The best tip to store spices all year long. Don’t store them.
Confused? Don’t be. Give me just a few minutes and you will know exactly what I am hinting at.
There are a dozen tips on how to store spices all year long. But none is as useful as this. Trust me. It’s tried and tested.
My great grandmother would buy ‘fresh’ spices in summer and store them for the entire year. She passed on this habit to my grandmother and she taught the same to my mother and then came a time when my mom was passing the baton of responsibility to me.
“Summer is the best time to buy spices for the whole year”, she said.
“But mom, I do not want to go out in this scorching summer heat?” I argued.
She wasn’t one to give up easily. So, she continued, “During summer the fresh spices are harvested and it’s the best time to purchase them for whole year long.”
“Okay, I’ll endure the heat and go and purchase these spices but how will I keep them safe and most importantly, fresh?” I asked her.
“Oh, that is an interesting question and I have many handy-tips for you. Store them in air-tight containers; I have a whole shelf in my kitchen for these spices to be stored all year long. Keep them away from heat, keep them in a cool place, keep away from light, keep away from moisture, Keep a tab on spices and monitor them constantly, remove small quantity of spices in your masala dabba for regular usage to retain aroma and flavor,” she went on and on.
She would have continued sharing these tips had I not interrupted. I reminded her, that even after she takes such good care of the spices, the red mirchi was no longer red and the haldi had lost its aroma and so had the coriander powder.
I still remember how my mom sat for hours together to clean the whole coriander seeds and then ground them to a fine powder. She didn’t grind them all at once because then the ‘freshness of the spices would be lost.’
But I noticed that in the last the few months of the year, the spices would lose their flavor, colour or aroma. They would no longer be ‘fresh’. I had heard my mom complain about it too when the dish didn’t turn out as expected.
Hence I asked my mom once again. Why do we buy spices in summer for the whole year? Only to take care of them in the ensuing monsoon season and then see them lose their freshness even before the next season arrives?
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