The Best Ten Spices Starter Set is a Do-It-Yourself Job

BACK to... A household starter kit for impoverished college students and others starting from scratch

A lady friend of mine was starting over home wise a thousand miles away, and I was trying to help by having Amazon ship her a few things.

I asked her if there was anything in particular she'd like for her kitchen. I was thinking maybe she needed some pot holders or cooking utensils. But instead she asked for a spices starter set.

This turned out to be one of the toughest things to get for her, for three reasons: one, I knew little about what the best spices were to get, and it turns out that besides the 'true' spices, there's a bunch of pseudo spices and mixes out there as well, and some sources (folks that I would consider scammers) even sell dozens of differently labeled bottles of plain old salt as different sorts of spice! And almost all these things (real spices or not) cost a small fortune! Two, Amazon at that time was using its best spice deals to lure in new Prime subscribers, and so those were off limits to regular customers like me. Three, Walmart's terrible online order shipping/delivery conditions made it utterly infuriating to consider using them for this. I mean, Walmart had some great deals on spices (often the very best), but basically required you to submit something like a job application(!) for whoever was going to pick them up at the local Walmart, if it wasn't going to be you, and if the destination Walmart wasn't in your own home town. And to get a straight delivery to my friend's house from Walmart Incorporated, I first had to get some sort of written permission from my credit card company to show to Walmart, when I placed my order online. Sheesh! Unbelievable!

(These incidents occurred in early 2015: hopefully online shopping at Walmart has improved dramatically since then)

So I researched recommendations for 'real' spices from various web sites which seemed to be authorities on cooking with them. I pooled the info from maybe a half dozen such sites to determine the top ten spices all of them had come nearest to agreeing should be in everyone's spice collection, and used that as my list. I also tried to avoid listing plain old salt or pepper as a spice. I mean, come on! Everyone already has salt and pepper in their kitchen! So a spices starter set shouldn't include those ubiquitous staples!

Here's the list I ended up with:

Ground Cinnamon
Ground Cumin Seed
Ground Nutmeg
Oregano Leaf
Parsley Leaf Flakes
Garlic Powder
Chili Powder
White Onion Powder
Ground Ginger
Thyme leaf

I couldn't find anything close to this list in commercially available spice starter or sampler sets. Instead, those things were rife with pseudo spices or obscure/unpopular spice mixes, or multiple differently named containers of salt.

So I eventually found an independent spice retailer who also sold sets through Amazon.com. That way I could see Amazon customer reviews for their products, to check their quality. Then I went to the spice retailer's own web site and selected the individual spices I wanted for a kit, and had them send the package to my distant friend. This tiny spice retailer was super easy to order from for my friend, compared to the nightmare offered by Walmart online. And, of course, at that time Amazon was reserving their best spice deals exclusively for Prime subscribers.

That independent spice retailer was simplyorganic.com.

And here you have a web page I can honestly say I wish someone else had created-- so that I could have found it during my own spice quest. For it would have saved me an immense amount of time and effort.