Spices that give flavor, flavor enhancer
Since Antiquity, spices have been used to take our palates on a journey through flavors. They are flavor enhancers.
We use spices as a marinade with meat, as a seasoning for a sauce, as a final sprinkling...they are there to add flavor. However, we need to know that the use of spices must follow a certain rule to give more concordance to our kitchen. This way we can optimize the flavor of food.
Mainly, they combine with the fundamental senses: sweet, spicy, sour, and bitter. Depending on our culinary needs, there are suitable spices for each sense.
Sugar
Highly prized by the greatest chefs around the world, vanilla is the spice par excellence for our sweet dishes. It is used in pod, powder or extract. We can also use cinnamon to give more flavor to our desserts. Cinnamon comes in powder or stick form. Star anise also has a slightly sweet flavor. It is also used to flavor desserts. In certain culinary cultures, it is mixed with mulled wine in order to enhance the taste of the latter. There are other spices that go perfectly with the sweet taste such as: paprika, licorice, mace, tonka bean, ginger, turmeric or fennel.
spicy
There are several spices that give the spicy taste, but the best known is undoubtedly pepper. It accompanies almost all our dishes. It must be added at the end of cooking in order to preserve all its fragrances. Pepper is a staple of European cuisine. For lovers of extra-hot cooking, cayenne pepper is recommended. Be careful not to overdo it because it stings! Moreover, it is used in the composition of certain hot sauces such as Tabasco. Ginger is also used to give a spicy flavor to our cuisine. Mixed with garlic, it is the ideal partner in marinade with meat or fish.
Acid
To give an acidic flavor to our dishes, we can use amchoor. It is a spice made from dried green mango. It is mainly presented in powder form. She will also take our taste buds on a journey to Southeast Asia, her region of origin. Sumac powder is also interesting for its tangy taste. Citrus fruits come into this register, we can cite Combava, a small, extremely fragrant lemon. A hint of these spices is recommended to perfect the vinaigrette, soften the meat or marinate vegetables.
Bitter
The bitter taste is often noted as unpleasant, but subtly combined with the right spices, we can concoct tasty dishes. Cocoa is the typical bitter-tasting spice. However, it ennobles gastronomy with its flavor. Several other spices have the particularity of being bitter, such as: citrus peels, thyme, sage, saffron, rosemary, nigella, etc.
In all cases, spices are made to enhance the taste of food, you just have to find the harmony of flavors and follow your intuitions.
Max Daumin