WHOLE VERSUS GROUND SPICES Y ou often hear chefs and recipe writers saying to use whole spices instead of ground and to toast your spices before using them, but you don’t often hear about why To figure out the answer, I made five batches of my Easy Weeknight Ground Beef Chili (here), using spices and chiles treated the following ways: Preground, straight from the jar Preground, toasted before adding Whole spices and dried chiles, ground and used without toasting Whole spices and dried chiles, ground and then toasted Whole spices, toasted and then ground Every batch of chili made with whole spices and chiles—including those that weren’t toasted—was superior in flavor to those made with preground spices Of the two made with preground spices, the toasted version was slightly more complex, and of the three made with whole spices, the one with spices that were toasted before grinding was markedly superior to the one that used ground and then toasted spices Why was this? Well, toasting whole spices accomplishes two goals: First, it forces aromatic-compound–laden oils from deep within individual cells to the surface of the spice and the interstitial spaces between the cells This makes it much easier to extract flavor when the spice is subsequently ground and incorporated into your food Second, toasting also catalyzes a whole cascade of chemical reactions that produce hundreds flavorful by-products, greatly increasing the complexity of the spice When toasting preground spices, this latter reaction will definitely occur, but you’ve also got a problem: vaporization The flavorful compounds inside spices are generally quite volatile—they desperately want to escape into the air and fly away With whole spices, they remain relatively locked down: they can’t escape very easily from their cellular prisons With ground spices, on the other hand, there’s nothing holding them back They’ll very rapidly fly into the air You may have noticed that preground spices become far more aromatic as you toast them Remember this—if you smell it while you’re cooking, it will not be in your food when you serve it There are rare exceptions to the toast-beforegrinding rule Indian and Thai curries, for example, start with ground or pureed aromatics sautéed in fat Because most of the aromatic compounds in spices are fat-soluble, they end up dissolved in the fat, flavoring the rest of the dish evenly and easily when other ingredients are added But for the vast ... spices, on the other hand, there’s nothing holding them back They’ll very rapidly fly into the air You may have noticed that preground spices become far more aromatic as you toast them Remember this—if you smell it while... most of the aromatic compounds in spices are fat-soluble, they end up dissolved in the fat, flavoring the rest of the dish evenly and easily when other ingredients are added But for the vast... from deep within individual cells to the surface of the spice and the interstitial spaces between the cells This makes it much easier to extract flavor when the spice is subsequently ground and incorporated into your food Second,