Knowledge Base > Dan Marek - Ask Me Anything (Office Hours)
Dan Marek - Ask Me Anything (Office Hours)
This event was on
Tuesday, December 05, 2023 at 11:00 am Pacific, 2:00 pm Eastern
Join Chef Dan Marek in his virtual office as he welcomes all of your questions. This event was created for you and we encourage you to Ask Anything – from cooking techniques to cours… Read More.
Question:
Can you offer some suggestions on building up and storing spices and herbs?
— Denika Messa
Answer:
Yeah, that's actually a wonderful thing to do. I have a very large spice and, um, herb cabinet that I keep in my pantry. Um, you know, I think one of the biggest things that, uh, I can give for advice is to be able to, when you're getting your spices, um, take a sharpie and right in the bottom of the bottle, the month and the year that you bought the spices because they do have a shelf life once you open them. And it's typically about a year. So, uh, holiday season is kind of one of those times I like to be able to use up a lot of the different spices I have. Um, and I always just make sure to flip over the bottle to be able to check the bottom of them. Now, spices and herbs are gonna be treated a little bit differently, of course, I mean, dried herbs, um, you know, uh, they're still gonna be about a year long that you would keep those as well, but I just wanna make sure that they're in a dry place. Um, typically a darker place is good for those as well too. Um, you know, as far as, uh, storage for spices, um, you know, I just typically keep them in little glass jars, basically write the number on the bottom for them and then, um, you know, uh, get rid of them once that year has kind of gone up. It's not like they're going to lose all of their flavor for it, but they definitely will lose a lot of flavor the the older they are. So if you have something from, you know, the, the eighties in your pantry, it's probably time to get rid of that. It'll take a lot more of it to get any kind of flavor out of it. Um, and then building up and, you know, you're, you just kind of build them up over time is, uh, you don't need to buy a lot of spices. A lot of people make that mistake with, they'll buy this big jar or something of spices, they're like, oh, I got the Costco version, you know, and it's like, do you really need that much timey, you know, or dried thyme. Um, so it's, it's better to s buy 'em in smaller amounts, so use them as you go and then get rid of them once they have kind of gone past their, their freshness.
