Spice Guide
Discover individual spices, their origins, flavor profiles, culinary uses, storage tips, and the best ways to bring out their character.
Sesame Seeds: Flavor Profile, Health Benefits & Culinary Uses
One of the oldest oilseeds on Earth, sesame is nutty, humble, and everywhere — tahini, gomashio, everything-bagel spice. Here is the white-versus-black guide.
Sichuan Pepper: Flavor Profile, Health Benefits & Culinary Uses
The tingly, vibrating mouthfeel called ma is unique to Sichuan pepper, and it turns out to be easier to work with than most cooks expect once you stop scorching it.
Silphium: Flavor Profile, Health Benefits & Culinary Uses
The ancient Roman spice that cost its weight in silver and then vanished. What scholars think it tasted like and which spices echo it today.
Slippery Elm Bark Powder: Flavor Profile, Health Benefits & Culinary Uses
The tree's velvet apology: a nearly tasteless bark powder that coats and soothes. How to stir the gel, avoid the seize, and respect the risks.
Smoked Chipotle Chili: Flavor Profile, Health Benefits & Culinary Uses
A jalapeno that ripened red and walked through smoke for a few days — chipotle's campfire flavor, friendly heat, and the two ways it reaches your kitchen.
Smoked Habanero Powder: Flavor Profile, Health Benefits & Culinary Uses
Habenero's fruity fire meets woodsmoke in a powder that makes heat feel like a conversation. Scoville numbers, taming tricks, and real pairings.
The Beginner's Guide to Spices: Where to Start and the 10 Spices to Buy First
Walking down the spice aisle is easy to overdo. Here are the ten spices worth buying first, the order to buy them in, and how to actually use each one tonight.
Spice-Infused Salts: Flavor Profile, Health Benefits & Culinary Uses
Grind coarse salt with your favorite spices and you get a jar of instant intent: flavored salts for eggs, popcorn, roasts, fruit, and margarita rims.
Star Anise: Flavor Profile, Health Benefits & Culinary Uses
The eight-pointed stars in pho broth and Chinese five-spice are star anise, a resinous licorice-spice from a small evergreen tree. Here is how to cook with it.
Sumac: Flavor Profile, Health Benefits & Culinary Uses
Why sumac belongs on every Mediterranean and Middle Eastern shelf: the story of the sour red berry, its best partners, and honest substitutes when the jar runs out.
Summer Truffle: Flavor Profile, Health Benefits & Culinary Uses
Tuber aestivum is earth, cocoa, and toasted nut at a friendlier price. How to shave it, store it, and never cook the aroma out of it.
Sweetflag Root (Calamus): Flavor Profile, Health Benefits & Culinary Uses
A marsh-plant rhizome with a legendary aroma and a serious caveat. What beta-asarone is, why modern food safety limits it, what to do instead.
Tamarind: Flavor Profile, Health Benefits & Culinary Uses
Tamarind is the sour-sweet soul of pad thai, sambar, and a thousand chutneys — what the pods are, how to buy them, and the honest substitutes.
Tansy: Flavor Profile, Health Benefits & Culinary Uses
A gorgeous old garden herb with a camphor-mint scent and a real hazard label. Its medieval uses, its modern risks, and the safe ways to get bitter.
Tasmanian Pepper: Flavor Profile, Health Benefits & Culinary Uses
Bush tucker's answer to the peppercorn, Tasmanian mountain pepper delivers woody, slow-building warmth and belongs on game, mushrooms, and winter roasts.
Timut Pepper: Flavor Profile, Health Benefits & Culinary Uses
Where Sichuan pepper buzzes and bites, Timut is the gentle, perfumed cousin that tastes like pink grapefruit rind and suits delicate fish and bright desserts.
Tonka Bean: Flavor Profile, Health Benefits & Culinary Uses
The dark, wrinkled bean with a vanilla-almond perfume — and a coumarin warning: treat tonka as a perfume note, never as an ingredient to eat in bulk.
Triphala Powder: Flavor Profile, Health Benefits & Culinary Uses
Three dried fruits, one famous Ayurvedic powder: what triphala tastes like, what the tradition claims for it, and why dosing this one calls for real care.
Turmeric: Flavor Profile, Health Benefits & Culinary Uses
Golden, earthy, and quick to stain everything it touches, turmeric turns plain rice and vegetables into food that looks like you tried harder. Here is how to cook it.
Urfa Biber Pepper: Flavor Profile, Health Benefits & Culinary Uses
Urfa biber looks like dark crushed velvet and tastes like smoky raisins and molasses, with a heat that arrives late — the secret to deep, mysterious Turkish flavor.
Voatsiperifery Pepper: Flavor Profile, Health Benefits & Culinary Uses
Harvested by hand from wild vines in Madagascar's eastern rainforest, voatsiperifery is a sweet, floral, gently hot pepper that deserves the special-sauce treatment.
Water Chestnut Powder: Flavor Profile, Health Benefits & Culinary Uses
The starch and flour of the crunchy aquatic water chestnut: how to thicken, batter, and bake with it, from Chinese stir-fries to Indian fasting kitchens.
White Mustard Seeds: Flavor Profile, Health Benefits & Culinary Uses
White mustard seeds are the mildest, palest member of the mustard family, and the base of American yellow mustard. Here is how to use their gentle heat.
White Pepper: Flavor Profile, Health Benefits & Culinary Uses
The same Piper nigrum vine gives us black and white pepper. White pepper is milder in aroma but sharper in heat, made for light sauces and pale dishes.