How To Grind Every Spice (2024)

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I'm Sana Javeri Kadri, the founder of Diaspora Co.,

and I'm gonna show you how to grind every spice.

I'm gonna show you the plant that it originally comes from,

and then how that transforms into the spice

that you see and recognize at the grocery store every day.

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These are peppercorns.

They are the fruit of the flowering pepper vine.

The black pepper vine essentially grows around

a more stable tree, and in the spring

that vine will start to bear pepper berries,

which will be green as they're unripe.

And then as they ripen will change from red

all the way to like a deep dark purple.

A peppercorn is then actually that fruit

that is harvested, threshed, and sun dried

for five to six days.

And then what you end up with

are these beautiful dark red, purple, black and gray

inky-colored little dried fruits.

It is interesting to think of a peppercorn as a dried fruit

because a good peppercorn should have

a significant fruity flavor before you hit the inner bark

of the seed at which point you're getting the spice

and the sharp pepper flavor that you know.

Black pepper is specifically indigenous

and known to be from the ancient coast of Kerala.

Most of the flavor of your pepper will be released

in the oil within minutes after you grind it,

which is why a pepper mill and freshly ground black pepper

is the only way to go.

It's possible to be a spice expert

and still make a tremendous mess.

All you really gotta do is freshly grind

into whatever you're making.

Oils within each pepper berry are not just being released

into the air, but it's also distributing the oils evenly

throughout the berry and into this bowl.

The white is the inner seed off the pepper berry,

and that's what has all the piperine content,

which is the spicy stuff that you feel on your tongue.

But then the black bits are actually the dried berry,

which makes the fruit part of it.

And when you're grinding it,

you're getting both perfectly blended together.

So you're getting that mix of sweet and spicy

and jammy and crisp.

So this black pepper was ground just a few moments ago,

and already I can tell that it's lost

a significant amount of its aroma.

So it really speaks to why freshly ground black pepper

is the only way to go.

And that pre-ground stuff is just, it's not an option.

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This is a nutmeg fruit as it would be

when it's just picked off of the tree.

There's some plants that actually give you two spices

from one plant.

So in this case, the nutmeg itself is the nut in here.

It's surrounded by the mace aril.

Aril is a fancy word for seed covering.

So this red, beautiful stuff is the mace

that we would then peel off.

So that's our mace.

And then this is actually shelled nutmeg.

So what I'm gonna wanna do is crack this open.

Ungrated, the shelled nutmeg actually doesn't have

a ton of aroma.

The magic of microplaning fresh nutmeg

is that you're unlocking those essential oils

that are in here right when you wanna eat

and right when you're gonna get the most flavor out of it.

The smell is hitting me.

It's magical.

It's smells like Christmas.

So this is our fresh mace

where you see that it's thick, wet, glossy, bright red.

And then when it's correctly, really gently dried,

you have a little bit of yellowing and golden at the edges.

Because the mace is quite so delicate,

it doesn't make for very easy grating

and even in a mortar and pestle,

you have kind of a hard time catching it,

which is why I think the ease of a spice grinder,

especially an electric one is the way to go for mace.

And we need a few seconds max

to get these really nicely ground.

Can you see that color?

You really wanna use this immediately in very small doses.

When it comes to mace, much more fruity floral notes.

There's a raw mango sourness.

There's a fruity papaya flavor.

Freshly grated nutmeg has these beautiful tasting notes

of kind of menthol, lemon grass, a little hint of tobacco.

There's an edge to nutmeg.

There's something about both nutmeg and mace actually

that make buttery things taste butterier.

That's a scientific fact, not just me making [beep] up.

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This is cardamom.

They are the fruits off the cardamom plant.

The cardamom plant is part of the same family

as turmeric and ginger.

The fruits themselves once dried kind of shrivel up

into this.

This outer shell actually does hold

a fruitier, gentler flavor.

So I prefer to smash or grind the entire pod

and not just the seeds.

I'll just take a few pods and lightly smash them

in my mortar and pestle.

This is the level to which I would smash my cardamom,

and I'd let it simmer into my dish.

I would pull out the whole pods before I eat

because biting into a whole cardamom pod

is never a very fun feeling.

For times when I do want the full cardamom flavor,

I go with the grinder.

It's important to know that the seeds will grind

really quickly and finely,

but that outer green fibrous membrane,

that takes a little bit more grinding.

So you wanna make sure to really get it.

So it smells really, really minty, licoricey.

Oh, it smells like breath freshener

in the most delicious way.

My nose is completely overtaken by how minty, piney,

licoricey this aroma is.

Cardamom has really serious main character energy.

So that's how you wanna treat it.

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This is Cacao.

This is the fruit of the cacao tree.

Getting you from cocoa fruit to cocoa powder

is several steps that we can't quite recreate in this space.

We're gonna crack it open.

What we're really trying to get to is the center of it,

which has the cacao beans or seeds.

So this is the fruit.

This is kind of membranous, sticky part of the fruit

that's encased around each seed.

I'm gonna cut one open.

These seeds will be fermented and then roasted,

which will bring them to their cocoa nib form.

These will be ground for a very long time,

put through a hydraulic press,

taking out as much of the cocoa butter as possible

and separating out just the cocoa solids.

All of that processing is what gets you to this ingredient

that we all know and love, cocoa powder.

What most bean to bar chocolate makers would call

the terroir of the cocoa powder,

that expression of where it grew and where it came from

is that it's very fruity and bright.

Depending on where it's grown,

it can have a huge range of flavors and aromas.

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This is sumac.

In specific it's staghorn sumac.

These bright little red berries grow in clusters

on the sumac tree.

There are many, many different varieties of sumac

that grow all over the world.

What we have here is a Chinese sumac that in Manipur,

which is a Northeastern state in India,

is known as wild Haman sumac.

In color it's quite different from the bright redness

of the North American staghorn sumac,

but they both give you that really zesty tart flavor.

We all use sumac for across cultures.

Bunches of the whole sumac berry are clipped off,

sieved to take out any impurities and sediment

and then dried so that this is what you end up with,

whole sumac berries.

These are used in a lot of cultures,

but most commonly you're consuming a sumac powder

that's then been preserved.

This particular variety is staghorn sumac.

So you actually take the whole berries and grind them whole.

Then what we have here was ground without the seeds.

The easiest way to grind the sumac

is just to stick it in the electrical grinder.

The seeds are pretty tough,

So paprika powder is really something that you wanna use

where you want more color and flavor rather than heat.

Next up is Guntur Sannam.

It has a tangy fruity flavor.

It's got a ton of floral notes.

For me, Guntur Sannam is kind of the perfect chili.

It's an all-arounder because you're getting flavor,

and you're getting some amount of heat.

Anywhere that calls for a red pepper or a chili flake,

this is my go-to.

Our final chili is the ghost pepper or the Sivathei chili.

We won't be grinding it

because it's not really used traditionally

in its ground form, simply because it is so spicy

that the powder would be unusable.

My favorite way to use a Sivathei chili

is to just stick a single chili into a big pot of beans.

I'm talking like a pound of beans.

It imparts this fruity smoky flavor

to the rich creamy beans.

The most important thing to remember though,

when the beans are done cooking, you're about to serve,

you have to take this a little friend out.

Otherwise it's going to make somebody's bowl

very, very uncomfortable.

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This is saffron.

It's the most expensive spice in the world.

These tiny flowers that only bloom one time in the year

are harvested, and what we really want

as the pure saffron you know today

is the stigma of this flower,

so these little red bits sticking out here,

and it would actually take thousands

of these saffron flowers to produce just one kilogram

of pure saffron.

So what you really want

for the purest highest grade of saffron

is the trumpet shaped tip of the stigma that's a deep red.

That's then dried until it becomes the saffron we know.

This is kind of a final dried stigma,

whereas this is a fresh stigma.

So this tip will actually be pressed and flattened out

a lot more until it becomes this shape,

and the color shifts.

And then if I add this stigma to pretty hot water,

the hot water really helps draw out the fat

and the color and the flavor out of the saffron quickly.

Saffron is actually one of those spices that's mostly fat,

and that means that it has really high oil content.

And the oil is what's holding on to all of the aroma

and flavor that,

actually with just two minutes of blooming,

I'm smelling right now.

Dairy and saffron pair beautifully together,

and I think every culture from Italians to Iranians

to Indians figured that out at some point in some form.

For really good, fresh saffron, the primary tasting note

is actually raisins and kind of dried fruit.

It has this rich fruitiness.

So this is a slightly wildly generous amount of saffron

that we've soaked for about 10 minutes in boiling water.

And as you can see, it has this like sunshine, yellow color.

It smells divine.

I'm gonna take a little sip.

Oh, I think like four teaspoons of that

would perfume, an entire pot of rice.

So that's really how sparing you could be

with your bloomed saffron.

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These are cloves.

Cloves are the immature flower buds

from the evergreen clove tree.

The bottom is the flower bud stem.

And then this top head of the clove

is actually the clove right before it's gonna burst open

into a flower.

Usually the cloves are sun dried

and need maybe four to five days

to get to an 8% moisture content

so that they have a nice snap,

and they're not retaining any moisture

that could lead to mold,

but at the same time have the right amount of oil content

so that you're still getting all the flavor

and the aroma that you want.

The two magic words in spices really are moisture content,

which should be low, and oil content which should be high.

And a good clove is the perfect balance of those two things.

A well-dried clove is pretty hard to snap

just with your hands and wouldn't do so well

in a mortar and pestle, though you could give it a go.

So I choose to grind my cloves in an electric spice grinder.

I'm gonna do a pretty small quantity of cloves.

Any more than this, and it's gonna take me months and months

to get through it.

You don't need very long in the grinder at all.

So that doesn't create a lot of powder,

but it's really, really potent.

I can smell it from a mile.

Pine, henna, butterscotch.

It's a very balanced flavor,

but when you put it in your mouth, it can really overpower.

So even if it smells amazing, you wanna go,

you wanna go light on how you use it.

It's really sharp.

Like my tongue is numb, officially.

Lots of minty piney notes.

It is spicy, but not obviously in the chili way,

more in that it overpowers your palette.

I consider that realm of cinnamon, ginger, cardamom,

pepper and clove as kind of the trifecta

of all fall and winter baking.

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Ginger and turmeric are both rhizomes.

The rhizome is the underground stem part of the plant

that's then connected to the root.

So it's very similar to bulbs,

but bulbs are actually modified leaves,

whereas rhizomes are modified stems.

We're gonna kind of pluck this part off, break it off.

And this baby ginger here is what we know and love

and will eventually turn into the ginger powder

that we see right here.

So these polished, dried rhizomes are really, really hard.

Cracking it is basically impossible.

Cutting it open would likely dent your knife,

and grinding it in here is gonna ruin your blades.

So these are processed in a very large,

very strong industrial grinder to get us to this powder.

It would also usually be sieved three or four times.

It's a method that's possible to accomplish at home,

but it is pretty labor-intensive.

So it requires slicing your turmeric or your ginger

into really thin slices.

You can either sun dry them for two or three days

or you could stick them in the dehydrator

at which point they'll take about one day.

They're still quite fibrous, so you'll need to sieve it.

You're running your powder through a fine mesh strainer.

And what that'll do is it'll take out your fibrous chunks

that you don't want.

You could also chop it up into small pieces like this,

so that there's more surface area for the drying.

Turmeric and ginger are actually one of the spices

that I don't think you need to grind fresh.

They retain their oil content really, really well

in powdered form.

And they'll last in your pantry for two or three years

without losing that oil content.

It's probably the spice powder with the longest shelf life.

I actually substitute ginger powder

anywhere that fresh ginger is required.

But my favorite way to use ginger powder

is in ginger cookies.

This turmeric is really sunshiny.

It's really bright.

I'm smelling citrus notes.

I'm smelling a little bit of florality.

There's some marigold in there.

Growing up in India especially,

we use turmeric in everything from breakfast oats

to lunchtime to a dinner curry

that'll add a savory earthy note

to anything you're cooking it in.

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These are cinnamon.

They are both the inner barks

of two different evergreen trees.

This here is cinnamon verum.

Whereas this here is cassia.

They're both ground into what people know as cinnamon,

but they actually taste quite different from each other.

Cinnamon verum here is indigenous to Southeast Asia,

specifically India, Sri Lanka, Burma, Bangladesh in general,

whereas cassia is native to China

and a completely different tree,

a much thicker bark, very different color.

You'll notice that cinnamon verum is lighter,

whereas cassia is much darker, almost reddish tint to it.

This bark had an outer layer that was shaved off of it.

This inner layer is shaved off into sheets,

and those sheets are then rolled into coils like this,

and they're hung up to air dry.

They probably take two or three days to air dry.

Cassia, because it's a lot harder, you can grind it up,

but you're not gonna get as fine of a powder.

The cinnamon verum is pretty easy to powder.

So I would just do it in a spice grinder.

It's as simple as breaking this up into a few pieces,

and then we're gonna add that to the grinder.

I would go with the spice grinder

just because you're not gonna be able to get a fine powder

with a mortar and pestle.

So that's our cinnamon powder.

There's a brown butter.

There's honey.

It's obviously very sweet.

There is a floral fruity note,

so I am getting an orange blossom, orange zest note,

but then of course,

there's that sharp spicy finish

that we know and love cinnamon for.

When we're talking about cassia and not cinnamon verum,

it's much spicier.

It has that classic red hot flavor that you're imagining.

And so it plays really nicely with sugar, with maple syrup.

It's delicious in pretty much every dessert.

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This is asafoetida.

It is a hard gum like resin that's actually extracted

from the roots off the ferula plant.

Ferula plant grows wild

in these desert mountain climates,

but it's pretty much exclusively used in South Asian cooking

to give the flavor of onion and garlic.

So if you're wondering what

your Indian or Pakistani food is missing,

it's usually this indescribable flavor of asafoetida,

or as I call it in Hindi hing.

So given that the resin is pretty hard to grind,

we're gonna use the electric spice grinder.

So in this very innocent looking bowl,

we have our hing or asafoetida powder.

It does have a really, really strong sulfuric smell.

When used in cooking the hing really imparts

a allium-like, oniony, garlicky flavor.

And in a lot of Indian cooking

that's very simple or specifically vegetarian,

hing really has the power to make a dish taste

like it's a lot more than the sum of its parts.

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This is cumin.

It's the seed off the cumin plant.

It's pretty delicate,

but it thrives in hot desert environments.

It's indigenous to Western Asia.

The cumin plant is from the same family as the dill,

parsley and carrot plants.

Cumin seeds are actually used whole quite frequently,

but cumin powder can be really nice in a spice blend

or a marinade.

It's very easy to grind up.

If you are trying to grind a larger amount,

the electric spice grinder will work just fine.

But for this little handful,

the mortar and pestle is the way to go.

It smells really good, so all of the oils that were hidden

inside that seed have been pounded to the surface.

It's gonna be bringing all of its flavor

rather than leaving some on the table.

So cumin is giving you an earthy bitterness.

There's a little bit of licorice in there.

It's adding a very savory note to your cooking.

I often add just one teaspoon of freshly ground cumin

to my rice cooker because it adds

a really nice smoky, earthy note to my rice that I love.

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This is coriander.

They are the seeds off the cilantro plant.

Coriander is the name of the seed

whereas cilantro is the American name for the leaf.

But a lot of people around the world

actually use coriander interchangeably

to mean the seed or the leaf.

These leaves will eventually flower.

And then once we have flowers,

those flowers will turn into bright green version

of these little seeds that we see here.

Coriander seeds are actually one of the spices

that are easiest to grow at home.

Wait until the plant completely browns, and at that point,

collect all of your coriander seeds from the top,

and you can dry them,

either sun dry for a few days or in an oven

for maybe a couple hours at really, really low heat.

And you'll end up with these lemony, zesty corianders,

it's quite a soft seed and really easy to do

in a mortar and pestle.

But if you do wanna do a larger batch,

you can go ahead and do it in your electric spice grinder.

So what I'm really tasting is the lemony notes.

There's a little bit of nuttiness to it,

which comes through in the flavor as well as the aroma.

Coriander in its raw form pairs really nicely

with all forms of citrus.

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This is fennel.

It is the seed off the fennel plant.

So once the flower turns to seed,

and the entire plant has gone to seed,

you're waiting for the plants to dry out,

which means it's given all of its nutrients to the seed.

At that point, we're harvesting the seed off of the plant.

We're laying them out to dry.

That can either be done sun dried over a few days,

or you could put it into a low convection oven.

You're wanting to seed to go from a bright

kind of soft green to this pale, brownish green,

that's when you know that it's dried out enough,

but it still has its oil content.

Most of the time I'm actually using fennel whole.

In India, Fennel is candied in sugar

and eaten as a digestive.

So I grew up thinking that fennel was candy,

but especially in Italian cooking,

fennel pairs really, really nicely with pork.

And at that point I do like to lightly smash it.

All I wanted to do is release a little bit of the oil,

so that you're getting as much flavor as possible,

but I still want the texture and the crunch

off the whole fennel.

The kind of sweet, anise licorice notes

that you're getting from fennel

cut through the richness of pork really, really nicely.

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Mustard seeds are seeds that come from the mustard family.

The mustard plant has many different varietals.

One varietal can produce yellow mustard.

Another varietal produces black mustard,

but when you actually look at the plant, not the seeds,

they might look very similar,

but the seed variety produces really different colors.

Of the two different varieties,

yellow mustard is much sweeter.

There's notes of maple.

There's notes of nuts,

whereas the black mustard is much sharper and more pungent,

and it really has that distinctive brassica edge to it.

Black mustard seeds are traditionally just used

in their whole form.

Similar to Sesame seeds, they add that textural crunch

in whole form, especially when they're fried.

They really add a nuttiness to your cooking.

Whereas yellow mustard is traditionally powdered,

smells like cooked Brussels sprouts in a way.

It's quite soft.

But then when I'm tasting it,

it's a really sharp hit of mustard.

It's very pungent.

It's quite spicy at the back of my tongue.

So it is a good lesson that spices can smell one way

and then taste a completely different way.

So if you did wanna turn yellow mustard

into mustard the condiment,

all you really need to do is grind the yellow mustard seeds

with a little bit of water, some vinegar, some lemon juice,

probably a little bit of salt

until you get that thick consistency,

and you have fresh mustard.

So the most traditional use for black mustard seeds

are toasting them in a fat, which is called a tadka.

It's a process of blooming the spice.

That also gets the mustard seeds really crispy and toasty,

and that makes a beautiful garnish on pretty much anything.

I add it on top of my thalis or my vegetables.

Whether it's yellow mustard or black mustard,

adding mustard seeds is just a really nice way

to add a sharpness and a pungency to pretty much any dish.

Now that you've seen how almost every spice

goes from plant to pantry,

my hope is that it really inspires you

to use these spices with a lot more confidence

and honestly just have a lot more fun with them.

Understanding where spices come from

is a really important part of connecting with foods

of different cultures and really driving home

the point that flavors connect all of us.