You go to your kitchen willing to prepare a great recipe for your friends and family who are your guests at home. You prepare all the ingredients your dish needs, the pans and pots and other kitchen utensils to cook with. There! you really think that you are ready to become the best of chefs… but you aren’t, in fact. You still need one of the most important ingredients that will make the difference in your dishes: spices. what outstands in the Mediterranean cuisine is the excellent top class products as well as the wide varierity of spices used. These add aroma and flavour to all dishes; on the other hand, you have to know which to choose for each dish and the right amount.

 Spice range depending on what you are cooking.

There are different types of spices used as a basic ingredient. These are usually added to soups, sauces, rice, mushrooms, legumes and vegetables. Amongst all, the most outstanding are Paprika, Nutmeg, Thyme, or Basil. For main and strong dishes such as meat, vegetables and legumes, we can use stronger spices: cumin, different varieties of peppers (black and white), bay leaf, mustard o dill. Sweet spices can be used in desserts, although they can also be added in some salads. We are actually referring to the aphrodisiac cinnamon, vanilla, anis, fennel, and clove.

Paprika range.

We can find different types of varieties in some of them, such as sweet or hot Paprika. Both are used in rice (for instance paella, very typical in Mediterranean cuisine in which we can also add saffron also called “red gold”), potatoes, stir fry, stews or also in some sauces. Add paprika in the last moment of the cooking since, if you toast it too much, you will then get a bitter taste. The number of spices used is vast: rosemary, thyme, clove, coriander, peppermint, curry, ginger, oregano, basil, fennel… Which one are you cooking today?