If you think about it, spices are essential to creating spectacular home-cooked meals. That said, keeping a few blends on hand never hurts. Customized combinations of multiple blends are a great way to use spices before they go stale. Here are some of the best spice blends, each with its distinct profile and culinary significance.
#1. Five-Spice Powder
Cinnamon, cloves, fennel seed, Sichuan peppercorns, and star anise comprise the Chinese spice blend known as the Five-spice powder. It’s also known as wu xian fen. The five also refers to the five flavors included in the mixture: sweet, salty, bitter, sour, and umami. Together, they provide a particular flavor that is characteristic of many traditional dishes, such as Pekin duck and Taiwanese beef noodle soup.
Buy it pre-mixed or create it yourself. In addition to being a vital component of traditional Taiwanese and Chinese cuisine, this mix provides flavor to dishes like Purple Sweet Potato Pie with Five-Spice and coconut, five-spice short ribs with Cilantro and ginger, and spiced brown-butter apples.
#2. Berbere Spice Blend
Garlic, cumin, cinnamon, coriander, chili, fenugreek, nigella, and ajwain form the base of the classic Ethiopian spice blend Berbere. This condiment is spicy and contributes its own characteristics to Ethiopian food. Berbere can be used as a paste, as in the recipe for Berber-spiced chicken breasts, where the flavor is combined with oil, or to add spice to an Ethiopian staple like Awaze Tibs, which is an Ethiopian-spiced lamb stew.
It can also be used with vegetables such as roasted butternut squash with spiced pecans. The Berber-spiced chicken breasts recipe contains a DIY Berbere blend using spices such as paprika, cloves, pepper, coriander, cinnamon, and cardamom to season flavorful grilled chicken breasts.
#3. Chili Powder Spice
Chili powder is a famous spice combination that is used in several recipes to enhance flavor and heat. It’s also especially popular in Tex-Mex meals. Chili peppers, which have been cultivated in the Americas for ages, were used by the Mayans in their food. In the sixteenth century, Spanish adventurers introduced chili peppers to Europe, where they immediately gained popularity.
William Gebhardt, a Texan entrepreneur, was the first to commercially produce chili powder in the United States in the 19th century. His combination of chili powder comprised crushed cayenne, oregano, and cumin. Currently, the blend is usually composed of garlic powder, oregano, paprika, cumin, cayenne, dried chiles, and onion powder, all of which contribute to the blend’s signature flavor. Chili powder is an essential component of the classic beef chili recipe. It can also be used to spice up other dishes, such as air fryer fish tacos, slow-cooker burnt honey barbecue chicken, and more.