I.e. my chef friend had ground jalapeno at her apartment, shit was good. Like cayenne level heat but with a different flavor
I had to go to like an international food market to find some near me which is weird given how ubiquitous jalapeno peppers are
Cardamom is a nice one which is common in Indian cuisine but underutilized elsewhere
I use freshly ground cardamom in my home made waffles. It’s awesome
Za’attar is delicious. Great simply on bread or in anything pepper is good in. I do cacio e pepe with it as well. Excellent!
Savory is my all-time favorite herb. I put that shit in everything.
Also i highly recommend keeping MSG on hand, if you don’t already.
I like thyme
For those who can’t find some of these, you can try harvesting or preparing them at home.
Peppers can be hung on a string, ideally in a sunny, dry place, and they’ll eventually dry out. From there you can grind them, either manually with a mortar and pestle, or in a coffee grinder (I keep a separate one just for spices). They’ll keep better if stored whole. This goes for herbs too, which can even be dried flat on a cookie sheet if spread out (I lut that cookie sheet on top of a radiator at home for a week in the cold season to give it gentle heat that won’t cook it).
I saw Taragon mentioned in another comment. If you don’t see this commonly, check the fresh herbs section at your loval grocer around Thanksgiving time. Buy extra when it’s available and dry it out.
Sumac is harvestable and common in much of the northern US. Poison sumac looks quite different from the edible kind, and should not be easily confused, but google it so you know you’re getting the right stuff.
If you’re lucky enough to live in a city with an immigrant population, you can find a lot of less common spices at ethnic grocers. Some of the larger ones will even stock spices outside of their particular community’s cuisine.
Finally, if you’ve got money to spend, Penzey’s Spices online generally has good quality but it will cost more than other places (some spices benefit more from high quality than others)
dry spices:
- sichuan pepper (for chinese food)
- star anise (good background flavor for lots of asian stuff)
- coriander seed (ground or whole, for different purposes)
- turmeric (necessary for curries and makes stuff yellow)
herbs:
- curry leaf (necessary for south indian food)
- sawtooth coriander/culantro (more intense coriander. south east asian food, mexican food)
- mint
- thai basil
Culantro also features heavily in Peruvian food
i’m only familiar with it from yunnan, lao, viet and thai food, but yeah after reading up on it it seems it’s more common in central/south american/carribean food than in mexican food
Sichuan is just kinda good in a bunch of stuff. I keep some Sichuan peppercorns in a pepper grinder, I think they need to be fried a bit to be activated but otherwise they add a fun flavor/spice to a lot of things
Ground fenugreek seed. It’s lightly sweet and mapley with a hint of smoke. It’s good for any sort of recipes that benefit from the general profile of cinnamon, nutmeg, cardamon, cloves, or allspice. I like it a lot for french toast
smoked salt
Mushroom powder is pretty damn good and the only place I can find it is Trader Joe’s
Oh good idea, i should get some of that
They have powdered mushroom at Harris teeter iirc, sold as “umami enhancer”
I’ve found it at Asian grocers as “mushroom bouillon powder”
Sichuan peppercorns
Is Barahat uncommon enough? Love that shit
Green chili flakes are cool. They’re milder than red chili flakes, so you can get more of the pepper flavor for the same amount of heat.
Freeze dried shallots are also fire. A little expensive, but it’s a good lazy source of allium flavor.
Spikenard is the shit and a key ingredient in pre-colonial European cuisine.
Galangal also slaps
Also lemon myrtle gang along with other traditional Australian spices.
maybe it’s too common but cayenne powder changed my life
try that ground jalapeno tho
cayenne powder is dirt cheap, strong, and instantly makes my mac and cheese better. Might try that ground jalapeno if I can find it
Salt
what’s your favorite salt
You should have multiple salts. At a minimum, iodized table salt, kosher salt, and some sort of large flaky salt.
I will judge you if you have a salt grinder.
I only have kosher salt and bulk fine grain sea salt and you can judge whatever you want about my grinder, honey, it affords me precision salt granularity that you couldn’t understand
I have iodized salt but it’s my “the apocalypse has happened and I need to prevent goiter” salt, I get my iodine from milk n’ eggs
I get it, you yearn for the mines and get your fix by unnecessarily smashing rocks.
don’t we all?
