Spices and herbs

Zelected Foods offers a wide range of dried spices and exquisite spice blends. The range includes all the essential spices and exciting blends that add an extra dimension to your cooking. Spices are harvested from a wide variety of plants. Often it’s bark, seeds, roots, leaves and berries that go through a process so they can be used in our food. Almost all spices are dried for shelf life, and most are crushed. What characterises spices is that they contain more or less potent aromatic and flavour compounds. These are so-called essential oils, which give spice plants their distinctive aroma and taste. Herbs are also spices. But when it comes to herbs, it’s mainly the leaves that are used, dried and crushed or finely chopped.

Even though spices play a very important role in cooking, salt and pepper are the most used spices in Denmark. They are essential basics, because without salt and pepper, food doesn’t taste of much. Salt enhances the flavour of food, while pepper adds warmth and mouthfeel, i.e. a sensory experience of heat inside the mouth. Salt and pepper make our food far tastier because, together, they highlight and intensify the other flavours in the dish. Food without salt and pepper can feel bland and give the impression that it doesn’t taste of anything. Salt is actually a basic taste on a par with sour, bitter, sweet and umami. Salt is tasted on the tongue, while many of the other impressions we get of a food’s flavour come from aromatic compounds perceived by our sense of smell. That’s why food also feels much more flavourless without the necessary basic seasoning: salt. In Zelected Foods’ range you’ll find both pink Himalayan salt, white Mediterranean salt and an exciting selection of salt blends with, for example, garlic and chilli.