Unlock the Flavors of Home with Key Spice Selections

Ever wondered which pantry essentials can take your home cooking from good to great? Step into our culinary world as Dave and I, Jen, divulge the top five spices that are absolute game-changers for any kitchen. We'll let you in on how the subtle punch of white pepper can elevate your dishes and why the nostalgic aroma of bay leaves is a must for that homely touch. If convenience is your thing, you'll appreciate our nod to granulated garlic, and hear us wax poetic about the transformative power of a good ol' Southern-style liquid hot sauce.

Join us for a kitchen rendezvous where we share our love for the unsung hero of the herb world: dried dill, and its unexpected ability to spruce up everything from a classic egg salad to a sophisticated salmon entrée. We're bringing you the inside scoop on the importance of quality oils, the magic of toasting spices, and why every home baker needs a bottle of top-notch vanilla extract on their shelf. From savory to sweet, we're serving up tips and tales that'll inspire you to stock your pantry wisely and cook with heart. So, tie on your apron, grab a whisk, and get ready to infuse your meals with a dash of passion and a sprinkle of know-how.

Transcript

Dave: 0:06

Welcome to Sweet Tea and Tacos. This week I'm Dave and I'm Jen, and this week it's the top five must-have pantry items. So we kind of had this idea. We're talking about spices, we're, you know. Obviously we're talking about ideas for podcasts. So we came up with this idea. So we each made our top five list and we've not told each other what it was. So we had a little negotiation on the front end. Initially Jennifer wanted to eliminate salt and pepper, but I kind of negotiated pepper back in and unfortunately gave away one of mine at the same time because she knows me too well.

Dave: 0:43

I have a feeling some of ours will be the same because of that. But we're gonna focus on savory. This is kind of to me the if I'm a stalker kitchen, the first five things I'm buying from my spice cabinet. You know that I'm gonna cook with on a regular basis.

Jen: 0:58

Right and just if that wasn't clear, on the salt. You know we left salt off, because we're assuming that everybody is gonna have salt, you cannot cook with salt.

Dave: 1:10

Salt's a given, pepper's a given, but there's a lot of different types.

Jen: 1:13

So that was kind of the negotiation and getting that back in there Right, which segues there's probably a lot of different salt.

Dave: 1:20

Yeah, she knows my first one, which would be white pepper. So for a long time, you know, I've heard of white pepper and I think we probably used it a time or two, but I thought maybe it was more of a an appearance type of a use. You use white pepper and blue black pepper when you want white sauces.

Dave: 1:41

I know that certainly is a use, but I watched a very old culinary show based on things in New Orleans where the first episodes they were did from the early early 90s and the interview with this this family restaurateur, cajun chef, and he was talking about using white pepper, black pepper and cayenne pepper for different flavor profiles in the same dish and how one was for bite, one was for heat, one was for this, one was for that. So that got me thinking. So I thought let me try some red, some white pepper, and it kind of surprised me about how flavorful white pepper is. So yeah, I've started using this kind of my go to now a lot of things.

Jen: 2:28

So yeah, and I will say I like it a lot. You know I don't have anything against black pepper, but it just got a little pedestrian for me. I guess sometimes, and it too much of it, brought a lot of heat and the white pepper just it's a more kind of roundness of flavor. It has a little bit more depth. I just enjoy it more.

Dave: 2:54

And I'm just using a powdered one right now, but I think my next step is a fresh ground white pepper, you know. So that's the next evolution. So because we usually do fresh ground black pepper, but I think a fresh ground white pepper would be good. And there's pepper blends, but I like. I like the control of a single one, where you can just kind of tweak that one flavor. So your first one.

Jen: 3:17

All right, my number one is Bay. Bay leaves Gosh okay.

Jen: 3:21

So I don't know, I guess I just kind of have an affinity for it. My mom used it a lot in her cooking. I remember as a kid this just kind of stuck out. But every time she would do like a kind of a pasta sauce, you know with meat, like a bolognese type. She'd put the bay leaf in there. And I was the only child when she would serve up my plate. She would always stick the bay leaf on my plate, I mean in the. In addition I would say, oh, I got the bay leaf. I'd be so excited.

Dave: 3:57

Yeah, I'm so, I'm so lucky. How does this keep happening?

Jen: 4:01

Finally, I realized one day oh, mom's, mom's putting it in there, she's done that some with our kids. That's a neat memory, you know. Yeah, but it does.

Dave: 4:11

It adds another level of complexity to soups. We use a lot of soups, obviously, but you can use it. You use it in a lot of things.

Jen: 4:18

Yeah, it's pasta sauce. We do mostly use it in soups and stews, but yeah we can say pasta sauce.

Dave: 4:22

You know whole bay and you know a fresh, organic one.

Jen: 4:26

Right, and it's the type of thing where you, when you eat whatever you've cooked it with you, don't say, oh, I taste that bay, it's wonderful, but if you don't have it in, then you can just kind of notice it. Yeah, it's almost this indescribable sort of flavor profile sometimes, but it just really adds a lot.

Dave: 4:48

Yeah, okay. So my second one would be granulated garlic, so not garlic salt and sometimes garlic powder, but I like the thicker ones.

Jen: 4:59

More the gran, more the size, More gran, more the size. Yeah.

Dave: 5:02

I just think it's nice to have on hand when you don't have fresh garlic. I like, I think a garlic adds a lot to your dish, no matter what you're cooking. I think it has. You know, garlic really adds a lot of depth and having that granulated garlic excuse me is a nice thing to have on hand when you can't have the fresh. Yeah, yeah.

Jen: 5:24

Well, that was actually my number two as well.

Dave: 5:26

Oh, there you go, yeah, All right. So number three, a Southern style liquid hot sauce. So I just I thought I had it on hand it adds, you know, it's a quick way to add a little bit of heat. It's not chunky, you know.

Jen: 5:42

Whatever your favorite brand is, yeah, there's several good ones from, like, the state of Louisiana. Yeah, everybody has their preference, and there's probably, you know, other brands as well.

Dave: 5:51

Oh, I have all over the place, but just that liquid and then little bottle on the table. All over the South you know sparkling cap, fish or greens or whatever, but I use it a lot for cooking just to add a dash of heat, a dash of red pepper flavor. But then they also have. There's a lot of varieties out there, some Chipotle.

Jen: 6:09

Right, like some blend.

Dave: 6:10

Yeah, some blends, and I like using that in chilies because you can add a smoky component to your chili or that type of dish.

Jen: 6:19

It's also really good A few little drops in scrambled eggs.

Dave: 6:23

Oh yeah, absolutely, yeah, all right.

Jen: 6:26

All right, let's see, we're on number three.

Dave: 6:28

Number three.

Jen: 6:29

Mine's going to be paprika.

Dave: 6:32

Yep.

Jen: 6:34

And there's several kinds of paprika out there on the market. We mainly just use kind of your straight paprika, right, but then there's like Hungarian and hot and sweet and, yeah, smoked paprika, Smoked paprika yeah, I like that too.

Dave: 6:49

Yeah, that was probably the number six on my list was paprika. Oh, okay, yeah, and there's that. One time we did a dish, we found this old, old Cajun cookbook and it had a recipe for paprika chicken and it had like this obscene amount of paprika I don't know, it's like a cup or something Like you almost a whole thing of paprika. And at first you're like, well, okay, let's try it. But it was good, it was really good, yeah. But yeah, just chilies and chicken and fish and I mean beef, whatever, yeah.

Jen: 7:21

And it does add some nice color to things.

Dave: 7:23

Color absolutely.

Jen: 7:25

But it adds good flavor.

Dave: 7:26

And again smoked paprika. I like in the chili, for the same reason of the Chipotle, you know. But can someone can be hotter, some can be not as hot. So yeah, you've seen some variety to adjust individual flavors. And that kind of leaves me to mine, which was chili powder. You were kind of leaning away from blends.

Jen: 7:43

Yeah.

Dave: 7:43

But I just like the generic chili powder term, whether or not you're using them more a single chili powder or a blend of chili powders. I like having chili powder and not just for a chili, that's kind of obvious, right. But just beef? I think chili powder brings out the flavor of beef, so I like adding just a dash to ground beef or a steak or a roast or whatever. Just a little bit of a chili powder I think helps amplify the beefiness.

Jen: 8:14

Like when you're doing a kind of a rub, maybe you'll just rub it, or something like that.

Dave: 8:20

Yeah, but if I'm just sauteing ground beef, you know salt pepper, yeah, chili powder. Yeah you know, I think just helps it now. Don't put enough in there that it start chasing like maybe a, a taco meat or chili meat, but just enough to bring out a little extra beefiness.

Jen: 8:34

Okay, yeah, cool All right number four. All right, you're number four. It's gonna be celery seed. Ah, so Something I've been using for probably I don't know about the past five years, I guess and I mainly use it in things like chicken salad and egg salad. When I make tuna salad I mean not that I wouldn't put fresh celery in there too, but it's kind of like with garlic you always can have it on hand because it's dried and yeah, and if you got a can of tuna and you want to whip up some tuna salad, you don't have to worry about having fresh.

Dave: 9:15

That's right, yeah.

Jen: 9:16

Yeah, just this adds a nice flavor and, yeah, I enjoy it Cool.

Dave: 9:23

All right, so my number five would be Wooster.

Jen: 9:27

Wooster sure.

Dave: 9:27

Wooster, sure, I just like saying Wooster, wooster, sure, which to share your shower, shower sauce and it's, um, a Compliment of a complex flavor. It's that one of those flavor profiles, you know. You have the sweet, salty, sour, and then there's what they call unami or umami not unami, umami which is kind of the savory it's hard to describe, it's just that savouriness, like mushrooms and this, that and the other, but wooster shower kind of adds that. So just a little, you know, drop here and there. But it's a complex flavor and a small source, you know it is.

Jen: 10:02

I will say I love it in Ground beef when you're making burgers.

Dave: 10:07

Mm-hmm.

Jen: 10:07

Just go ahead and mix it through.

Dave: 10:09

I mix it in it.

Jen: 10:11

Makes an amazing burger.

Dave: 10:12

Mm-hmm, cool and number five for you.

Jen: 10:17

My number five is dill.

Dave: 10:18

Hmm.

Jen: 10:19

Okay, dried, you know dried dill, again, kind of like the celery seed, something I haven't been using that long. You know maybe the past right a couple years. But I have found myself Putting it in a lot of things these days. You know, eggs, it kind of like with the celery seed, also things like egg salad chicken salad, but it just adds a real fresh taste. You know you think about Like dill pickles having a real strong taste, but the dry dill is it's. It's not quite as intense.

Dave: 10:55

Fresh and it's more of a yeah, just kind of a fresh yeah, yeah, fish.

Jen: 11:01

Oh yeah, it's great like on some salmon. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah yeah, yeah, our kids love it, they do shocking.

Dave: 11:10

So yeah, so these are, you know, some things that you would have on hand, so you don't always have to rush out to the grocery store to cook something, you know. It's like I've got these ingredients on hand and I know what these can do and they're pretty Versatile things like I pull some stuff out of my fridge and cook. Yeah, one of my favorite stories is is A friend of mine in college, keith. We went home I.

Dave: 11:34

He came home to me with me with me when we can and I cooked and I wasn't anything major. It's like frozen peas and Pork chops and maybe rice or something.

Dave: 11:43

He was like man, you cooked from ingredients and I'll just never forget that because it was. It was kind of like shocking to him that I don't know if it's somebody my age or maybe other people in college don't cook. I don't know what it was, but it wasn't just some like I stuck it out, pull it out of the freezer and stick it in the microwave. It was different components that put together and so, yeah, it was, you know, pretty generic components you can have on hand, but then you know some other things you might want. Obviously, you know a good oil is as a versatile Pantry item.

Jen: 12:13

Yeah, and I would encourage you to look for a really good quality oil. You don't have to spend a ton, just do a little research. There's some really good, good ones out on the market. We found one recently at kind of one of these big box stores yeah, that's an extra virgin or game that was recommended by an author out there. And Then another oil that we've stumbled upon lately that we really enjoy is avocado oil, and it's it's really good for a high heat. I think it's up to like maybe 450 degrees.

Dave: 12:52

But a lot of people shy away from cooking in high heat with olive oil. Yeah but I think it depends on the olive oil.

Jen: 12:58

It does.

Dave: 12:58

Yeah, a really strong flavored one.

Jen: 13:00

Maybe, you know, yeah, some of them can taste, maybe a little grassy or something like that. But you think about all the cultures that have used olive oil through the years. You know they fried with it. It's not gonna. Yeah, I mean it can withstand the heat. It may be more about kind of some of the flavors that it imparts, but certainly can can handle the heat, I think. I mean that's just my opinion. But and another good oil is Coconut oil and that's come become real trendy, you know the past few years. But it you know it's a very stable oil. It's Not really gonna go rancid Very quickly at all. And and I will say on some of those others, you do have to be careful. I mean you don't want to use like Three-year-old olive oil.

Jen: 13:51

It's been opened and sitting in your cabinet and and again, like with the spices you know, check some expiration dates if you get some, some old stuff, throw it out and start over keep them fresh. Yeah, keep them fresh.

Dave: 14:06

Yeah, but it's good to have the dried ones on hand when you can't have the fresh stuff.

Jen: 14:09

It is. And here's a tip if you've got a dried Say herb or something like that, maybe like dry basil or maybe an Italian type blend, you know, do it in the palm of your hands, kind of crinkle it up a little bit. It'll release a little bit of those oils. Right, bring out some more and a lot of.

Dave: 14:29

Indian cooking, they saute a lot of in a dry pan. They do the spices and help toad, they toast them and I know, and sometimes in Spanish cooking, mexican cooking, in different cultures, they'll toast the spices, yep, and amplify the flavor of the toasted spices. Yeah, and so what about some sweet ones? We didn't really cover sweet ones, but what, what would be kind of your sweet?

Jen: 14:53

Yeah, you know and I think that's pretty obvious. Probably most people would have the same. You know, maybe four or five, but I did do a little research and so I had. Let me just name them and then I'll go back and talk a little bit about them.

Jen: 15:10

Cinnamon yeah, clothes okay, make sense nutmeg, nutmeg and ginger, okay, and then Maybe all spice. So Now again, we're not doctors, we're not health practitioners, we're not dispensing any kind of medical advice. But I mean, if you just do a basic search on the internet, I think most people would agree that you know spices in general a lot of times have some good health benefits. So I thought it was interesting to find out that cinnamon can lower blood sugar levels. You know, it's just really good for your blood sugar. It's also kind of anti-inflammatory, let's see. So cloves, you know, you see cloves in kind of the whole form it's got.

Jen: 16:01

It almost looks like a nail you know, it's got kind of this head on one end and then the little pierce part and then but we use it a lot in baking in the ground form the whole cloves are good for like mulling spices or Steeping and different things yeah. Yeah, then nutmeg is just another good spice out there.

Dave: 16:32

Right, it's got that. You know it's a fall flavor we're familiar of, but also, you know, you can use it in a lot of different things. A lot of people use nutmeg and soups. We do this pumpkin bisque that you had a recipe for from somebody one time. Yeah, it uses nutmeg. It's kind of a sweet and a savory component to it, which is nice it is.

Jen: 16:51

And I will say that just a sort of FYI, that Mace you know like with those pepper sprays and things that Mace is the outer covering of nutmeg.

Dave: 17:04

Right yeah.

Jen: 17:06

Anyway, for whatever that is, and then ginger, ground, ginger. It's just nice, you know, you think about it in like gingerbread and again, just kind of those fall profiles. And then allspice is not like it's not a blend.

Dave: 17:26

It's not you know cinnamon, nutmeg cloves.

Jen: 17:29

Altogether it's own spice and the reason that it was named allspice is that people felt like it had flavors of all of those. But it's very prevalent in Caribbean cooking. Gotcha If you know about the jerk seasonings and things that's in there, and then also and this is from Encyclopedia Britannica, but it said that it's a main spice in ketchup.

Dave: 17:59

Interesting.

Jen: 17:59

Yeah, I thought that was really, really interesting, but it's from. It's the dried berry from the allspice tree.

Dave: 18:09

Oh, okay, so it's called the unripe dried berry All right, well, cool, yeah, so you have kind of a staple of ingredients that you would consider mostly sweets, but some of them, you know, crossover into your savory. Yeah, you know, ginger can be in a savory, like garlic and ginger combinations and Asian cooking. You've got a lot of. You've got nutmeg, which a lot of people show, shows up in different sauces and people like to put that on white sauce.

Jen: 18:38

Right.

Dave: 18:38

And it makes more complex flavor, yeah, and I think my, probably my, I would round that list out with maybe cocoa powder, yeah, and I think with that combination of things you can pretty much do. You can do a wide variety of things in your kitchen you know, without having to run the store. Make brownies, obviously. Make cookies, you know. Make a pie, you know make a cake.

Jen: 19:00

No, and I've got to say it's not really a spice, but vanilla extract Right. You know, you kind of need that yeah. It's kind of like the Worcestershire that's right, and I would encourage you to buy a good quality one. Don't buy, like I mean, artificial yeah.

Dave: 19:16

Yeah.

Jen: 19:17

You know they're not that expensive. You can get a decent quality one at the grocery store, Absolutely.

Dave: 19:23

All right, well, thanks, I hadn't even thought about some of those. That's sweet tea and tacos for this week. We urge you to subscribe and leave a comment for us. We'd love to hear back from some folks. You can go to the website sweetteantacoscom, send us an email and let us know you know what you thought, what comments you might have or some things you would like to talk about. And that's it for this week. I'm Dave.

Jen: 19:49

And I'm Jen.