There has to be some elite grandma tech for this.
Where I live even with all the precautions in the world my onion and garlic powders in particular absorb moisture very quickly and turn into rocks that I have to chip at to use.
strats?
put some rice in the jar
or submit to nature and scrape/grate off the block as needed. maybe you can have it cake into a more convenient shape, like flat and thin like a cracker that would be easier to work with. crack it in pieces and store that way.
Seeing how rice illiterate a lot of the world is I’d like to clarify on your behalf:
Uncooked rice. Put some grains of dry, uncooked rice in the spice bottle. It’s fairly common in equatorial areas, as it’s cheap and it’s effective.
yes this is correct. i should have been more specific lol
I think I’ll start leaving half a cup of rice inside the outer-most container that all the spices live in as prophylaxis.
not sure if it’ll work. but up to you.
if you don’t want to mix rice with your stuff, you can put it in a little thin bag like a teabag.
On top of the other good advice, you should also pre-mix your spice blend in a small rameken or bowl and add it to whatever you’re cooking from that. If you’re dumping seasoning over a hot cooking dish, the steam can really quickly clump stuff up.
Yeah this is a good tip, I reckon that might be at least half the explanation for how things ended up so clumped in this instance. I might check with my fellow kitchen user to make sure we’re on the same page about this.
I say to do this, and I absolutely don’t abide by it lol. I’m always adjusting and it’s so tempting to just grab the seasoning and go for it. If you do need to do that it’s best to put it in your hand first.
Yeah it seems like onion powder is just waiting for you to slip up one time and absorb the whole steam cloud.
It isn’t exactly a perfect strat, but I usually just use a chopstick to break it apart and scrape off all the spice I need from the big spice lump, works better than something like a spoon or a fork in my experience.
This gave me an idea. I need to check when I make beans later if there’s even enough left to be worth it, but a pointy knife should crack everything up and then i could tip it into a ziplock or similar to crush it up.
Yeah, ziplock bag to crush things up is always a good idea, make sure it isn’t overfilled though or else it might burst.
onion powder is so bad for this.
I think maybe its protecting the rest of my spices like a sacrificial anode.
lmao!
dunno about garlic but you can gently heat something like salt or pepper at 50-60c, spices probably better to be closed though and mixed a couple of times. grandma tech would be to use a pan instead of oven to get it over quickly
yes once a whole box of salt turned to a brick and I was able to dry it out with heat to recover it.
i’m more doubtful about exactly garlic tbh, cause it’s sensitive to temperature and i never tried, normal spices can handle 100c no problem, and dry very quickly that way without losing aroma that much (with a pan or oven), but can intermix the smells if you are doing all at once in an oven (
)i also think some hotels use giant ovens for their salt shakers, as it’s the least effort
at some point though you are toasting your spices…? which is a nice thing to do and in some cuisines, required.
roasted garlic is nice. so maybe roasted garlic salt is OK.
perhaps a solution to your problems might be to get whole instead of ground spices. impossible to cake up, and have better flavor. I grind a month’s worth at a time with a dedicated coffee grinder. keep in little jars. a mortar and pestle is quieter, cheaper and doesn’t require electricity but more laborious.
salt is safe up to 800c lmao
Which is incidentally why it’s used in some solar power plants to store energy at night!
but garlic electricity wears down devices faster.
The smell is nice, though.
they do use other salts there, with lower melting points and not as aggressive
But they aren’t adding fat or acid, so I bet their solar plant tastes like SHIT!
I just break it up with a (metal) chopstick. Works fine.
Rice or the silicone packets that come in vitamins and other stuff?
Ive used some salt in the past but its so-so effective and it’s a pain for the cholesterol.
oh true that’s a pretty classic anti caking agent isn’t it. Maybe a chunk of rock salt that can be mostly kept out of the actual seasoning process would be effective.
edit: not that I’mma add salt to my spices but its interesting to think about.
Interesting, I didn’t think about a chunk of rock salt. I’ll need to experiment with that.
