Spices for dinner
The main meal of the evening: curries, roasts, braises and grills.
Dinner is the main gathering meal in much of the world, and often where the full range of a cuisine's spices is shown, from slow-cooked stews to roasts and curries.
Slow-cooked dishes
Stews and braises use whole and ground spices cooked for hours. Moroccan tagines, Indian curries, Mexican moles, Persian khoresh and Hungarian goulash each use a different spice set, giving each its character.
Roasts and grills
Spice rubs and marinades, such as jerk, tandoori, suya, shawarma and barbecue rubs, flavour meat before cooking over fire. Pepper, paprika, cumin, coriander and garlic are common across them.
Table spices
Beyond the cooking, many tables carry their own seasonings, such as pepper mills in Europe, pepper sauce in the Caribbean, chilli oil in China and shichimi in Japan.
Dinner on EveryMasala
The spices written up so far, best known first.
馃嚬馃嚪 Turkey and 5 moreBlack cumin
The tiny black seed of a wild annual flower, used across the Middle East and South Asia.Seed 路 Sharp and pungent 路 Herbal and green
馃嚠馃嚦 India and 5 moreFenugreek丨賱亘丞 (hilba)
The cuboid seed of an annual legume, prized for its bitter warmth and maple aroma.Seed 路 Bitter 路 Warm and sweet-spiced
馃嚞馃嚜 Georgia and 1 moreBlue fenugreek醿ａ儶醿儩 醿♂儯醿溼償醿氠儤
The blue-flowered annual herb that seasons Georgian stews and Swiss cheeseSeed 路 Earthy and deep 路 Bitter
Photo credits on this page
The small pictures above come from Wikimedia Commons under free licences. Some are cropped to fit.
- Black cumin: AndreHolz at English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, source
- Fenugreek: Yak, CC BY-SA 3.0, source
- Blue fenugreek: Flyout, CC BY-SA 3.0, source