Help a helpless old bachelor, of the sort who can’t fry water, with a Cuisine Question. Answers at the “Seriously Dummies” level, please.
I just cooked up a pot of pinto beans, ground beef, and tomato sauce along with some spices that I’ve had sitting around for about 5++ years (just the spices, not the other ingredients). The spices are very weak, being old and stale. But do old spices go bad in ways that are bad to eat, or do they just dry out and get lame?
Spices in question: Cumin, Italian Seasoning (mixture of bunch of stuffs), and dried minced onions.
(I’m not too terribly worried, or I might have thought to post this before eating it. :dubious: Just slightly.) It certainly tastes okay, I think.
Don’t need answer fast, as it’s too late now to really matter. //old-rolleyes//
Okay, thanks. Now, 3½ hours later, I haven’t dropped dead yet. You’re right, the spices are a bit weak (although not totally tasteless). If I live until tomorrow, I’ll let y’all know.
I grew up in a household where the spices were routinely older than I was. You will die of disappointment in the lousy taste. There isn’t enough nutrition in dried old spices for deadly bacteria to live on.
Are there spices which are toxic if you eat them in ridiculous quantities, like, say, putting a cup of nutmeg in your cake recipe?
They’re also inclined to start growing, which means they scavenge the dead bodies of their fellow plants and next thing you know, you’ve got zombie compost.
A cup of nutmeg in your cake may make you hallucinate (but it’s not a nice trip). It’s also likely to taste like Satan’s Asshole, so good luck eating the whole cake without throwing it up.
Eat enough juniper berries over a long enough time period and you might damage your kidneys from the sesquiterpenes (cedrol, specifically), but how often do people really cook with juniper berries these days? I think I use it in my sauerkraut and corned beef, and that’s it.
Likewise, a ridiculous, inedible amount of file could lead to liver damage and potentially cancer from the safrole in it, but safrole is generally a concern more from the root bark of the sassafras, rather than the leaves, which is what file is made from. And that one’s pretty controversial, even at high doses.
I would not even have known that. Ignorance fought!
Anyway, I survived the Night Of The Stale Spice Onslaught! Actually, it wasn’t even as tasteless as I’d have expected. Those old spices sure smelled like they would be tasteless. But apparently, once moistened up in the pot, the whole mix wasn’t arf bad.
I have heard it recommened that you burn all your dried spices in the fireplace on New Year’s Eve and start fresh every year. We tried it once, but some spices smell disgusting burned.
They do tend to lose flavor as they age, but then you just add more. One ought to season to taste anyway.
