CT FM 007: Cooking With Herbs & Spices

CT FM 007:

Cooking With Herbs & Spices Brought To You By: RecipeThis.com

Introduction Welcome to our seventh Podcast from CT FM. For our 7th Podcast I wanted to talk about herbs and spices. I will start by saying that I love herbs and spices. They are always in my kitchen and I couldn’t live without them.

When we first moved to Portugal we do so in a caravan. It was one of those really small caravans so storage was an issue. Therefore prior to going nearly everything was sold. We said “bye bye” to our DVD collection, our furniture, most of our kitchen items and there was just a few small kitchen items that made it with us to Portugal.

I brought my slow cooker with me because at this point I had owned it for 4 years and loved it. And of course my herbs and spices. They didn’t take up that much room and they are well loved.

Whether you are on a diet or not there is a certain something that herbs and spices adds to a dish. A boring shepherds pie tastes so much better with some seasoning and I would be lost without basil in my tomato sauce.

But there is often so many questions surrounding herbs and spices so let’s get started…..

Where Should You Start?

I would always suggest with starting with 10 everyday herbs and spices away from the typical salt and pepper that you already own. These will be ones you can use in your everyday cooking and then as you start to cook more you can gradually add more and more to your range.

We are lucky in the sense that brands send us goods to test so we don’t always pay for them and our herbs and spices cupboard is often full to bursting.

Starting out though, these are the top 10 I would always start with: Ginger & Garlic – I always have these in large jars of puree. It always seems to take me an age to peel and grate so I buy them already pureed.

Because I use garlic nearly all the time the garlic will last me about 6 weeks where as the ginger will last about 3 months. Though it is always down to how much heat you like in your cooking.

Basil & Oregano – I just couldn’t live without basil and oregano. They are perfect for Italian cooking and when you are making pasta dishes in tomato sauce they are perfect. They are also very good for adding to chicken dishes or for when you are making a marinade with red wine.

Tarragon – OMG I just love tarragon and I get the same reaction from Dominic every time as it sets off his food intolerance. So he will always ask if I have put it in, or not! It is perfect though for chicken. Next time you do a chicken casserole, chicken in a cheese sauce or even a chicken pot pie; add a little tarragon for the perfect flavour!

Mixed Herbs – What I love about mixed herbs is that it has a few of my favourite herbs together so it saves buying them seperately. In a typical mixed herbs jar you will find thyme, sage, rosemary and parsley.

Mixed Spice – Like mixed herbs but for the spice addict. You can usually find coriander, nutmeg, cinnamon, all spice and ginger. It is perfect for Asian cooking and we often use it in our stir fries and our curries.

Chinese Five Spice – I get this in bulk from the Chinese supermarket because I love Chinese food so much and I am always using it. It contains a lot of your typical Chinese flavours including cinnamon, fennel seeds, cloves, star anise and pepper.

Cajun – I love Mexican food and there is no better place to start than with cajun seasoning. Use it to make yourself some chicken fajitas, slow cooked ribs, as part of a rub for pork dishes and best of all on our Airfryer potato wedges.

Paprika – The final one on the list has to be paprika. Mix it up with some cajun spice and you have a lovely smokey seasoning for your meat and it works perfectly together on pulled pork. I also love paprika in hot tomato sauces or to add something different to an Asian casserole.

I have also listed the ten above in the order of my favourite first, so if you can only afford to top up on five then just choose the top five on the list!

You will also notice how great your food now tastes and how much flavour is in your dishes and it only takes a minute to add some dried herbs or spices.

This brings us to this Podcasts Sponsor: For Podcast 7 of CT FM we wanted to bring to your attention Amazon and their wide choices of herbs and spices. What I have found is since I have started RecipeThis.com is that because we all live in different locations around the world and what is a famous herb or spice in one area, isn’t in another.

You can then have the opportunity to look up herbs and spices mentioned in recipes and easily get hold of them.

So if you go to http://recipethis.com/amazonherbs you can see a whole range of choices.

Thinking Frugal The thing about herbs and spices is that the supermarkets own brands are often the best and taste just as good. Don’t think you have to buy the best because you don’t.

Often the jars of herbs or spices that we buy will last us several months so paying a euro or two for a jar is never going to break the bank. Plus you will find that you will use some of them more than others and that on average you will probably only have 1-2 to refill each month as part of your grocery shopping.

Also think about the herbs and spices that you hardly ever use. If you have a curry evening once a month then you don’t want to go to the effort of buying in each of the spices needed to make the curry, instead it will work out a lot cheaper if you just buy the spices as a spice mix. You will probably pay 20% more for this but it will mean the difference between buying 1 jar and buying 8.

Where we live we often end up at the English supermarket that charges a premium for produce. We don’t mind buying the herbs and spices from there because they will last us six months, but we wouldn’t buy one off products because we are just too frugal to part with our money!

Round Up! Thanks for joining us in our Podcast and we look forward to sharing more of our cooking tips with you in the future.

Links & Resources Mentioned In This Podcast  Amazon results for herbs  Slow Cooked Chicken Fajitas  Airfryer Potato Wedges How To Get Involved In Our Podcasts

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Thanks again for listening and best of luck with your cooking.

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