The Oneida Daily Dispatch (Oneida, NY)
Spice It Up!
What are spices and herbs?
Some families are looking forward to a Thanksgiving meal with friends, family and lots of good food. But what makes our special meal so tasty?
Spices and herbs are usually a big reason that the food smells and tastes so great. This week, The Mini Page learns about the seasonings that add flavor to a traditional Thanksgiving feast.
A spice can be from the roots, seeds, fruit, flowers or bark of a plant. Spices are usually dried and ground up. Most spices are grown in tropical areas.
An herb (pronounced ERB) is the leafy part of a plant.Herbs may be cut up or used whole, as with bay leaves. Most herbs are grown in temperate climates, or where it is neither very hot nor very cold.
Favorite spices and herbs
• Cinnamon comes from the bark of the Cinnamomum tree. There are several types of this tree, and each produces a different flavor. For example, the cinnamon tree that grows in Vietnam has more than twice as much fragrant oil as other cinnamon trees. The extra oil makes it more spicy.
• Vanilla comes from the beans of an orchid vine. Vanilla grows wild in parts of Mexico and Central America. Workers dry the beans in the sun until they are dark brown. Each night for three months, they wrap the beans and take theminside, then unwrap themand take them back outside in the morning. • Black peppercorns grow on Piper
nigrum vines. Most black pepper comes from India, Indonesia, Vietnam and Brazil. Farmers climb ladders to hand-pick pepper spikes, or ears, full of the berries, or peppercorns.
Farmers spread the berries out so they can dry in the sun. They turn the berries several times so they dry evenly. At night, they take the berries inside to protect them from moisture, then take them back outside every morning for seven to 10 days.
• Nutmeg and another spice, mace, both come from the fruit of the same tree, Myristica fragrans. Mace comes from a red covering on the shell protecting the seed. The nutmeg comes from the seed itself.
Indonesia is the world’s top nutmeg producer. Workers climb into the mountains to pick nutmeg fruit during many harvests a year. Afterward, the nuts are dried in the sun. The outer shell is removed, and the seeds are sorted.
• Oregano comes from plants in the mint family. There are different types. Oregano is often used in pizza.
• Sage comes from the leaves of a shrub and is related to mint. It is grown in the U.S., Albania, Montenegro, Bosnia and Serbia.
Spices in history
Through much of history, spices were so important that they were used as money. About 700 to 1,000 years ago, people used black peppercorns (the source of black pepper) to pay rent, ransoms and taxes. Many of the most important voyages of exploration, including Columbus’ discovery of the Americas, were undertaken partly to find different sources of spices.
Some of the most valuable spices hundreds of years ago, such as cinnamon and black pepper, are common today. Black pepper was known as the “king of spices.” Many of the spices were very expensive.
Growing spices
All spices are still grown, harvested and dried by hand, much as they have been for thousands of years. Modern technology has made it much easier to grind and process spices, however. Today this work is done by machines in factories.