About spice prices

[Howard_2]

I was in one of those "dollar stores" (specifically, Ocean State Job Lot in the Boston area) and I noticed some jars of spices being sold for $0.88 each. The brand name is Spice Supreme, and I bought caraway seeds (3.5 oz), ground coriander (3 oz), and cumin (3 oz).

These prices are obviously WAAAAY below the prices charged at leading spice vendors, or in the supermarket.

Does anyone know anything about these spices, and about spice pricing in general? My hunch is that spice pricing is artificially high,--a shared monopoly, in effect, or loose price-fixing-- because in general, "spices" are a kind of snob item.

[ratbuddy]

I was at Stop and Shop today looking at freeze dried chives. It was $6 for a .10 ouce jar or something. The per pound price was over $900. Three times the price of SILVER. Got home and checked Penzey's site, and it's $5.35 for a 1oz bag, or $85.60 a pound. Still not cheap, but the grocery store was a major ripoff compared to that.

[letorthopper]

I really wonder if these spices are just so old that they've made their way to the dollar store. Most food items I've seen in our dollar stores are close to their expiration date. In my experience its all kind of crap, but maybe I haven't found the right dollar store.

Picking up whole seeds is probably a good bet though since they last so much longer than ground. The absolute worst thing about the store spices is that the small container is only about forty cents cheaper than the large. I don't like buying the large ones because there are only a few spices that I use "that much" before they'll go stale.

[therealdoctorlew]

A friend who travels the world buying spices for a major name-brand spice distributor told me that buying cheap whole spices is just fine, but avoid the ground spices.

[cutipie721]

I stopped buying ground spices after reading this.

http://www.time.com/time/health/artic...

[Howard_2]

Here in the Boston area, some years ago, we had 2 stores that had spices in bulk. The 2 were homsy's and (iirc) Cardoo's, both near Dedham. Very fresh, reasonably priced. they had all sorts of interesting ingredients. They used to be a major stop on my agenda; sadly they're gone now.

I would say that spices are a "snob cookery" item for most "non ethnic" Americans, and certainly in a major branch of US heritage, i.e. Britain. American food by and large is soooooo bland and spice-less; folks from a variety of ethnic heritages seem to me to know much more about how to cook and eat well.

[jumpingmonk]

I agree with pretty much everything said above. I will however over onle little caveat. Most spices, when they arrive in this country are filled with "junk" (dirt clods, insect parts, rodent droppings, seeds of other plants that were growing in the field etc. pest damaged spice etc.) There are of course, USDA maximums that cannot be exceeded for the spices to get into the country, but those tolerances are usally set pretty high, since even the USDA admits there really isnt all that much the growing countries can do about the problem. I'm not sure I ever seen any "junk" in the supermaket spices so I assume that most of the "big name" spice companies put the spices through addional cleaning procedures to make them at least look "pure". The "bulk" packers for the so called "ethnic" markets however, often don't bother, since they assume that most of the clientele who are buying them are from cultures where picking over your spices before you add them to cooking is a normal procedure (this is also, now that I think of it another good reason to buy your spices whole, you can make sure that all the junk was removed). what I'm trying to get at is If you buy your spices from these sources (and there is really no reason not too) you have to be aware that you need to clean before you cook, you can't just grab a handful out of the bag and toss it in like you might with a supermarket container (note most of what I've said above also applies to ethinc bulk foods (like beans and grains)) Most of the junk really can't harm you (at least, not in the amounts you will find) but most people don't like the idea of finding a rodent turd in thier dinner and some of the things that show up could give the food and icky taste . Just remember to spread your spice out on a surface and pick out anything that looks extraneous (for some spices that have real problems (coriander seed is a particualry bad one) you may want to float them on a little water just before you cook (coriander floats, most of the other things don't)

[Perilagu Khan]

I hear you. Once bought a burlap sack of basmati at my Indian market and it was full of live bugs. They looked like flees.

[jumpingmonk]

hmm assuming that the bugs were in fact quite a bit bigger than fleas (actual fleas are usally a bit to small to look like more than a little black dot to the naked eye) my money would be on grain weevils. I've had the same thing happen to me once (Though I will point out that live insects are pretty much the one area where the USDA importers have a pretty much zero tolerance policy, so if you do find living bugs in your food or spices, it's more often than not a post import problem, and blame shoud be placed on the storage warehouse or (sometimes) the store, not the packers) In my case it was even worse, I bought a bag of purple corn kernels at a spice store and since they looked so nice (and I had no real need for them at the time, I put some to the side, to try and plant in my garden next year. Not only did the weevils destroy the purple corn completely, they also got out and destroyed a good portion (about 25%) of the other corn seeds I had put aside for my garden.

[Perilagu Khan]

These bugs really were quite small and did resemble flees crawling through the fur of a white cat. I simply rinsed the rice well and used it anyway, but my wife was sufficiently icked out by the critters that we wound up tossing the bulk of the rice. Suffice it to say that we've not since bought rice in a burlap sack.

[Parrotgal]

At the City Market in Kansas City there is a spice vendor with these huge boxes of all kinds of spices, $1.00 for a scoop of almost any of them. A scoop is almost more than I ever need, so I love it. I can buy my own jars.

[alanbarnes]

Spices a snob item? I don't think so. Go into any market in a Persian / Thai / Indian / Middle Eastern / Latin American community and you'll find spices out the yin-yang. Good spices are and always have been a valuable commodity, but they certainly aren't limited to the upper crust.

That said, grocery store spices are hideously overpriced. The spice section is only going to have products from a couple of companies, and yes, they charge a premium. Moreover, if you're buying anything that's even a little unusual, you run the risk of getting spices that are stale.

I get most of my spices from the Indian market around the corner, and pay a tiny fraction of what McCormick or Spice Islands would cost. The stuff tends to be fresher, too.

Which raises a question about the dollar-store spices. In my (snobbish?) opinion, ground cumin and coriander just don't last very long. Most of the time they're dead when you open the jar, and once the jar is open it's a matter of days, not weeks, before it needs to be pitched.

Whole seeds, on the other hand, will stay aromatic for a year or more if they're stored in an airtight container in a cool, dark place. Toast them and grind them yourself just before using - it makes a huge difference.

[Perilagu Khan]

I know that, generally speaking, you can find spices in ethnic markets and ethnic sections of your grocery store for a fraction of what you'll pay for Spice Island and the other name brand spices. The price differentials are frankly astonishing.

[mpjmph]

Plus, the spices at ethnic markets (and from the bulk spice section of Whole Foods, etc..) are usually stronger/better than the grocery store bottles that cost much, much more.