For those who cook with turmeric:

If you cook with turmeric, how in hell do you prevent everything it touches from turning yellow? I made a huge pot of soup, and now all my plastic containers are stained yellow. Help!

That’s basically life with turmeric. Nothing can be done about it.

All my mother’s containers are stained yellow.

I avoid using turmeric unless absolutely necessary because of the staining/mess.

Yeah, that sounds about right to me. It will fade over time if you don’t cook anything else with turmeric in it for awhile. (A few runs through my dishwasher and eventually that yellow stain does fade.) You can always try bleach or vinegar if you need to get them as close to their original state as possible.

I have the same issue with paprika-heavy Hungarian dishes: they stain all my Tupperware red/orange for several wash cycles.

Another, perhaps obvious suggestion. Don’t use plastic containers. Store the tumeric or tumeric-heavy foods in glass or metal containers.

Small price to pay for all the yummy goodness turmeric adds, plus the health benefits!

I’m doubting there’s much you can do. I switched to stainless steel bowls, for all things turmeric, and the problem went away entirely!

For a similar reason, I exclude fenugreek from any recipe I try as it stinks the house out.

As for turmeric, just keep it away from plastic and wood and you’ll be fine!

And what does it do to your teeth?

Turmeric is actually used for teeth whitening, surprisingly enough.

It doesn’t stain your teeth.

So, is everyone spelling it correctly, or is autocorrect changing tumeric to turmeric?

Seriously? I like the taste of fenugreek, and only recall a mild, nice anise type aroma.

As far as I’ve always known it, it’s turmeric. That’s a British lens though, I know how USians like to chop out random letters :smiley:

God yes, I cook Indian at least once a week so love me some spices, but fenugreek seems to seep into the walls of the kitchen.

It should. Turmeric is the correct spelling… and pronunciation.

Yes, I know it is the correct spelling. However, every time I’ve written it on a shopping list or in a recipe I’ve spelt it “tumeric”. Every time I’ve read where someone else has written it, say in a recipe, they’ve written “tumeric”.

Yes, it’s generally spelled turmeric.

As for fenugreek–I’ve not noticed any smell from cooking with it. If anything, it has a bit of a nutty maple-type flavor and scent to it (which makes sense, as it’s used in artificial maple syrup.) I’m assuming we’re talking about the seeds. If you’re talking about methi leaves, I guess those are more fragrant, but nothing particularly noxious, like, say, asafetida (hing).

Uh … what? You know what the correct spelling is but you insist on spelling it incorrectly? I don’t think anyone here can help you with that.

Use glass. There is nothing you can do to keep turmeric, or any of a number of other foodstuffs, from staining plastic. Glass, on the other hand, is non-reactive (to pretty much anything you’ll find in your kitchen at least).

I have the staining problem with tomato-based dishes.