Our aim at Seasoned Pioneers is to emulate authentic worldwide flavours and enable you to bring them into your kitchen. To achieve this we have needed to gain an in-depth understanding of how seasonings are prepared on a traditional, everyday basis in rural homes worldwide, from as far afield as Indian, Mexican, Moroccan, Caribbean, African… and then to emulate this without any compromise whatsoever. This is what we have found to be essential:
Finest Ingredients :
Firstly, it is vital that the very finest ingredients are used – this is obviously an essential prerequisite to achieving genuine results. At Seasoned Pioneers, we are proud of our obsessive attention to this element: for further information see Sourcing & Provenance
Traditional Recipes:
Rather than any sort of ‘special company recipe’, we insist on using carefully researched, strictly traditional recipes for every single spice blend. So, for example, when you use our Moroccan Ras-el-Hanout Spice blend you can be sure you are getting the genuine article: there are absolutely no compromises – we never add any form of additive, preservative, colouring or ‘bulking agent’ whatsoever.
Authentic Dry-Roasting :
To produce a genuine spice blend, dry-roasting is absolutely critical – this fully develops and infuses together the flavour of each and every spice so resulting in the rounded, intense flavours of an authentic spice blend. Despite this, it seems to be rarely done at a commercial level – maybe the reason is the high level of expertise and time required to do this properly.
In essence, the process involves measuring out the whole spices in small manageable batches – these are then dry-roasted together to marry & intensify their flavours. The dry-roasting process is actually an art in itself requiring a high level of skill to determine the optimum length of time for each spice (too short and the flavours do not develop fully, too long and the flavour is ‘burnt out’ leaving a bitter taste - Dave, our ‘Master Roaster’, has many years experience).
As a result, spices will need to be added to the dry-roasting batch as different times so as to ensure they all reach an optimum level of roast at exactly the same time. After thorough mixing, the blend then needs to be ground – again, the degree of fineness or coarseness of the grind is vital in determining the flavour profile and will differ from blend to blend.