How To Store Spices Properly

I love my spices, whether it is the coarse ground spices that I prepare with the exact proportions that have been running in my family, or the less traditional spices like basil, oregano and peri peri masala. But every once in a while, I will open a container of spices to find that it has gone mild or has changed colour. While it is natural for some spices to change colour after a few months, it is usually not good idea to consume them before making sure they are still good. It is important to store your spices carefully so that you don’t lose their flavour.

The primary factor to consider while storing your spices is to decide if you’re storing whole spices or ground spices. As a thumb rule, whole spices have a much longer shelf life as compared to ground spices. Moreover, there are different rules when it comes to storing fresh herbs. The best part is that you can easily tell whether your spices have gone bad based on their colour and smell. So, let’s talk about how to store your spices.

Based on your cooking habits and patterns, pre-decide whether you want to keep your spices whole or ground. For example, I keep both black pepper powder and whole because I use both of them. I sprinkle some black pepper powder in my salads and sandwiches and add full peppercorns in khichdi while roasting onions.

The basic, no-brainer rule you must follow while storing spices is to ensure they are in an air-tight container. This helps preserve their flavour and keeps the humidity away, thus ensuring that they are not spoiled due to moisture. Keep a smaller container to use the spice on an everyday basis while ensuring that the bigger container with the bulk of spice is stored in an air-tight container away from the sun. It is important to keep them away from both sunlight and heat, because heat can degrade the flavour, thus spoiling your favourite spice. If you have a large refrigerator, go ahead and store your spices there!

Here’s one more handy trick to ensure that your expensive spices don’t go to waste - use a labeller to label the spice containers with the “best before” date. While the spices won’t instantly become flavourless or poisonous if you don’t use them before this date, this exercise will allow you to use them while they are still fresh.

Another good idea is to store them in transparent containers. If you’re looking for cinammon powder, for example, you will end up opening 5 containers before you know which one to use. If you have labelled it, reading all the labels will also slow you down.

Hence, keeping them in glass containers will speed up your cooking process, by helping you find them more quickly, and more importantly, ensure that you don’t need to open the container multiple times, thus ensuring that their flavour stays intact.