"Best before" dates on herbs and spices

Pretani

I recently bought pale yellow dried noodles from a chinese supermarket and although they had a proper sell-by-date, I thought they were old. I bought them and have been eating them since two months. Nothing wrong with me yet:D

Again, I keep soy sauces in the cupboard instead of the fridge and have been using them for nearly 1 year, still no problems.

hotcookie101

A few months ago I made curry sauce for me and OH, made with curry powder that was BB 2004:eek:
tasted fine

but tasted better when spices in date and stronger

TBH with dried stuff unless it is crawling I tend to think it is OK (OH is more sqeamish, trying to get me to throw out smoked dry cured bacon-use by 4th august )
shall I give in?

Pretani

good stuff hotcookie, sometimes we can become paranoid over the sell-by-date or instructions to keep in fridge once opened.

as for dried herbs and spices, I would keep them untill you run out.

Pink.

Hi catlou,

There's an earlier thread on using out of date herbs and spices that may help so I've added your thread to it to keep the replies together. Personally I never look at the dates on dried herbs and spices and just use them until they run out.

Pink

mi55pink

I have noticed today in my herbs/spice collection that some have past their best before dates. I have no problem using food past its best but some are 2005!

Where would you draw the line (if at all)?

Agapanthus

I think I've got some that are a lot older than that! (I think I've got one or two that go back to 1970... :eek: )

They're dried, so they're not going to go mouldy or anything. Eating them certainly won't do you any harm, but after a bit they start to lose some of their flavour and colour. If they still seem to be appetising then I'd use them with no qualms at all. If they're looking a bit faded or have lost their pungency then I'd replace them. The human race used dried herbs for thousands of years before anybody thought to stick a date on them!

Elliesmum

Just looked in my spice box and the oldest I have is 2000 :cool:

EM xx