Baking Spices: A Buying Guide

Do you need to buy fancy-pants spices? We’ve got answers.

I first became interested in spices in 2015 — an era you might call peak Marie Kondo. Back then it was a given, even among talented bakers, that it was just fine to use that jar of McCormick’s ground cinnamon that your mom gave you when you moved into your first apartment for your holiday baking.

But times changed. A whole new generation of spice purveyors was coming on the scene: Intrepid spice merchants wanted to restore spices to their glory days, when they were exotic and valuable. And that meant a focus on freshness and provenance. And so the conventional wisdom, which I actively dispensed, was that it was time to Marie Kondo your spice drawer, and to replace stale spices every one to two years.

This is still pretty good advice. But it also can feel a bit overwhelming — especially at this time of year. And so in this buying guide to holiday baking spices, we stress-tested ground cinnamon, ginger, and cardamom to get straight about which spices to buy and why, and how to store and refresh them to minimize cost.

OUR PICK:

Burlap & Barrel

Price: $4.99 to $5.55 per ounce

Why we like them: Burlap & Barrel is the epitome of the new-gen spice merchant. The company goes straight to the source for its spices, many of them heirloom varieties. The quality is tops: Burlap & Barrel’s Vietnamese cinnamon smells like none other you’ve tried — spicy like a Red Hot — while its ginger has a sharp, fruity depth. Equally important, the company is transparent about where (and from whom) they buy their spices and their direct relationships cut out the middlemen so farmers get a fair shake — and so do consumers.

BUDGET PICK:

Whole Foods 365 Organic

Price: $2.82 to $3.20 per ounce

Why we like them: Confession: Prior to testing we had been brainwashed to believe that supermarket spices were nothing more than flavorless dust. Not necessarily. Whole Foods 365 Organic line of spices does not offer traceability, but their ground ginger and cardamom were as pungent as most of our other entrants. (The Vietnamese cinnamon was a bit flat, but perfectly serviceable.) Even better, the price, not including Prime discounts, is between 30% to 40% less than premium direct-to-consumer brands.

The Hunt

Mystery has always been at the heart of the spice trade. In medieval times, in an effort to boost prices (and scare off competitors), traders whispered that nutmeg came from a dragon’s egg on top of a mountain. Which, along with other fanciful rumors, somehow succeeded. In the age of exploration, nutmeg was valued more highly than gold. In 1667, the Dutch traded Manhattan to the Brits in exchange for a speck of an island in Indonesia that was the exclusive home to the nutmeg tree.

Today, the opacity of the spice supply chain is what keeps prices low. If you don’t know where your cinnamon is from, it’s easy for a spice company to replace revered Vietnamese or Sri Lankan cinnamon with stuff from China. And if you don’t know when the spice was harvested or ground, you certainly don’t know how long it’s been sitting in a warehouse. According to Ethan Frisch, the co-founder of Burlap & Barrel, a spice in the commodity supply chain will change hands five or six times from the farm to your kitchen. This can take anywhere from 18 months to three years.

For this reason, our hunt was for the freshest spices. Spices, in other words, that you can keep around for years because they aren’t already faded when you bought them.

We gathered three baking spices: ground cinnamon, ginger, and cardamom, though we think our testing would likely apply to other holiday favorites including nutmeg, cloves, and allspice. Samples came from two direct-trade spice firms, Burlap & Barrel and Diaspora Co. B&B brings in spices from all over the world, and blends spices too, often in high-profile collabs with celebrity chefs. Diaspora sources only from India and Sri Lanka, and is unique in the spice game for its radical transparency: the company’s website doesn’t just tell you who grew each spice and when it was harvested, but what each farmer was paid, and how samples stacked up on lab tests for purity.

We also sampled spices from Spicewalla, a new-gen spice company based in Asheville, N.C., and Penzey’s, a beloved brick-and-mortar and online retailer. Both businesses buy from trusted importers, so there’s a bit less transparency, but they are laser focused on freshness. They also move a lot of product, so it’s unlikely that a jar has been sitting in their warehouse for years before it gets to your kitchen.

Our control, if you will, was Whole Foods Market 365 Organic. Are supermarket spices as subpar as the hip spice guys claim? We wanted to find out.

One final note: Spice aficionados universally maintain that you should never, ever buy ground spices. And while they have a point, we beg to differ. It’s true that ground spices go stale much faster than whole ones; this is because, when ground, more surface area is exposed to light and heat and moisture — all enemies of freshness.

But!! We pay more for all kinds of convenience. And if having ready-ground spices is important for you, that’s okay by us. (See our tips below for extended storage and replace when required.) Sourcing ground spices also seemed a suitably tough test for our competitors.

The Smart Choice

Our top pick is Burlap & Barrel, which excelled on flavor and aroma but also on its efforts to pull back the curtain on the convoluted spice supply chain. Its Royal cinnamon comes from mountains around Hué in Vietnam, and producers let the bark dry on the tree before harvesting to concentrate the essential oils. (In light of recent fears about lead in cinnamon, B&B also regularly tests its cinnamon in an independently accredited lab, as it should.)

Its Buffalo ginger, another heirloom variety, hails from northern Vietnam and plays beautifully in sweet and savory dishes. Like many spice nerds, Burlap & Barrel prefers you buy whole spices and, if I were buying cardamom again, I’d buy the whole pods and grind them myself. Their version of ground cardamom, from a regenerative farm in Guatemala, has that intense warm and peppery sweetness, but it is made from ground pods, not just the seeds, and therefore needs to be further pulverized for baked goods.

Or actually … when it comes to cardamom, which happens to be the most expensive baking spice, you might just choose Whole Foods 365 Organic, our budget pick. We could smell the sweet, camphor-y scent before we even removed the protective seal from the jar, and it did wonders to some morning oatmeal. The ginger was a lighter, more buttery color, but was somehow both piquant and round in aroma. The Whole Foods cinnamon was a tad flat, but fine. If you’re an occasional cook or baker, and spices tend to sit around for a while, I’d choose these and replace as necessary.

What about the rest? We loved Spicewalla but its spices were per-ounce more expensive than Burlap & Barrel’s, as were Diaspora’s. (Both gingers, for example, were more than 60% more expensive!) Penzey’s quality was tops, and I liked that you can experiment with spices from different countries — Vietnamese versus Ceylon versus Indonesian versus Chinese cinnamon. But again, with the exception of their lovely buttery ginger powder, all were more expensive than Burlap & Barrel.

Important Tips … for whatever you choose

Here’s the part where we get to say: Relax! You don’t have to replace your spices every year. Choose high-quality spices, then follow these rules:

• Buy small: Avoid the pain of throwing out stale spices by simply using them up. You’re more likely to do this if you buy smaller quantities. (In other words, Costco is not the ideal place to buy spices.)

• Go dark: Heat and light will sap the aroma and flavor of your spices. So put them in a drawer or cabinet — and away from the stove.

• Avoid moisture: Humidity also can sap aroma and flavor. So keep spices out of the fridge and use the freezer only if you are going away for … six months or more.

Seal well: Glass or metal tins are preferable to plastic, which can absorb aromas and make them less ideal for reuse. Storing your spices in the jars they come in is fine. If, like me, you get a thrill from an alphabetized spice drawer, these glass jars from IKEA are a bargain. Or choose 4-oz metal tins.

The Fine Print

Our buying guides are much more than taste tests. We try to balance nutrition, environmental pros and cons, price, and taste. Click here to learn more about our philosophy and selection process.

What we included in this buying guide:

Ground cinnamon, ginger, and cardamom from five companies:

• Burlap & Barrel

• Spicewalla

• Diaspora Co.

• Penzey’s

• Whole Foods 365 Organic

What we didn’t include:

Additional supermarket spice brands, which lack transparency about where the spices are from or when they were picked/processed. We wanted one as a foil against the claims of high-end spice firms. We chose 365 Organic because it was organic and the most affordable when compared to Frontier, Simply Organic, and McCormick. The rationale: If you aren’t seeking out something special, price is likely the overriding factor in a buying decision.

What we looked for:

• Aroma: Fresh, deep, powerful scents.

• Taste: Bright, pungent flavor; a little spice should go a relatively long way.

• Feel: Yep, spices feel different to the touch. If it feels dry, it may be stale.

• Organic: This is more about protecting growers than your health, but we think that organic products are always worth choosing, if you can afford the added cost.