Welcome back to our review of RawSpiceBar! If you want to know more about RawSpiceBar in general, click on over to my Unboxing and Pricing post to get the rundown.
—
First up on the list was the Winter Herbs spice blend which includes a fragrant mixture of tarragon, sage, white peppercorns, thyme, allspice, black peppercorns, garlic, and marjoram. While the recipe included suggested using this in a potato gratin dish, I had more enticing plans for this blend.
We just got back from a weekend at Selma’s parents’ where they fully re-stocked our fridge and freezer with tons and tons of meat. We rarely have to buy meat anymore at the store because every time we go and visit they always send us back with a car full of steak and chicken. Maybe it’s because they think I’m starving their daughter but whatever the reason is, I’ve stopped asking questions at this point. On this particular trip, they sent us back with a whole roasting chicken so I thought this would be the perfect test for this blend.
As I mentioned before in my Unboxing and Pricing post, I wanted to see how this spice blend would hold up as a substitute for my usual seasoning mix because that’s how I envision most people will use these spices. I don’t usually do anything too fancy to my birds besides the usual salt, pepper and cajun seasoning blend so I was really hoping this would help spice up this dish and add a new twist of flavor to my ordinary recipe.
For this test, I keep it pretty simple. Besides stuffing the chicken with a lemon, fresh sage and thyme, I generously coated the bird with the Winter Herbs spice blend. A few things I took note of:
- I could immediately tell the freshness of the spices right when I opened the pouch. Usually when I open a new bottle of herbs or spices I get the muted scent of something that has clearly been ground awhile back and left to sit on the shelf. Not these spices. They were aromatic and strong.
- There is no added salt or sugar which was a good thing since you don’t get any cheap fillers. You just have to remember to add it to whatever dish you make.
I’m not going to lie…the results were pretty amazing. The blend added a whole a new level of flavor to the chicken that I would never have thought of on my own. This blend would definitely be something I would keep on hand for future use in other dishes.
Plus, 0.4 ounces may not seem like a lot, but even after heavily seasoning a whole roasting chicken and adding some to our side dishes, we still had enough left over for another bird.
So far we’ve been very impressed by this blend and the entire RawSpiceBar experience. We easily substituted this in for our usual seasoning blend and it brought a new level of complexity to our dishes. Plus, the best part about is that they send enough for you to try it out in multiple recipes which is definitely an added bonus.
The only small complaint we had was that the pouch was not resealable. If you’re making their included recipe for 4-6 people, you shouldn’t have any leftovers. But since we’re only cooking for two, we had a bit left over that we had to package away ourselves to keep them fresh. But other than that, we are pleased with the experience thus far and we can’t wait to try out the other spice blends.
And with that, thanks for reading and stay tuned for our next spice blend review!
Disclaimer: This box was provided by RawSpiceBar for reviewing purposes but all thoughts and opinions are my own.
Leave a Comment