Spice Storage Ideas

[TdeV]

On 3/25/2018 at 11:18 AM, paulraphael said:

All in the freezer. When my freezer had shelves in the door, I put the bottles there. Now we have drawer-style freezers. I found plastic organization bins (Container store?) that fit the bottles fairly well, though not as convenient as the door shelves. between buying whole spices whenever possible and keeping them in cold storage, they stay much fresher. I alsways have a small mortar/pestle and microplane handy. 

 

@paulraphael, could you please post a photo of this arrangement? I keep my nuts in the freezer but I have just been reading that I should be keeping seeds there too. Many of my spices are in glass jars, and maybe I'll need to change that.

[TdeV]

I am unable to link to another post, so here is my former spice cabinet:

 

On 2/26/2018 at 6:52 PM, TdeV said:

 

 

[TdeV]

Here is my new spice cabinet. It is 4.5" deep, 41" wide, and 87" tall.

 

[TdeV]

Does anyone else keep spices in the freezer?*

I've been looking at these freezer safe jars from Lee Valley but I can't see any reasonable way to organize my inadequate freezer space.

 

Edited to add:

* Could you post some photos, please?

Edited October 15, 2018 by TdeV (log)

[kayb]

This topic has been dormant for a while, but I had to report a major advance in spice storage at my house. I have spices stored in a couple of pull-out shelves in my pantry. Some are in plastic containers with the name of the spice written on the lid, but the black lids on Penzey's jars had defeated me until I finally ordered a package of white paint pens. Now all my Penzey's jars have the name of their contents on top!

 

 

It makes me foolishly happy to look in the spice shelf. A good activity for a socially distanced day.

[choux]

Finally got my spices organized, a big change from ziplocs and a Rubbermaid bin. So happy to not have to root around in all that. Everything is from Lee Valley.

I thought the larger metal tins would be bigger, guess I can't visualize spec measurements well. This is mounted on the wall in my pantry, which is the cupboard under the stairway. 

[KennethT]

44 minutes ago, choux said:

Finally got my spices organized, a big change from ziplocs and a Rubbermaid bin. So happy to not have to root around in all that. Everything is from Lee Valley.

I thought the larger metal tins would be bigger, guess I can't visualize spec measurements well. This is mounted on the wall in my pantry, which is the cupboard under the stairway. 

I have a lot of similar metal tins with the clear cover. They have a magnet on the bottom and I have them stuck to a magnetic white board hanging on the wall. Really easy access, but some if the tins have gotten gunked up over the years. I can't even twist open the one that holds star anise!

[heidih]

11 minutes ago, KennethT said:

 I can't even twist open the one that holds star anise!

Some bozo put the Angostura bitters in the fridge and rim must have been gunky. Pliers can be your friend with gentle application. Bottle now in pantry after wipe down. 

[haresfur]

4 hours ago, KennethT said:

I have a lot of similar metal tins with the clear cover. They have a magnet on the bottom and I have them stuck to a magnetic white board hanging on the wall. Really easy access, but some if the tins have gotten gunked up over the years. I can't even twist open the one that holds star anise!

 

try a couple of these puppys 

[KennethT]

It's not the hand strength - and I've got a set of channel locks - but the metal it's made from is relatively flimsy - so any tool used to grip would probably deform it. And I don't really care - we'll be moving in a couple months and will need to rethink the spice storage since the new kitchen has lots of cabinets but very little wall space, so the whiteboard is going out the window. And I have a bag full of star anise in the cupboard...

[chromedome]

I have several of the same kind of spice jars hanging on the backsplash near my stove. A couple are similarly sticky, and I've been racking my brains for some kind of lubricant for the lip of the tin (or inside of the lid, but I'm leaning toward the tin) that I'd be comfortable having in close proximity to my spices. Many of the obvious options are suspect: vegetable oil gets gummy; I don't want mineral oil or WD-40 in my spices; and graphite is seriously messy.

So far my best idea is to rub the lip with paraffin (ie, a tea light candle) the next time I wash one of the sticky ones. Where it's a solid it should stay in place (barring trace amounts, which I'll live with) and hopefully will help keep them sliding smoothly. I'll try to remember to report back (and I'm open to better suggestions, if anybody has one).

[MokaPot]

Yes, I have the same baby boa wrench. I think it started out as a plumbing tool. It shouldn't damage your container. Inexpensive, too.

 

 

[weinoo]

I like these semi-custom inserts for a spice drawer...

 

 

Not perfect but works here.  And pandemic acquisitions specific to certain cuisines have led to storage of said spices in devoted cambros. So when cooking "Indian" food, for example, a cambro can just be taken down from the shelf, and all related spices are at hand...

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited January 30, 2021 by weinoo (log)

[KennethT]

4 hours ago, weinoo said:

I like these semi-custom inserts for a spice drawer...

 

 

Not perfect but works here.  And pandemic acquisitions specific to certain cuisines have led to storage of said spices in devoted cambros. So when cooking "Indian" food, for example, a cambro can just be taken down from the shelf, and all related spices are at hand...

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nice.  But certainly there's some crossover, no?  When making Thai food or other SE Asian food, you can use coriander, fennel and cumin seed for starters (as well as cloves, cinnamon, nutmeg, star anise, etc.) all of which you could also use for Indian.

[KennethT]

 

The top left shelf has all of the backup spices that either aren't used much (so don't go on the whiteboard) or have what is leftover.

[weinoo]

15 hours ago, KennethT said:

Nice.  But certainly there's some crossover, no?  When making Thai food or other SE Asian food, you can use coriander, fennel and cumin seed for starters (as well as cloves, cinnamon, nutmeg, star anise, etc.) all of which you could also use for Indian.

Now you're really trying to confuse me. 

 

So the stuff you mention by name - that all resides in the main spice drawer. The cambros generally hold stuff in addition to spices, which is pretty specific to its cuisine. Like palm sugar in the Thai cambro. Dashi tea bags and nori in the Japanese one. Etc.

[weinoo]

And to confuse matters further, the saffron jar on the top left-ish part of my photo; that never held saffron - I think it's got dried rosemary in it. On the right hand side of same photo, there are at least 4 containers with saffron from 4 different regions.

[JAZ]

Way back when this topic was first started, we were redoing our kitchen. Before that, we had a cabinet next to the stove dedicated to spices, with a 2-tier turntable on the upper shelf, and a stepped rack on the lower. In addition, we had a shallow rack on the inside of the door to hold 4 or 5 jars of spices that we used the most. It was not ideal.

 

When we remodeled, we bought the pull-out shelves mentioned by @kaybback then (that might even be where we first saw them). (Here's a link: https://www.verticalspice.com/products.php?product=222x2x11-Spice-Rack-Drawer-%2d-Cream). As she said, they are expensive (although they seem to have gone up in price -- we paid a bit less). We bought one and liked it so much we bought another for the other shelf. This is what they look like in our kitchen:

 

 

 

The company makes a single pull-out shelf and it would have fit next to the larger ones, but we decided that the extra spaces was better served holding odd-shaped, larger containers. While the shelves were pretty expensive, they were one of the best investments we made in the new kitchen. You can't tell from the photos, but the black bands that hold the jars in place are elasticized, so it's really easy to remove and replace the jars (even on the top shelves). Each set of three shelves holds 30 jars --more if they're small and you stack them.

 

Our problem was that we buy most of our spices in bulk bags and transfer to the jars as needed. We were keeping the back-up bags in drawers in the living room bookcases, which serve as our back-up pantry. When it was just a few, it was pretty easy to keep track, but lately, it has gotten out of hand. So we bought a couple of baskets to hold the bags, and now they're much more manageable.

 

 

They're in alphabetical order now, although I can't guarantee they will stay that way. We still have a few strays in the drawer above -- mostly small bags and jars that were free samples from Penzey's, where we buy a lot of our spices.

 

 

 

The last thing I did to make it all more manageable was to create a spread sheet of the jars and bags so we know what we have.

 

Oh, and the only spices that aren't in the cabinet are salt and pepper (black and white). We keep them on the counter on the other side of the stove.

 

 

So far it's worked quite well, and I think the new baskets and spreadsheet will help solve the minor problems we had.

 

 

 

[JoNorvelleWalker]

2 hours ago, JAZ said:

Our problem was that we buy most of our spices in bulk bags and transfer to the jars as needed. We were keeping the back-up bags in drawers in the living room bookcases, which serve as our back-up pantry.

 

A woman after my own heart.

 

[TdeV]

@JAZ, that's a big backup supply! Do you worry about the ground spices going stale?

(When I have old spices, I just use more of it. Not sure if I should, though).

[JAZ]

@TdeV, the bags reseal quite well, and we try to squeeze as much air out as possible, plus the drawer where they live is dark and pretty cool, so I think that helps. But we don't buy bags of everything -- just the spices we use a lot. Also, you can't see this, but many of the bags contain whole spices -- cumin, caraway seeds, fennel seeds, and peppercorns. So overall, we've found that they keep pretty well. Finally, Penzey's seems to pack very fresh spices. I don't think I'd want the typical jar from the supermarket to sit around as long.