Herbs and Spices for Bomb Ass Food

So you want to tantalize your taste buds. I have a well stocked spice cabinet, but you don't need to go overboard to make your food taste great. I'll cover the ones I think are essential and then explain some of the others I think are important. Some may be mentioned a few times because they're fucking great in all regional cuisines. 

I like spicy food that burns my fucking face off! I also have significant fondness for the tex-mex flavors, so we'll start with that. The spices i deem essential for bomb ass south of the border flavor are as follows: cayenne pepper, cumin, chili powder, cilantro, and red pepper flakes. You really can't make good tex-mex meals without these spices. I also use a lot of garlic powder, paprika, and black pepper when cooking these types of foods. 

When I'm craving something with more Italian flavor, the essential spices to have on hand are: oregano, basil, thyme, rosemary, sage, garlic powder, and bay leaves. I personally like to keep on hand parsley, marjoram, tarragon, paprika, and red pepper flakes.

Let's talk about essentials for cooking amazing Asian dishes: ginger, cinnamon, curry powder, basil, turmeric, and coriander. I also keep on hand dried red chili's, cloves, anise, cumin, sesame seeds, and cardamon. I'm not going to separate them into Thai, Chinese, and Japanese as that will take too much space. We may break it down later in additional blogs!

Other essentials to your spice cabinet are salt, pepper, nutmeg, allspice, and cream of tartar.

Again you don't need to break the bank. Just start out with a few in each area and you'll be cooking up food that makes people think you have that shit locked down! If you have others I may have missed, drop a message and let's chat about it. I'm anticipating some tasty dialog outta this shit.