I’m a fanatic for fresh ingredients and will go so far as to grind spices myself when making Indian or other cuisines that call for them. We rarely buy any packaged foods other than dried pasta, some specialty breads like Nan, salsa, canned tuna, and orange juice (although nothing beats fresh-squeezed). I have come to the realization however, that when it comes to spices, sometimes the prepared pastes are actually better than making it from scratch. The reason is that spices tend to lose their full aroma pretty quickly and unless you are using them with a high turnover, they are usually pretty stale and lifeless. If you’re like me and don’t like throwing stuff out, you wind up with some spices that are almost as old as your grown-up kids. I think we still have an opened tin of cloves that go back to 1974! Recently I’ve started using Asian Home Gourmet spice packs and I must confess they are much better than anything I can concoct, for the reasons already mentioned. The ingredients are all pretty benign too; just spices usually in some canola oil, without any preservatives and other chemicals. You do need to be careful though, because I’ve read the ingredient lists from other brands and they are often loaded with junk.
Right now there’s a wonderful smelling Lamb Curry in the crock pot that took just 5 minutes to chop up the lamb and add it to the spice mix and some onions. It likely won’t be quite as good as our friend Sudha’s home-made lamb curry with hand-ground spices, but I didn’t spend two hours making it either.