I debated sharing this article, as it’s probably best to remain blissfully ignorant in some cases. I’m supposing that spices from a reputable house like Penzey’s or major brands like Durkee are safe, but it makes me want to grind my own spices in the future.
Meh.
Stories like that make me think of my own: picture a dish, say pasta with sauce. You try and try but can’t get the same great tasting sauce as the cook down the street. Every ingredient is the same. Every measure is the same. All aspects are the same.
Turns out the cook is a profuse sweater and that special something is his sweat dripping from his brow into the pot as he lovingly stirs and stirs.
BTW, hope no one reading this is having pasta with sauce tonight.
Bug parts doesn’t bother me in the slightest. They’re in pretty much every food you eat. But as I noted in another thread, I won’t buy McCormick spices because I’ve noted that every damned one of them says ‘Product of China’. May as well say “Adulterated and Polluted”.
That’s probably why they are dropping like flies in Shanghai.
I have a few McCormick jars in my cupboard, and none of them says “Product of China.” What they do say is “Packed in the USA,” with no indication of where the stuff was actually made.
A couple of weeks ago I was in Walmart, picking up some chili ingredients while waiting for a prescription. Onion powder: China. Huh, wha? Garlic powder: China. Picked up a bunch of others and they all said China. Was kind of irritating to be in the middle of America’s agricultural heartland and such basics as garlic and onion powder are coming from motherfucking CHINA???
I dunno, maybe that’s just the crap they sell to Walmart because they otherwise can’t make a profit on what Walmart will pay for it.
It’s not very useful to point out that 12% of imported spices are contaminated without telling us what percentage of spices that aren’t imported are contaminated. Or are there basically no spices grown and produced in the USA or other western countries?
Why would garlic and onion powder come from China? It produces 77% of the garlic and 27% of the onions in the world.
The town I live in, while now a well developed suburb, was once called “Onion capital of the United States”.
Yeah, but salmonella isn’t in everything you eat. My grinder is going to get more of a workout. I have a Delfino that kicks ass on most everything, despite some bad reviews on Amazon. I dismiss any reviews that say “dead on arrival” as there are always factory duds of anything, especially when most everything originates in China.
True enough.
Whilst the story cited in the OP is pretty gross (although all those insect bitties must add to the protein value somewhat 
), I’m just sick and tired of buying packets of ground herbs/spices that taste like nothing!
I don’t use a lot of spices, so a packet of something like McCormicks ground cumin (for example) might get used to make a dish, then won’t be called upon for a month or so later. By then, NO MATTER HOW AIRTIGHT I STORE THE DAMNED STUFF, there’s no flavour left.
So now I just buy the seeds (cumin, coriander, fennel, dill etc), store them in little jars, and pull out the mortar and pestle when the recipe calls for them. I haven’t seen any cockroach legs or weevil antennae, so I’m all good at the moment.
