Spreads & Flavorings

Hear me out.

A brief history of America’s favorite condiment.

Here’s how it gets that iconic flavor!

This Korean red pepper paste will add serious kick and depth of flavor to anything you stir it into.

Yes, you can save that runny jam.

From ras el hanout to herbes de provence, herb and spice mixes are essential to many cuisines around the world. Bringing these blends into your own kitchen can lend authenticity to international dishes and provide creative inspiration for your everyday cooking. Ready for this trip across the globe? No passport required! Berbere Berbere – A heady combination of spicy, bitter, and sweet spices used in Eritrea, Djibouti, Ethiopia, and Somalia.

If you see a lot of fruit dehydrating in your future, buying a food dehydrator makes sense. Using one is more energy-efficient than slowly baking fruit in a low oven, and the results are more consistent. But if you just want to make the occasional batch of crispy apple chips or intensely-flavored dried tomatoes, keep things simple and gadget-free: use your oven to make dried fruit!

Vanilla beans are magical. Not only do they look like fairy wands and have an aroma that always brings me to a standstill, but these beans have the ability to transform scoops of ice cream into childhood memories and dishes of crème brûlée into marriage proposals. Using them is easy; wait to scrape the seeds out of the vanilla pod until you’re ready to use them. They are definitely not to be squandered or taken for granted.

I’ve been adding curry paste to an assortment of old standby dishes to give them a bit of kick. If you have half a can of curry paste lying about here are a few unexpected ways to put it to good use!I’ve written about my favorite curry paste in the past and it should be noted that I am a huge fan of green over red curry pastes. That’s simply a matter of taste, but I have found that I have better luck controlling the heat without many surprises.

Grab a few sticks of butter and a small saucepan and let's upgrade our beloved butter to fragrant, nutty brown butter.

Celery leaves — known primarily as a throwaway top to an already underappreciated vegetable — are so often discarded. It’s a real shame. Celery leaves are actually a bonus to their stalks and completely virtuous on their own. Here’s everything you need to know about prepping them and turning them into a vibrant pesto. Celery leaves are delicious, nutritious, and packed with intense celery flavor.

Pickling and fermenting are two methods for naturally preserving foods, and both produce some delicious, tangy results. Do you know what sets them apart? While both pickling and fermenting produce different results, there are some areas of overlap that can easily spark some confusion.

I am an equal opportunity fruit jam eater. I am just as happy with the loose, sloshy batches as I am the ones that have a firmer consistency. I love to use the runny varieties to flavor plain yogurt or as a sweetener for green smoothies. The slightly overset batches are perfect for serving with cheese plates or as the filling in a thumbprint cookie.

Nut-free? These tasty alternatives will make you forget all about peanut butter.

These tangy little buds are a pantry staple when it comes to jazzing up a weeknight pasta or adding the perfect finishing touch to a plate of cured salmon. Just a spoonful of capers can make a whole dish sing. Do you ever cook with them?Capers are actually the immature flower buds of the caper bush, a shrub-like plant that hails from the Mediterranean region. The buds are picked just before they reach ripeness and pickled either in a salt brine or in vinegar.

Flavorful shiitake mushrooms are such a foundation of Asian cooking. They have an intense flavor that always reminds me of my Chinese grandmother’s cooking, where she used shiitake mushrooms in soups, braises, and steamed dishes. My grandmother always had a big glass jar of dried shiitake mushrooms in her pantry, and I’ve picked up this habit too!

Pad thai and many other Southeast Asian dishesThese blocks of tamarind pulp are the tamarind fruit pods stripped of the outer husk and compressed tightly together. Sometimes the seeds are removed, but we usually find a few errant seeds even in packages marked “seedless.” The pulp itself is very fibrous, so we need to soften it and push it through a fine-meshed strainer to separate the edible pulp from the strands of fiber.First cut off the portion you need.

Do you have a bottle of clam juice in your pantry? Maybe the bottle you have is lurking in the back of the fridge after you used it in that one recipe that called for one tablespoon. Let’s be honest — this isn’t an ingredient making it into your everyday cooking. Well, not until now. Clam juice can also be used in cocktails, pastas, stir-fries, and deglazing your pan. Here are five ways to use clam juice so that bottle doesn’t get lost in the dark depths of your fridge.

Maybe you’ve heard of harissa, but have you ever tried it? If you love condiments and adding a kick of spice to your meals, you’ll want to check this out! Harissa is a spicy and aromatic chile paste that’s a widely used staple in North African and Middle Eastern cooking. Harissa recipes vary between countries and regions, but a standard version includes a blend of hot chile peppers (which are often smoked), garlic, olive oil and spices, like cumin, coriander, caraway and mint.

As I’ve gotten older I’ve come to enjoy renting a house or apartment when I travel. It makes my trip feel more personal and comfortable than staying in a hotel, and above all I really love having the option to cook at least some of my meals. I’ve also learned that creativity is essential when you’re cooking while traveling. Aside from basic cookware, utensils and dishes, my expectations for the kitchen in my vacation rental are pretty low.

Both rice wine and rice vinegar are widely used in Asian cooking, but they’re two very distinct products. Do you know what sets them apart, and when to use each one? While both products are made from fermented rice, the difference is in the manner in which each one is produced, as well as how they’re used. These two can easily be confused, since rice vinegar is sometimes also labeled as rice wine vinegar (which is a vinegar, and not wine).

Here are three tricks I use to give my everyday rice a little extra oomph in the flavor department.

That little jar of red or green Thai curry sitting in your fridge adds a powerful punch of spicy flavor to whatever it’s added to. And while it’s great for making curries, don’t be afraid to use it in other dishes too — here are some of our favorites ways to use it. The beauty of soups that use Thai curry paste is that you usually don’t have to simmer them for very long since the paste is so flavorful by itself.

Fresh ginger is a staple in my kitchen. It is an extremely versatile ingredient that shows up in any course, from savory to sweet, be it main, beverage, dessert, or salad. It can even be medicine — hot ginger tea with lemon, honey and brandy will cure what ails you! In short, fresh ginger is essential to my cooking. Read on for my methods for peeling and mincing fresh ginger.

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There’s something that truly can’t compare to the warm, sweet scent of vanilla. Beloved in everything from ice cream to cakes, a vanilla is as much a scent as it is a powerful flavor. Even in chocolate recipes, vanilla acts as a secret ingredient that makes everything taste just a little bit better. You’ll most often see vanilla extract called for in recipes, but there’s a whole world of vanilla products to explore.

I have an ongoing real estate battle in my refrigerator door between condiments and cocktail ingredients. While I can ignore boozes and bitters since they seem to last practically forever, condiments definitely have shorter shelf lives and need to be pruned occasionally. We can all read a date stamp, but an opened container is another thing. Here’s a rundown of some of the most common condiments and how long they last once they’re opened.

Pomegranate molasses has become one of my favorite ingredients, but it’s a tricky one for many people. Perhaps you, like our assistant editor Ariel, bought a bottle to make one recipe, such as muhammara, and now you’re wondering what else to do with it. Ariel has been after me for months to write down a list of more ideas for pomegranate molasses.

There's a reason they taste so different.

More and more of us are discovering what a fantastic ingredient concentrated miso paste can be in our daily cooking – and not just for soup! Happily, many major stores have caught on and are starting to carry a variety of traditional misos to choose from. There are different types of misos and each is made from soybeans that have been fermented with either rice, barley or other grains. The real question is: how to choose?

These are the two best ways to do it!

With all the bean talk this month, we started thinking about which herbs and spices go well with specific varieties of beans. In general, most beans go well with herbs like parsley, rosemary, sage, savory, and thyme. You usually can’t go wrong with garlic and onions, either. Specific kinds of beans, like fava beans or mung beans, have other affinities with particular herbs and spices.This is not to say that other combinations won’t work.

What are you most looking forward to cooking this autumn? Whether it’s a hearty stew, a batch of fall cookies Toss what’s stale, note what you use often and need more of, and replenish in preparation for cooking rich savory dishes, baked goods, and holiday meals (they will be here before we know it!). Although spices don’t spoil, most should be used within 6 to 12 months for maximum freshness.

Q: I just bought a bag of ground chipotle powder. I’ve never used it before but the smell was intoxicatingly delicious and I couldn’t resist buying it! I searched online for some recipes but had a tough time finding something appropriate for me (no red meat).I’m curious about some of your favorite recipes using ground chipotle powder which don’t involve red meat.Sent by LeahEditor: Leah, chipotle powder is one of my very favorite seasonings.

Canning feels like equal parts science and magic. Sure, we understand the basic facts of cooking the fruit and sealing it inside jars. But you can’t deny there’s something magical about opening that jar months later and spooning out a taste of summer. Pectin is one of the key players in this magical process. Ever wonder what it’s doing?Pectin is a gelling agent that helps to thicken and solidify the fruit juices.

Pickling involves little more than marinating vegetables over time. How much time depends on the method. And for new picklers, the best way to try it out is through refrigerator pickling. You don’t need a garden’s worth of vegetables or canning equipment – just pick a vegetable (or several), add spices and brine, and into the fridge it goes. Best eaten within a week or two, this method is your answer for quick and fresh pickled fare. 1.

One of our favorite parts of summer is the abundance of fresh herbs–often in our own back yards!We find ourselves throwing herbs into everything we cook, relishing in their fresh green flavors. Since these herbs are so fresh, it doesn’t take a lot of persuasion to bring out their best flavor. We need to give them a little more TLC than their dried counter parts!

Many of us keep heaps of spices on hand in the kitchen, and that can create quite the storage conundrum. From wrangling dozens of little bulk-bin bags to rummaging around in the cupboard for the right jar, the whole process shouldn’t be so maddening. We love seeing how other cooks store and organize their spices because we’re always on the lookout for that “why didn’t I think of that?” tip.

We hate to say it, but summer will be over before we know it. Now is the time to preserve some of the season’s gems like tomatoes, peaches, corn, and peppers. Preserving isn’t just about canning, though. Here are some tips for freezing, pickling, making sauces, and more.Berries: Berries may be frozen, of course, but our favorite way to preserve their flavor is in a shrub syrup, which you can use in sodas, cocktails, and salad dressings. Vinegar is also a great option for berries.

I love cayenne, don’t get me wrong. It adds a fantastic heat to any dish from scrambled eggs to curry. It’s just that sometimes I get a little bored of seeing “cayenne, optional” listed in recipes and need a reminder that there are other spices and seasonings out there that can give these dishes some serious kick.I’ll bet most of these seasonings are living in your fridge or cupboard right now, just waiting for to jump in and save the day.

As a kid, pancakes weren’t pancakes without the good stuff. And by the good stuff, I mean real maple syrup — not that artificially flavored, corn syrup-laden imposter. We’d pick up a big jug in the spring and it would last us through the year, for special weekend breakfasts and early morning oatmeal. Now, as an adult, my pantry isn’t fully stocked unless there’s a bottle of maple syrup in it. But lately I’ve discovered that just one bottle won’t cut it.

Use them to add tons of flavor to soups, stews, collards, and more.

No blanching required.

The technique is inspired by In-N-Out.

Some recipes get pretty specific about the kind of wine they want you to use: an oaky chardonnay in this reduction sauce, a hearty Italian red for that braise. But does it really matter?We say, go for it. Switch it up! Experiment with flavors! Try something new! All wines will chemically behave in the same way, so there’s no danger that a recipe won’t work if you use a white instead of a red or vice versa.

Tiny upgrades, big results.

The purpose of adding salt isn't to make food tasty salty — it's to enhance the flavors of the ingredients.

It's the instant jolt of color and flavor I'd been searching for since March.

There are some tasks in the kitchen I don’t enjoy: grating cheese, shucking corn, and peeling and chopping garlic among them. The kids can take over some of those tasks, and they should, because — just like my mother told me, over and over — while they live in my house, they have to live by my rules. She also observed that when I had my own house, I could make my own rules. She was right. This totally came true! I make rules all the time! Even though they get broken.

Use them together or individually for that smoky, from-the-grill flavor!

It elevates even the most everyday meal.

Magic happens when two humble condiments join forces.

If you've ever looked at a recipe for pickles or chutneys, you may have encountered an ingredient simply called "pickling spice."

Strawberry butter, anyone?

You're one ingredient away from the umami-packed pesto of your dreams.

The truly transformative pantry staple beats the pants off your dry beans.

Turmeric has long been a staple in Indian curries as well as in foods like mustard, but there are lots of other ways to eat and drink this spice.

Yep, the stuff you put in soup. But hear us out: It's *really* good!

Cooking with real vanilla beans is a beautiful thing; I love the flecks of vanilla flavor and scraping the concentrated vanilla seeds out of the fragrant beans. But after paying up for the real things, the last thing I want to do is throw away the scraped-out pod. Good news — there are plenty of uses for these spent beans, which still contain tons of great vanilla flavor. Vanilla sugar – Stash spent vanilla beans in a canister of sugar to give it a subtle vanilla flavor.

Have you ever heard of Ficoco? No? Well, let us introduce you then. Ficoco is a rich, dark spread made in Croatia out of figs and cocoa. It’s lightly sweet, but full of flavor, and it is superb when paired with cheese. Here’s our latest favorite pairing: Humboldt Blue Fog.