# Where is the best place to buy jarred dried spices of good quality at a decent price? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Tags:** food-cooking\ **Created:** [February 12, 2024, 2:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-is-the-best-place-to-buy-jarred-dried-spices-of-good-quality-at-a-decent-price/997474 "2024-02-12T14:22:25Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 28
**Author:** ![commasense](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/commasense/32/3017_2.png) [@commasense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/commasense)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2024, 5:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-is-the-best-place-to-buy-jarred-dried-spices-of-good-quality-at-a-decent-price/997474/28 "2024-02-13T17:17:23Z")
A spice-related life hack: if you use a lot of vanilla extract (or even if you don’t), make your own instead of buying it. My wife often has warm milk with a little vanilla in it before bed. So we were going through a lot of it. The artificial stuff is cheap, but doesn’t taste as good. OTOH, real vanilla extract is _very_ expensive: store brand is about $3.50/oz ($450/gal) and Penzey’s cheapest is well over twice that. But you can buy [vanilla beans](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00PMUNEK6/) for about $13, slice them down the middle, then put them in an [8-oz bottle](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01IGP2X50/) with some vodka, wait a couple of months, and presto! Vanilla extract for well under half the price of store-brand, and it tastes much, much better. (Some places say you have to wait six months or a year, but we’ve found that two months is plenty.) But wait, there’s more! As you use the extract, just keep topping up the bottle with more vodka. So a practically bottomless bottle of real vanilla extract for $13 plus the price of some vodka (and you don’t have to use particularly good vodka). I’ve been doing this for a couple of years, and haven’t reached the point of depleting the beans. --- _[View the full topic](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-is-the-best-place-to-buy-jarred-dried-spices-of-good-quality-at-a-decent-price/997474)._