New life for old spices

“If your spice is more than six months old, you should replace it with new” is common advice, but it is not practical for most people. Throwing out spices is an expensive proposition, and with food prices in an unrelenting upward trend, it can stretch an already tight budget. While it’s true that spices will lose potency over time, there are ways to revive older spices.

According to spice experts Mohammad and Anita Salehi, much of the flavor in spices comes from essential oils in the seeds or leaves. When you toast spices or bloom them in oil, “you are helping release the fat (oil) which brings more flavor and aroma.” While adding heat cannot make a tin of spice that has been sitting in a cabinet for a decade smell like new, it will boost the flavor for spices that have lost their edge.

Whether you dry toast or bloom in oil depends on the format of your spice. Whole spices benefit from dry toasting while ground spices will burn quickly over dry heat. For those, adding fat will provide a buffer so their flavors can be accentuated without scorching them.

How you store your spices can impact how long they stay fresh. If they are exposed to heat and light, they will degrade more quickly than if they are kept in a cool, dark place. My spices live in drawers that are spaced away from the cooktop so the temperature doesn’t fluctuate. While I can tell a difference between fresh spices and those that have been there a while, I find that spices will last longer than the recommended amounts of time with enough flavor to be worth using. Sometimes I will toss in a bit extra for spices that are past their prime. As long as they don’t smell musty or off I will use them for months beyond their recommended expiry dates.