Old Stale Spices can Ruin your Meal!

Dizzy Tips: Old stale ingredients can ruin your meal!

Here’s a little bit of bbq humor to kick off this month’s Dizzy Tip article:

Q: Why did the chicken cross the road?

A: To go to his Dizzy Pig dealer and replace his old jar of seasoning!

“What?” you say.

“That doesn’t even really make sense, and is actually a little bit silly.”

True. But you know what else is a little bit silly and doesn’t really make sense?

Spending an ever-increasing amount of hard-earned dollars for quality food only to add a spice or seasoning, regardless of brand, that’s lost its punch and flavor due to an extended shelf life!

Don’t Use Old Stale Spices

What we’re talking about here folks, are the ingredients in your cupboards, pantry and fridge that undermine an otherwise great meal creation by being used after their prime has passed. Anyone who’s ever:

Baked with old chopped walnuts or pecans and regretted the decision when tasting the off/rancid nut oil in their end result
Baked bread with old yeast and cursed the lethargic loaf
Spun a salad with wilted greens, or
Created a shortcake with sad and sorry strawberries

Knows the detriment of using old ingredients — disappointment.

The same is true for the spice blends you use.

Top quality meats and seafood deserve fresh spice flavors to coax out the most in your meal. That means replacing older, flacid flavored spice blends with new, fresh ground seasonings.

Getting the Most Out of Seasonings

No one knows more about getting the most out of seasonings than the team at Dizzy Pig, and they take every step to ensure the herbs, spices and peppercorns that make up their blends are the freshest and best available. Then, once blended together, a ‘best if used by’ date is affixed to each jar of rub.

Why does Dizzy Pig take this step, among other quality control measures?

We can sum it up in two words. Essential Oils.

The Role of Essential Oils

Fact

How Dizzy Pig Stays Proactive

When herbs, spices and peppercorns get freshly ground, they begin releasing the essential oils inside, and from that point onward, flavor pungency begins to very slowly dissipate.

Dizzy Pig grinds smaller batches, so all that fresh-ground essence and flavor kick gets to you, rather than fading away in our warehouse waiting for your order to come in.

We encourage our retail partners to order often and keep fresh stock on-hand and we have offered incentives, such as low ordering minimums to ensure stock is fresh, regardless of where you get your Dizzy Pig fix!

Once you pop the lid on your new Dizzy Pig spice blend, it will begin to lose those essential oils further as oxygen gets in the jar as you cap and uncap it.

We put a ‘best if used by’ date on the jar that indicates when, in our experienced opinion, the true flavor essence of the rub blend has been spent. Not many reach this point, but we acknowledge that not everyone uses the blends often enough to ensure consumption before that date, or perhaps one blend lags behind the others in your cooking preferences; hey these things happen!

We want each of our customers to enjoy the full Dizzy Pig flavor experience, and that is what is behind the ‘best if used by’ date sticker on the side of each and every jar you purchase.

What to do when the rubs have passed the ‘best if used by’ date? Assess the flavor profile for yourself, and if it finger-tests dull or “off”, and the color is faded from exposure to air and light (try to keep them in a cool dry place for best shelf life!), then it’s definitely time to restock with a fresh, flavorful new jar of Dizzy Pig!