Ever wondered how to get the same great flavor that you find in restaurants in your cooking at home? The quality (and quantity) of seasoning can make or break a dish! Salt, of course, is a vital ingredient and amplifies other flavors in a dish (and we do have several great options for you, but that’s the subject of an entirely different post). But what about the rest of your spice cupboard or drawer? What’s the difference between an herb and a spice? What is better—whole or ground? What about blends? Here we’ll take you through a brief overview of the spices we carry on our shelves. Not only are they all sustainably grown and harvested, but they’re also guaranteed to give whatever you’re cooking up a zing of flavor!
Spice Up Your Life!
Boonville Barn Collective
This woman-owned farm has been producing unique chile powders for 10 years in the resource-rich Anderson Valley of Northern California. Krissy Scommegna, the owner of Boonville Barn Collective, has devoted three of the seven acres she and her team oversee to growing and hand-harvesting Piment d’Ville, their signature version of the coveted Basque Piment d’Espelette, with organic and sustainable farming practices.
Daphnis and Chloe
Named for the hero and heroine of the eponymous ancient Greek novel by Longusl, Daphnis and Chloe is an incredible small-batch culinary herb and spice shop located under the Acropolis Hill of Athens. All of their products are indigenous to Greece, a country full of micro-ecosystems that allow a wide variety of herbs and spices to thrive.
Épices de Cru
In 2004, Ethné and Philippe de Vienne founded this family-owned spice company in Montreal. They provide high-quality whole spices made sustainably, with the traditions of the producers in mind. They create whole spice blends in order to retain the most integrity of flavor—when whole spices are ground just before use, the aromas and flavors are much more potent than their pre-ground counterparts.
Zingerman’s House Spices
We have sourced a few really exceptional spices that we love so much that we put our own name on them! So far that includes Spicy Coffee Spice Rub, fennel pollen, Marash pepper, Tellicherry peppercorns, and Urfa pepper.
Make a Spice-tacular Meal
Spices are shelf stable, just like most pantry goods, but time always affects flavor. Try this exercise if you like: take out any ground spice in your pantry—cinnamon, black pepper, etc—and give it a whiff. Now take the whole spice version, grind a small amount, and smell. Like any other ingredient, freshness makes a huge difference! When spices are left in their whole form, their full potency remains undisturbed. This is because when spices are ground, their essential oils are exposed. Quality plays a role here too — there’s no telling how long that tin of smoked paprika has been sitting on the supermarket shelves! We know having ground spices on hand can be more convenient when you’re using them frequently, which is why we carry plenty of fresh, high-quality ground spices alongside our whole spices — but if a grinder is holding you back from buying whole spices, we’ve got those! When grinding spices at home, you can take the analog route with a mortar and pestle, or a spice mill if you want to skip the arm workout!
When it comes to using whole versus ground spices in recipes, you’ll want to treat them a little differently. If you want the full breadth of flavor from your whole spices, give them a little toast first in a warm pan or the oven. You can toast your ground spices too, but these can burn very quickly on their own. To prevent that from happening, “bloom” the spices in a pan with oil. The time you add whole versus ground spice during cooking also differs; while ground spices can be added at any time and are often added intermittently throughout cooking to build a depth of flavor, whole spices should be added at the beginning of cooking to provide ample time for the flavor to absorb into the dish. If you’re leaving the spices whole while cooking (rather than grinding them) and want to remove them for the finished dish, wrap them in a bit of cheesecloth tied with kitchen twine. This way you’ll just have to remove the package when your dish is done, rather than fishing around for the spices.
If you’ve been using old spices in your cooking, there’s no need to panic—old spices don’t hurt you the same way other expired products might, they simply lose their flavor potency over time. If your food has been tasting a bit bland lately, it might be time to refresh your spice rack.
How We Put a Little Pep in Our Step (& Our Dishes)
We use the same spices that we stock on our shelves! Here are some of our favorite spice-laden dishes from the Deli kitchen:
Spiced Pecans: An irresistible seasonal specialty that comes around for the winter holidays. Georgia pecans toasted with butter and tossed with our special blend of spices—freshly ground Tellicherry black pepper, Jamaican allspice, and Indian cloves, just to name a few.
Chicken Paprikash: A rich and creamy old-world dish made with real Hungarian paprika from the Hodi family in Szeged, a region in southern Hungary noted for its paprika production. Hodi paprika is the highest grade available, known as kulonleges, meaning “extraordinary” or “special” in Hungarian. Our paprikash is spicy, sweet, smoky, tangy, and of course delicious. Serve over traditional buttered egg noodles, or a slice of crusty bread to soak up the luxurious sauce.
New Deli Dahl: Our take on a simple but flavorful traditional South Asian lentil soup! Made with Beluga lentils, housemade garam masala, tomatoes, ginger, olive oil, garlic, onions, carrots, and sea salt.
Lamb / Vegetable Tagine: Two takes on a traditional North African dish. Our Lamb Tagine is made with incredibly flavorful all-natural, local lamb from Hannewald Farms, braised in the Moroccan-Jewish tradition with prunes, allspice, and coriander. The Vegetable Tagine is made with slowly simmered seasonal vegetables like fresh chickpeas, sweet potatoes, cauliflower, and carrots, seasoned with tagine spices from Épices de Cru of Montreal.
Chef Bill’s Tunisian Chicken: Whole pieces of Amish free-range chicken with our own preserved lemon, fennel, fresh parsley, and Beldi olives. Coriander and Syrian cumin from Épices de Cru make this a succulent and aromatic dish.
Fennel Pollen Pork: Free-range Michigan pork shoulder, rubbed with extra virgin olive oil, sea salt, fresh herbs, and wild fennel pollen. Served over the Marino family’s amazing organic stone-milled polenta from the Piedmont in Italy.
Zingerman’s BBQ Beef / Chicken / Pork: Hand-pulled beef, Amish chicken, or Cuban-style pork in housemade BBQ sauce made with brown sugar and cayenne.
Ari’s Favorite Spices
Ari has written about many spices from our shelves—telling their history and his favorite ways to use them. Here’s a sampling of what has inspired Ari in his home kitchen.
Many years ago when we started this blog, our friends at Épice de Cru shared some of their favorite recipes with us to help kick off the website. Our blog is now full of interesting articles, our own recipes, and stories about our producers, but the generosity of Épice de Cru lives on and you’ll still find many recipes to inspire your home cooking. Here’s a list:
