The cloves just didn't smell sufficiently clove-y to me anymore. Based on the date I had scrawled on the lid with a Sharpie, I'd purchased the jar in November of 2018. Now, nearly five years later, the aromatic thrill was gone and I'd barely made a dent in the contents. Now, like several other equally fading but underused items on my spice rack, the cloves seemed to challenge me with an unwinnable quandary — do I toss and start fresh, knowing that the sun will be a cold rock in space before I bake enough to get to the bottom of another jar? Do I just put it back, destined to spend the rest of my days periodically eking out one-quarter tablespoon of the stuff at a time? Or could I figure out once and for all how to build a better spice rack?
There is no question that a well-curated arsenal of spices and dried herbs are essential for successful cooking and baking. But while an eclectic "global pantry" seems like the Pinterest board dream, reality can feel more like a collection of jars that resembles the family junk drawer and whose contents taste like… absolutely nothing. So determined to never throw out anything not completely used up was my late mother-in-law that her spices often carried the fonts of other eras. Needless to say, many of them were flavorless tubs of powder.
So, when should a jar get chucked? Conventional wisdom tends to hold that whole spices can last up to five years (Ask yourself, who was the president when I bought these cardamon pods?). In addition to longevity, whole spices also often offer more complex flavor. "Grinding spices a la minute helps toast the spices and coaxes out the oils with the friction of the blade or grinding mechanism," says James Beard Foundation Award-winning Chef Zach Engel of the Michelin-starred Chicago restaurant Galit. "At home, we try to buy whole spices and mostly from The Reluctant Trading Experiment. Their sourcing is excellent and the care they have for each spice during transit and storage is top-notch. I have a small hand-held grinder or a countertop coffee bean grinder for when I'm cooking at home."
With ground spices, you can expect them to start to lose their potency after about six months, a span of time that may be true but sounds utterly impossible to keep up with. Fortunately, even plenty of pros don't think that's a hard and fast rule.
"It’s rare that anyone uses up any of their spices quickly, unless they have some sort of catering business or their family really likes lots of oregano in their daily Italian food or cinnamon on their toast," reassures recipe developer, chef and cookbook author of "The Infinite Feast" Brian Theis. And Zach Engel advises that a spice that may be a little past its heyday can still be effective. "At Galit," he says, "we go through spices so fast we would never have any on hand older than three months. At home, I know we have some older spices lying around. It isn't the worst thing, but you'll have to use more of the older spices in a recipe in order to achieve the same level of flavor."
Keeping dried herbs and spices freshest the longest ideally involves some thoughtful preservation. As a 2022 feature from Martha Stewart advised to "Steer clear of hot spots and designate a dark, cool, dry space in your kitchen for your collection." But I have one of those impossibly small New York City kitchens in which a metal rack hangs right next to the stove, and I just can't sweat about it. Theis takes a similar approach. "In a perfect world you’d keep your spices away from the heat of the stove in a cool cabinet to maintain flavor and freshness," he says. "I don’t, however. Mine are near each stove I have for easy reach and that works just fine. Convenience is more important to me than storage perfection."
Convenience also means simplification. It was revelatory to read recently, in the midst of a cookbook I otherwise did not care for, the author boldly suggesting a pared-down, minimalist approach to one's spice rack. I live in fear of the blandness I grew up on, but overcompensating doesn't help, and it isn't boring to be selective. It's also important to note too that the spice rack is just one part of an efficient — not overstocked — kitchen. If you've got lemons, garlic, fresh herbs, butter, honey and an interesting mix of oils, vinegars, mustards and the like, you've got the building blocks of limitless dishes.
"Pay attention to what you cook most often," says Theis. "I need Creole, Mexican, Italian, Indian, plus autumn and Christmas baking spices. It’s rare I say, for example, 'Shucks, I can’t believe I don’t have any marjoram.' I think the average home cook can do everything they need to do with literally a dozen affordable bottles of spices you use regularly." But Theis is hesitant to recommend leaning on spice blends, which can do the work of multiple jars of ingredients but don't allow for adjustment.
"You could get by with a few blends — Chinese, Mexican, Italian, Indian, for example," he says, "but you’re going to find yourself needing specific things like chili powder, or cumin, or garlic powder, or gumbo filé (sassafras) or fenugreek from time to time, so having individual spices in my experience is preferable."
Vered DeLeeuw, a Memphis recipe developer and creator of the Healthy Recipes blog, says it's all about making smart choices in the supermarket first. "I avoid using recipes that call for rarely-used spices and other ingredients. My advice is to think long and hard before using one of those complex, multi-special-ingredient recipes," she says. "Because if you make them, you WILL be stuck with stale spices." But if you're really intrigued by a new dish, Engel suggests, "If there's a particular recipe you need to get a spice for that's not in your pantry, red long pepper for example, try and plan for next week's dishes that also use that red long pepper. That way you don't end up with a ton of extra half-filled spice jars lying around."
Letting go of the things I don't love and have lost their flavor anyway frees me to rely more on the workhorses of my own kitchen, which currently means sea salt, peppercorns, cinnamon (not just for baking, but adding a warm, subtle boost to chilis and sauces), cumin, smoked paprika, sumac, za'atar, everything bagel mix, garam masala, red chili flakes and good old oregano. If I had to pack up tomorrow and leave everything else behind, I'd be fine.
My current own imperfect maintenance for them involves buying the smallest-sized version of the item and using good quality brands I like, writing the purchase date on each jar, and periodically soul-searching about whether I really am a turmeric person after all. (I'm not.) And I care less about the date on the jar as the color and scent of its contents. "I replace spices on average every one to two years," says Brian Theis. "Your nose knows."
