What should you do with all your old spices? — theguardian.com

We called it the “Ottolenghi effect”. Where once our spice cupboard was really just half a shelf housing dried basil and mild curry powder, suddenly that forgotten corner of the kitchen was playing host to harissa and sumac and saffron. Bart Spices reported an 82% increase in sales of za’atar. Supermarkets stocked szechuan pepper like it was no big thing. We learned to pronounce asafoetida. And then we forgot all about them. Or so a recent report by the kitchen gadget company Kenwood would lead us to believe. According to the survey, there are £240m worth of unused herbs and spices languishing in this country’s kitchens. And 13% of us confess to owning jars of spices more than four years out of date. (Last time I was at my parents’ house, I found a jar of dried basil older than Justin Bieber.) My mother-in-law’s spice drawer looks like the Schwartz history museum.

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