I’ve fallen in love with white pepper. Mrs Cad hates pepper (but I still love her). So how do you add pepper without your dish tasting peppery? White pepper. Works great in caesar dressing, fried chicken, etc.
Well, there was this scene in the Last Tango in… what? Spices and herbs? Ah, yes, I meant rosemary, thyme, black pepper, garlic, Spanish smoked paprika (sweet and hot), sage, cumin and all this oriental stuff. Favourite? Rotating, depends on the dish. Oh, and saffron, of course! Saffron is really cool!
Us too… we’ve got all those you list, plus a couple of parsley plants as well. Dill is usually in the garden as well.
I’ll second @CairoCarol’s suggestion of za’atar; it’s fantastic on flatbreads with olive oil (just sprinkle some on before baking) and as an ingredient or garnish with hummus. I suspect it would be part of a terrific grilled chicken marinade, but I haven’t tried it yet.
As far as spices go, it seems like we use a lot of chili powder when making Tex-Mex stuff, and Gebhart’s is pretty much the gold standard for chili powder. We also use a surprising amount of curry powder (my wife has a great mulligatawny soup recipe), and we really like the Penzeys Maharajah Curry Powder and the Spicewalla Madras curry powder.
Otherwise, we do a LOT of baking during the holidays, and we’ve found that we like the Penzeys cinnamon blend a lot, and the Penzeys vanilla extract and the Nielsen Massey vanilla bean paste are our favorites.
Spice - Sporty
Herb(ie) - The Love Bug
No love for Alpert in this thread?
Part of the problem with the answer is the nature of the question. Which of the many (often contradictory) definitions are you using for spice vs herb? Because it’s generally a nuanced definition, and people draw it very differently.
As for favorite, we’ve already had people mention favorite by quantity used, class (capsicums), and the like.
Because in terms of used the MOST in my household it would probably be Black Pepper, Garlic (if not considered a vegetable), Capsicums (various, but wouldn’t that be fruit as well?), Paprika (smoked, sharp, half sharp), Ginger (powdered, dried, candied, fresh), followed by others.
But are they my favorites? I don’t know - I love Black pepper as a seasoning, and it goes in nearly everything I cook, but it’s more I would miss it if it were gone than (outside of several outstanding dishes) being a key ingredient!
And what about the example of paprika? Smoked vs sharp vs sweet and all the variants of the above! They are all quite distinct in taste and use, so would we just have to pick just one? Or coriander (seed) vs cilantro, same source plant, very different flavor and use!
Too many gotchas and what ifs to give it a good answer.
Spice: Szechuan Pepper Salt from Penzey’s. A combination of salt and ground roasted szechuan peppers. It has a citrusy quality to it that improves just about anything you put it on.
Herb: Dried oregano. I just love it.
Herbs - Mint and Thyme. I try mint in nearly everything - some work briliantly (try some in a puttensca pasta - and some fail - but that’s the fun.
Thyme is just nice.
Rosemary, I’m careful with - it definitely does NOT go with a lot of things (but Im Australian, so I eat a lot of lamb, so I get my intake of rosemary).
Spice - ginger is my favourite, but I do like a salt & pepper mix.
Thyme and dill are good all-around herbs for all kinds of meats, fish and vegetables. Dill works really well in tuna salad. My favorite aromatics are rosemary, sage and fennel. Smoked paprika, cumin for spices. Saffron for rice. And Penzey’s Baking Spice for cookies, pancakes, etc.
Team cumin here.
Also cayenne.
mmm
Spice: Cumin, easily. Add it to anything savory, and it enhances the savoriness several-fold.
Herb is tougher: Either oregano or rosemary (though not usually in the same dish). Probably oregano, but it’s a close one.
Favourite spice; cardamom.
Favourite herb; thyme but not so clear-cut
Spice - vanilla
Herb - fennel
This is almost impossible to answer. When I try to narrow it down, I realize that it probably depends on the season. I seldom use sage, but would be lost without it for the holiday dishes. Basil is a favorite when it’s fresh in the spring and summer, but I never use it dried. Never the less, I’ll try.
Spice: I too love cumin, so I’ll go with that. I lost the cookbook with the Cumin Rice recipe that I loved. I miss it so. I could eat that rice everyday.
Herb: I think I’ll choose Rosemary. I love how it smells and I love how it tastes in a multitude of stews and breads, just to name a couple of examples.
Salt, pepper, and garlic powder go on everything I make, even amends.
Other than that, I only have favorite spices for categories of food.
Rosemary is my favorite for breads.
Cinnamon is my favorite for sweets.
Paprika is my favorite for eggs.
Dill is my favorite for dips.
Oregano and Basil are my favorites for subs and Italian dishes.
Thyme is my favorite for generic savory dishes.
Cumin is my favorite for Indian dishes.
Ginger is my favorite for non-Indian Asian dishes.
Cheyenne is my favorite for kicking anything up a notch. Bam!
Marjoram is my most redundant, it’s oregano’s ugly sister.
Dried Parsley is my least favorite. It’s like your uncle Fred, the tax accountant who collects velvet paintings—boring and tasteless.
We were dining at Marrakech, a Moroccan restaurant in St Martin. We were seated outside in the dimly lit rear patio. A guy with long dreads walked by our table, whispering something to my gf. She got up and walked away with him, into the shadows.
They stood there for a few minutes talking. She reached into her purse and handed him something. He handed her a baggie. I was puzzled/intrigued.
Vanilla beans. The guy was selling gooey, delicious, vanilla beans
I find marjoram and oregano quite different, but that’s probably because I grew up with marjoram in Eastern European food, and not oregano. Oregano would taste all sorts of wrong to me in various traditional Polish dishes. It’s a clearly different herb to my tastes.
When I was a kid I loved this album cover from my parents’ collection, and often snuck a look-- I thought it was pretty spicy:
Something similar happened to me many years ago at a Waffle House in Newark, New Jersey! We were seated in a brightly lit indoor booth. A guy with missing teeth walked by our booth, whispered something to my escort. She walked away with him, into the shadowy entrance-way to the bathroom.
They stood there for a few minutes talking. She reached into her purse and handed him something. He handed her a baggie. I was puzzled/intrigued.
Heroin. The guy was selling gooey, pungent heroin.
j/k
Spice: red chiles, of any kind: red chile flakes, cayenne, guajillo chile powder, Japanese red chile seasoning mix
Herb: basil