The Spice Finder matches what you are cooking and the spices you actually have against the site's blends, rubs, pastes and herb sauces, and ranks what you can make now first.
What it is¶
The Spice Finder is the practical end of the site. Instead of reading about ras el hanout and finding at step three that you have no allspice, you tell it what you have first, and it tells you what you can make.
The three questions¶
- What are you cooking? Chicken, lamb, fish, a curry, a tagine, roast vegetables, lentils, eggs, flatbread, cake, mulled wine — or leave it blank for anything.
- What is in your spice rack? Tick what you have: whole spices, ground spices, dried and fresh herbs, chillies, fresh aromatics such as garlic, ginger and lemon, and store-cupboard basics such as oil, salt, sugar, vinegar and yoghurt.
- Any filters? - Diet: vegetarian or vegan. A vegan recipe also satisfies a vegetarian search. - Gluten-free: hides anything that is not. - Maximum heat: none, mild, medium or hot, so a family supper does not return zhoug.
How it ranks¶
Every recipe in the Finder has a list of essential ingredients and a list of nice-to-have extras, and a list of the dishes it suits. The Finder scores each one against your answers:
- A recipe made for the dish you picked beats a general-purpose one.
- Every essential ingredient you have counts for a lot; every extra you have counts for a little.
- Every essential ingredient you are missing counts heavily against it.
Results then come back in three bands:
- Make it now — you have every essential ingredient.
- Nearly there — you are one or two short, and it tells you exactly which.
- Shopping needed — a good match for the dish, but a longer list.
Each result shows the method inline, with quantities, and links to the full article for the blend or paste — its history, variations and how to store it.
What is in it¶
The Finder's recipes are home-made versions of the blends, rubs, pastes and herb sauces covered in the reference guide: garam masala, curry powder, a tarka for dal, panch phoron, ras el hanout, za'atar, dukkah, baharat, berbere, five-spice, jerk, Cajun, chili powder, tandoori, chermoula, chimichurri, pesto, salsa verde, gremolata, zhoug, harissa, Thai green and red curry pastes, green chutney, mint sauce, chilli crisp, shichimi togarashi, chaat masala, herbes de provence, mixed spice, pumpkin spice, mulled wine and masala chai.
A few things worth knowing about how they are labelled:
- Most spice blends are vegan. The exceptions are mainly pastes that contain animal products: Thai curry pastes are made with shrimp paste, so they are listed as containing meat and fish, and their methods say how to leave it out.
- Asafoetida usually contains wheat. Commercial asafoetida is the resin diluted with flour, most often wheat. Recipes that use it list it as optional and say to use a gluten-free-labelled one.
- Pesto is listed as vegetarian, not vegan, and its method notes that Parmigiano Reggiano is made with animal rennet.
- Heat levels are for the recipe as written. Most can be made milder by using fewer chillies or seeding them; the method usually says how.
A worked example¶
Cooking: fish In the rack: fresh coriander, parsley, garlic, ground cumin, paprika, a lemon, olive oil, chilli flakes Filters: none
The Finder returns chermoula first: every essential ingredient is there, it is made for fish, and the chilli flakes are one of its extras. Gremolata — parsley, garlic and lemon — is also ready to make, and comes second. Zhoug appears under "nearly there", with a note that you are missing fresh green chillies and cardamom, and salsa verde under "shopping needed", three items short (mint, capers and vinegar).
Set the maximum heat to none and the chermoula and zhoug drop out, since both contain chilli, leaving gremolata at the top.
Getting good results¶
- Tick generously. Most kitchens have more than they think: salt, oil, garlic, a lemon, sugar, a jar of cumin at the back.
- Whole and ground are listed separately, because a blend that toasts whole seeds needs whole seeds. If you have only ground, the method's quantities still work roughly as a guide, but the flavour will be flatter. See whole vs ground spices.
- Fresh and dried herbs are separate too. They are not interchangeable one-for-one; see fresh vs dried herbs.
If you just want to know how hot something is¶
Use The Heat Ladder on the home page: an interactive Scoville scale running from sweet peppers to the superhots, each linked to its chilli page. The numbers behind it are explained on the scoville scale.