing for the holidays. This is another great spice for your kitchen garden, and easy to grow, too! The best flavor in the world is sage butter…melt butter in a skillet on low. Toss in fresh sage leaves and let it simmer on very low heat approximately 10 minutes. It’s wonderful on ravioli, or really any pasta. It’s also wonderful drizzled over roasted vegetables.

Turmeric

Tumeric also colors food yellow and is an essential ingredient in Indian cooking, and a primary ingredient in curry. It’s slightly bitter, but has a warm taste.

Thyme

This offers a pleasant, lemony taste to soups and stews and is often combined with rosemary and/or sage in European cooking. Another super easy spice to grow in your kitchen garden. I love throwing sprigs of thyme into all of my broth-based soup recipes.

So, that’s the round up – all the most common spices that should be in every kitchen. And, every one of them is found in the foods you’ve come to love at restaurants. Now, wouldn’t it be great to replicate your restaurant favorites? Next up… Nine Spices Thought to Have Health Benefits! And, if you’re looking for other great info about spices, simply enter “spices” in the site search!

In the meantime, looking to get your kitchen stocked with the most common global spices? Here’s what I use in my own kitchen and I just love it. It’s a great selection to get you started, and is also available in 12- and 16-jar setups! What’s really cool is it comes with FREE refills for 5 years!

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