I always thought buying store brand spices was a downgrade until I did a side by side blind taste test

My girlfriend called me out for being a snob about spices about 6 months ago. I swore the name brand stuff was way better. So we did a blind test with 5 common spices - oregano, cumin, paprika, cinnamon, garlic powder. She made two identical pots of chili and swapped the spices without telling me which was which. I guessed wrong on 4 out of 5. Only got cinnamon right because the store brand seemed a little weaker. Now I save roughly $12 a month on spices. Has anyone else had a similar moment where their expensive habit turned out to be placebo?

2 comments

2 Comments

anderson.piper1h ago

Oh come on, blind taste tests are worthless for cooking because they don't account for how the spices smell in the jar or bloom in the pan during the actual cooking process. You saved twelve bucks but ate twelve bucks worth of mediocrity.

spencer7822h ago

My buddy Kyle swore by expensive olive oil for years, would only buy this one bottle imported from Italy that cost like $18. We did a blind taste test at his place with some cheap stuff from Aldi and he couldn't tell the difference either. He was so mad but also relieved because he'd been dropping like $40 a month on it lol. Now he just buys the regular store brand and jokes about his old fancy oil phase whenever we cook together.