Dried Spices At Home!

So again, I have been trying to get our home cleaned and prepared before we leave for the holidays, and as a result had a few more items lying around that I wanted to use up.  I had some fresh ginger root that I couldn't finish up in time so I thought I would try to make dry ground ginger.  I wasn't really sure if this would work, but I figured I would give it a try anyway.  I also had some dried pasilla chiles that were taking up too much space in my spice rack, so I thought I would make some ancho powder as well.  Lastly, I had used up my store of vanilla sugar earlier in the week, and wanted to get started on a new batch that would be ready when we got home in January.  My methods/recipes follow.


Dried Ground Ginger


1 whole fresh ginger root


-Wash the outside of the root, and peel the skin completely off.
-Grate the fresh ginger using a very fine grater or a ginger plate if you have one (I like to use a long superfine microplane because it makes quick work of this job and I don't worry about cutting myself on it).
-Pat the ginger pulp several times using paper towels until all of the excess moisture has been removed.
-Spread out the pulp onto a cookie sheet as evenly and thinly as possible.
-Place sheet into an oven on the lowest setting possible, preheating is not necessary (mine was at 170 deg. F).
-Stir/scrape the mixture around once per hour until it has completely dried (it took me about 3 hours total).
-Remove the sheet from the oven, and scrape all of the pulp off once it has cooled (about 5 minutes after you pull it out)
-Put the dried pieces into a spice grinder or food processor (I use a coffee grinder that I have for spices only) and grind until it is the consistency you like.

I was excited how well this worked out!  Basically I decided to never buy dried ginger from the store ever again, because here is how the price breakdown works for me:

Fresh ginger $5/1 lb
Dried ginger $4.50/0.8 oz. jar

I only used about 1/2 lb, or roughly $2.50 worth of fresh ginger and got an ounce of dried out of that, or about $5.63 worth of the dried stuff.  Yeah, definitely a good deal!


Ancho Powder


2 dried pasilla chiles 


-Cut the chiles in half lengthwise, and remove the seeds, stems, and membranes.
-Cut or break the remaining part of the chiles into small pieces, about 1/2"
-Put the pieces in a spice grinder or food processor (I use my "spice" coffee grinder) and pulse until you get a uniform powder.

Here is the price breakdown for my ancho powder:

Pasilla chiles $4/bag (I got mine on sale however for $1.50/bag!)
Ancho powder  $5.25/oz

My chiles made about 2 oz. of powder, which means I spent $1.50 for a total of $10.50 worth of powder!  Yay for spending a little bit of time to save a ton of money!


Vanilla Sugar


8 cups granulated sugar
4 Tbsp vanilla extract
1 whole vanilla bean


-Mix the sugar with the vanilla extract, stirring and breaking up the chunks as much as possible.
-Split the vanilla bean lengthwise in half, then scrape out the vanilla beans (the tiny black specks inside the skin) and put them into the sugar mix, stirring again as you can, reserve the vanilla "skins".
-Spread out the sugar as thin as you can on a few cookie sheets.
-Stir the sugar each day for three days, then when it has completely dried put the chunks of sugar into a food processor and pulse until the sugar is all broken up like normal granulated sugar or slightly finer.
-Put the sugar in an airtight container along with the vanilla "skins" and shake once a month.

I absolutely love using vanilla sugar in place of regular sugar.  It tastes so much better, and adds a nice quality to the baked goods!  Also, this is a good way to do something with any leftover vanilla "skins" you might have leftover from other recipes, I always just throw them in with my sugar when I'm done with them because they keep flavoring the sugar forever!