Spice Tips

[nascarchuck]

Someone in another forum posted a newspaper article about spices and the article had a few pretty good tips. Thought that I would pass them on.
I'm sure that others here have some more tips to add as well...


*When cooking with whole chile pods, if you want the heat, use fewer chile pods, add them to the dish early and cook them for a long time. If you want the chiles' flavor without the heat, put in more chiles and cook for only a short time before removing them.

*Add whole seasonings to a dish early in cooking and ground spices toward the end of cooking.

*The finer a spice is ground, the more quickly the flavor dissipates.

*Spices have an affinity for fat, which carries flavor, so if you refrigerate a meat stew or chili overnight before removing the fat from the top of the stew, the flavors will be more intense.

*Roasting a pepper caramelizes it and brings out the sugars. Roasting dried spices imparts a richer, more robust flavor; use a low oven temperature, 200 degrees or less.

*Dried chiles and other spices are much more flexible in seasoning than bottled hot sauces, which tend to be strong and identifiable