Indian Spice Box

Anyone use an Indian spice box?

http://www.amazon.com/Stainless-Masala- ... B000T3E96O

Being that the containers wouldn't have lids does it change the taste of anything inside the box?

I need something that is more efficient than cabinets full of containers that take me 5 minutes to find the onion powder.

I'd like to be able to store salts, peppers, dried green spices, chinese five spice, shawerma spices in the same container but not sure if one spice would funk up another in the same tin, using an Indian spice box.

Kenji,

Stainless steel spice tins (masala dabba) are used in India all the time. You can get some spice tins with little lids for each of the spices. However, for spices you would use on a daily basis, the little lids can be a pain. In my experience, the portions you add are fairly small and if you use them up rapidly, there does not appear to be too much crossover of flavors.

Jyoti

I can also think of all kinds of other uses for this container - my first thought is that it would be a great bain-marie for little boston brown breads or English-style puddings.

As a spice container, if used in my house, I know I would jostle it and spill the spices inside, but that's because I'm a major klutz. I can see how useful this would be, particularly if you make masalas from whole spices every time.

Kenji, those spice boxes aren't IMO good for any sort of long term storage because of the air exposure. They typically tend to be re-filled every few days with freshly ground spices, they are designed to hold what an Indian household would generally use in less than a week given the amount of spices used in pretty much every dish at every meal. The little lids you can add are often not air tight so check this if you are going to store anything in the pans for any length of time. In my experience the boxes tend to be filled with spices that are used together - the proportions may change in the various dishes, but it means that the impact of cross-contamination is minimal if you have a spill (I've seen households where there is one box used for spices for savory dishes & one dedicated for spices for sweet dishes, together with dedicated pans for sweets, again so there is no carry over of flavors).

I don't think they're Indian, but Lee Valley has a whole selection of small, covered aluminum containers they call "Watchmaker's Cases"

http://www.leevalley.com/wood/page.aspx ... 48&p=44948

Looks like the little containers would be good for spices, assuming that aluminum is not a problem, spice-wise.

Lot cheaper, too.

NICE FIND!!!

Thanks!

I saw something similar last weekend at Costco - a magnetic board with maybe a dozen of those little lidded aluminum jars to attach to it. It could be wall-mounted or stand on its own. I think it was in the $20 - 30 range. I would have bought one, except I think we'd need at least 3 to include all our spices!