Welcome to the Spice Lab

Spice Lab · Welcome

Welcome to the Spice Lab

Where every spice gets a proper introduction: what it is, where it comes from, and what it smells and tastes like.

Open any spice cabinet and you’re holding centuries of history, trade, and tradition in a row of little jars. Spice Lab is how we bring those jars to life in our Artisanal Academy classes. Whenever a recipe calls for a spice, students meet it with their senses first: they look at it whole, smell it, crush it, and taste it before it ever goes into the pot.

This blog is the companion to that hands-on time. Here I’ll share what we can’t fit into a class: where each spice comes from, its story, how to store it, and how to make the blends at home. In the weeks ahead, we’ll break down one spice or blend at a time. So let’s start at the very beginning.

The Basics

Spice or Herb?

It all comes down to which part of the plant

This is one of the first questions I get in class, and I love it because the answer is so simple. They both come from plants. The difference is which part of the plant we’re using.

• Herbs are the leaves. Think basil, parsley, thyme, rosemary, mint. They’re green, often used fresh, and most of them are happy growing right outside the kitchen door.
• Spices are everything else. Seeds like cumin and coriander. Bark like cinnamon. Roots like ginger and turmeric. Berries like black pepper. Flower buds like cloves. Even the tiny red threads inside a flower, which is saffron. Spices are almost always dried, and that’s where all that concentrated flavor lives.

My favorite example to show students is cilantro. The leaves are an herb. Let the plant go to seed, and those little round seeds are coriander, a spice. Same plant, completely different smell and taste. Crush a coriander seed between your fingers and you get something bright and almost citrusy, nothing like the leaf.

How I Use Them

Herbs bring freshness, so I usually add them at the end or sprinkle them on top. Spices bring warmth and depth, so they go in early, often toasted in a dry pan or warmed in a little oil until the whole kitchen smells amazing. A good spice blend brings both together in one pinch.

A Pinch of History

Once Worth Their Weight in Gold

From camel caravans to our pantry shelves

It’s easy to forget how special spices once were. For thousands of years, they traveled by camel caravan and by ship from India, Sri Lanka, and Southeast Asia to the Middle East, Africa, and Europe.

Black pepper was so valuable it was traded almost like money. Explorers sailed across oceans looking for faster routes to cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg. Spices were used to preserve food, as medicine, and in celebrations long before they became the little jars in our pantries.

I think about that every time I open a jar of cinnamon. It costs a few dollars now, but it carries a really long story with it. As we go through this series, I’ll share a little of each spice’s story along the way.

On My Bookshelf

If you want to go deeper, my absolute favorite book on this is Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat by Samin Nosrat. It’s one of the most cherished books on my shelf. I love the way she describes spices and shows how the same seeds and barks show up in kitchens all over the world, each cuisine using them in its own way. It changed how I think about seasoning, and you’ll probably hear me reference it more than once in this series. (Samin, if you ever read this, I would love to cook with you one day!)

Using Your Senses

Taste It Through a Screen

Grab a jar from your cupboard and follow along

In class, students hold each spice, smell it, and taste it. Here on the blog, I’ll do my best to bring those senses to you in words. For every spice and blend in this series, we’ll walk through the same five steps:

• Look. Color, shape, and whether it’s whole or ground.
• Touch. Rough, papery, oily, powdery, or gritty between your fingers.
• Smell. First a gentle sniff from the jar, then again after crushing it, when the oils wake up.
• Taste. What hits first, what follows, and what lingers after you swallow.
• Pair. The foods and other spices it loves.

Here’s how that sounds with cinnamon:

Look

Curled, reddish-brown quills of bark, rolled like tiny scrolls.

Touch

Thin and papery; it snaps and crumbles. Ground, it’s as soft as cocoa powder.

Smell

Warm and sweet, like opening the oven on a tray of cinnamon rolls. Crushed, it turns sharper and almost peppery.

Taste

Sweet at first, then a gentle warmth on the tongue and a dry, woody finish.

Pair

Apples, pumpkin, oats, sweet potatoes, coffee, and cloves.

When there’s no word for a flavor, we’ll compare it to something you already know: a pine forest, a fresh lemon peel, a campfire, a sharpened pencil. That’s how chefs describe flavor, and it’s a skill students build every time they taste.

Words we’ll use often: warm, cooling, sweet, bitter, earthy, floral, citrusy, smoky, woody, piney, peppery, tingly, and numbing

Where It Started

The Gardens That Inspired Us

Epcot International Flower & Garden Festival

The idea of growing my own spices came from two gardens at Epcot’s Flower & Garden Festival. Walking through them, I got to see the actual plants behind the jars on my shelf, and I wanted that same connection in my own backyard.

The Spice Garden at the Morocco pavilion was filled with potted ginger, chili peppers, parsley, and chives, tucked between bright strawflowers and big globes covered in whole seeds. A sign told the story of ras el hanout, the Moroccan blend whose name means “head of the shop,” a merchant’s very best mix.

The Spice Garden at the Morocco pavilion

How many can you spot? And ginger, growing tall in a planter.

Over at the United Kingdom pavilion, the English Tea Garden had giant teacup planters, each one showing off the plants inside a Twinings blend. The Raspberry & Lemon tea, for example, gets its depth from rose, blackberry, licorice root, and hibiscus, not just raspberry and lemon. Another sign walked through how true tea is made: every black, green, and white tea comes from the same plant, Camellia sinensis.

The English Tea Garden, where every teacup tells you what’s in the blend

Why It Stuck With Me

Both gardens did something a spice label can’t: they showed that every blend starts as a living plant. That’s exactly what I want students to feel in Spice Lab.

Growing Our Own

From Our Garden

What actually grows here in the South Bay

A lot of spices need a tropical climate we just don’t have here, but some do really well in our garden, and we’ve started.

Saffron. Every fall our saffron crocus sends up these little purple flowers, and inside each one are three bright red threads. That’s the saffron. You pick them by hand, one flower at a time, which is why it’s so precious. Fresh saffron smells sweet and honey-like with a slightly earthy, almost hay-like note, and a few threads turn a whole pot of rice golden.

Roselle hibiscus. After the pink flower fades, it leaves behind a deep red, fleshy calyx. Steep those in hot water and you get a tea the color of rubies that tastes tart, like cranberries with a squeeze of lemon. This is the same hibiscus you’ll find in a lot of herbal tea blends.

Our saffron crocus in bloom, and roselle calyxes forming

Our garden Herbes de Provence. This was our first try at making Herbes de Provence entirely from our own garden: lavender, thyme, rosemary, marjoram, fennel fronds, basil, tarragon, and parsley, all laid out on a screen to dry. Brush your hand over it and you get the lavender first, then the woodsy rosemary and thyme, then a sweet hint of licorice from the fennel and tarragon. I’ll share how we put it together in an upcoming post.

Our first homegrown Herbes de Provence, drying

Where I Shop

Oaktown Spice Shop

Oakland & Albany

Here’s something most people don’t realize: spices don’t really go bad, they just fade. So whenever I can, I buy from small local makers who grind in small batches and know exactly where their spices come from.

The minute you walk into Oaktown Spice Shop, you smell it. Warm cinnamon, smoky paprika, something sharp and peppery underneath it all. It’s like walking into a spice library.

John Beaver and Erica Perez opened the shop in Oakland back in 2011, and they now have a second location in Albany. They’re celebrating 15 years this month, which I think is wonderful. They grind and hand-mix their blends in small batches, and they source peppercorns from Cambodia and India, cinnamon from Vietnam and Sri Lanka, and some spices from farms right here in California.

I could spend hours reading these shelves.

Everyday basics sit right next to chiles I’d never heard of until I visited, like Urfa biber, which smells almost like raisins and coffee. And I love that their house blends tell you every single ingredient on the label.

Where I Shop

FlipFresh

Santa Clara County farmers markets

FlipFresh is a local maker out of Los Altos, and you can find them at farmers markets in Mountain View and San Jose. They buy directly from farms, so the spices haven’t been sitting in a warehouse for years. Their smoked paprika from Spain smells like a campfire in the best way.

I also love their jars. They’re reusable and magnetic, so they click together or stick right to a metal surface, and refills come in packets instead of another plastic bottle. Check flipfreshspices.com for their current market days.

At Home

Keeping Spices Fresh

Small habits, big flavor

You don’t need anything fancy. A few small habits make a big difference:

• Buy small. I’d rather have a little jar I’ll use up in a couple of months than a big one that fades on the shelf.
• Buy whole when you can. Whole peppercorns, cumin, coriander, and nutmeg hold onto their flavor so much longer than ground.
• Grind right before you cook. Crack a peppercorn in a mortar and pestle and smell it. That sharp, almost piney burst is what you’ve been missing from the pre-ground stuff.
• Toast whole seeds first. A minute in a dry pan, just until they smell nutty, wakes them right up.
• Keep them away from the stove and the sunny window. Heat and light are what steal the flavor.
• Write the date on the jar. A little label tells you when it’s time for a fresh one.

Coming Up

What’s Next in Spice Lab

One spice or blend at a time

From here, each post will take one spice or blend and really get to know it: what’s inside, where it comes from, what it smells and tastes like, how the store-bought versions compare, and how to make your own at home. We’re starting with pumpkin spice, because it’s fall and I couldn’t resist.

• Pumpkin spice
• Chili powder
• Garam masala
• Chinese five spice
• Herbes de Provence
• Peri peri
• Ras el hanout

In Our Classes

Spice Lab isn’t a separate class. It’s woven into the classes you and your kids already take with us. Whenever a recipe calls for a spice, we stop and meet it first: we pass it around, smell it whole, crush it, and taste a tiny bit before it goes in the pot. These posts are how I bring that same experience home to you.

“Spices don’t really go bad. They just fade.”

— Why fresh matters in Spice Lab

So grab a jar from your cupboard, open it up, and take a sniff. I’d love to hear what you smell.

Chef Deborah

Spice Lab · Welcome · Artisanal Academy

artisanalacademy.com · info@artisanalacademy.com

Sources: KQED: Oaktown Spice Shop; KQED: Oaktown Spice Shop at 15; Oaktown Spice Shop on Good Eggs; PCFMA: FlipFresh. Garden signs photographed at the Epcot International Flower & Garden Festival.