Make your own Spice Blend

By Katie Barreira

All this week, Special Fork bloggers are revealing what’s in their pantry, with tips for using pantry staples. To celebrate Pantry Week, Special Fork has teamed up with Zojirushi, the Japanese maker of top-quality kitchen appliances, to offer a fabulous sweepstakes prize: the 5.5-cup capacity Zojirushi Micom Rice Cooker & Warmer ($192 MSRP), which not only cooks rice flawlessly, but also steams foods and bakes cakes. Menu settings include: white/sushi, mixed, porridge, sweet, brown, cake, steam and quick cooking. Enter to win!

Dried herbs and spices are forever proliferating in my pantry, taunting me with their two-year shelf life. One great way to plow through those jostling jars is to make your own spice blends.

I knew my guy was a keeper when he coated chicken thighs with this all-purpose rub, which he employs on everything from bell peppers to skirt steak. Try it as a dry rub on a smoked pork butt, or mix it with a few glugs of olive oil for a wet rub that packs chicken breasts with flavor and seals in moisture.

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Pantry Clean-Up: What to do with Garam Masala

When visiting Cape Cod, one of my favorite pilgrimages is to the Atlantic Spice Company, a wholesale distributor of high-quality herbs and spices. The deceptively stark warehouse is, on the inside, a Mecca for foodies. It is also the prime culprit of my pantry mayhem.

Whether it’s stocking up on discount staples, like salt and pepper, snatching up an item I’ve heard of, but never tried (this year it was bee pollen!), or shopping for a recipe-specific ingredient, I can’t get out of that place without an armload.

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