Who’s actually using them?
For what it’s worth I saw oregano today in the Carrefour beside Zhishan MRT station. It was beside a few other spices in the foreign food section, at the end of one of the aisles - set apart from the main spice selection elsewhere in the store. I believe there was also garlic salt, and now I’m wondering if my recollection of seeing garlic powder is instead for garlic salt. (For the past couple of years I’ve been working through an increasingly solid big bag of garlic powder bought in Canada.)
Not entirely related to this issue, but the Carrefour had signs up saying that, due to labor and Covid-19 issues in France, stocking of imported goods is intermittent at the moment. They hope to resume normal service in mid to late April. Nice that they’re so optimistic.
Sort of following up on @Dragonbones: yeah, it’s surprising to me that the recipe doesn’t include cumin. That and Mexican chili powder (often itself a mix of spices) are usually the two main ingredients in “typical” taco fillings. And as he suggested, cumin can be way better if you use the seeds (often easier to find than ground in Taiwan anyway!), toast a bit in a pan, then crush / grind.
I found everything expect oregano.
Thank you for the Carrefour update. I’ll look in the imported section next time I visit
The recipe has cumin. Cumin hasn’t been difficult for me to find
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Just a note, onion powder and garlic powder don’t stay on the shelves long IMO because they tend to cake up in Taiwan’s humidity. In contrast, minced dried onion (Costco) does not, so if you keep a spice grinder handy, buy that, and grind it when needed. And for garlic, seriously, use fresh! Dragonbabe also gets giant bags (like, bigger than a basketball) of organic garlic from a local farmer and peels it within a couple days, then I puree it with olive oil and freeze it in ice cube trays. Spices don’t have to be dried. We can pull out a cube of frozen garlic puree, thaw it, and sautee it gently then add other ingredients, and the result is as good or better than powdered stuff.
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Thank you for pointing that out. It would be neat to see what your frozen garlic-oil cubes look like. Can you post a picture here?
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I can find all of these easily and cheaply in Italy. If you would like, I can bring back some hard to find spices when I return. Although I’m not sure when that will be at this point.
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I does, it will clump together as it doesn’t have an ‘anti-caking’ agent in it.
No problem. And thank you for offering. I am happy to use the fresh garlic option. I am new to cooking at home, so I follow recipes I find as closely as I can.
My sister, however, is an awesome cook and I wouldn’t be surprised if she doesn’t even have any measuring tools 
she has a more intuitive feel for why ingredients, measurements, and temperatures are what they are. She also studied it in school, so there’s that.
So, I appreciate that there are many opportunities to fudge, tweak, and modify in cooking, especially given limitations in local supply.
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It’s in the gut, a gut feeling.
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I realise you are more of an expert than I am, but for me it’s more about experience. The more times I have cooked a dish the more I just know the right quantities. Tasting all the time, of course, is vital.
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An experienced cook or chef can actually combine flavors in his thoughts (flavor mapping?). Knowing your ingredients and how it tastes and than combining flavors without ever having made them.
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I’ve bought the minced (not powdered) one for years, and our kitchen in humid Donghu is not dehumidified, but our minced dried onion has not caked up. In contrast, powdered onion cakes terribly, so as to be unusable. Your experience may differ.
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Hi, it just looks like beige soap in the form of ice cubes.
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3/4 cumin and 1/4 Italian spice worked pretty darn well instead of coriander powder in my khao soi yesterday. I might just always do it that way
Onion and garlic have sugar, so the natural sugars, even dried, will clump eventually.
City Super has them.
Taiwan is not really into the variety of spice and it’s obvious when you go to a local supermarket and they all have the same few basic spices available.
Can’t speak to those brands, but I’ve definitely had brands that had different qualities of preservation - so in a few cases, yes, paying more for a dried herb can be worth it. But I sure as heck wouldn’t pay 300 unless it came very, very strongly recommended! And, now that I think about it, dried parsley? It doesn’t come with much flavor at the best of times.
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Is this thread from 2007? Go to Carrefour, if not go to fancy city super or Jason’s or shop online. Indian Spices goto Trinity
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