Spice Racks

If you love to cook and experiment with food, then you know how important seasonings, herbs, and spices can really be. As you conduct your culinary experiments and create your masterpieces, it is easy to collect large numbers of spices. To avoid the possibility of becoming overwhelmed by savory spices, then spice racks are a necessity for the truly organized kitchen. Here is everything you need to know in order to create the perfect spice rack for your needs.

• Purpose. When looking to create your spice rack, you need to determine what its purpose will be. You can do this by answering a couple of relatively simple questions. The first question is how much cooking do you actually do in your home? If you do a lot of cooking, then chances are good that you will need a wide assortment of spices. What type of cooking do you tend to do? Choose the types of spices and the amount of spices you will need depending on the type of cooking that you do. For example, Italian cooking usually uses a different variety of spices than Chinese.
• Size. When looking for a spice rack, keep in mind that size plays a large role. Size of the bottles, size of your collection, size of the rack, and even size of the kitchen will help you determine how large of a spice rack you can actually have. For the sake of convenience, and to help with organization, limit the size of your spice rack to something that is easily manageable.
• Location. Where in the kitchen will you have your spice rack? Place your spice rack somewhere that will be easily accessible from your main work areas. Some of the best possible places to store your spice racks are on the back of a cabinet door, in a drawer, or even hanging form the ceiling. Keep in mind when planning the location of your spice rack that the most common work areas in the kitchen are the countertops and the stove.
• Grouping. When grouping the spices in your spice rack, decide on a way to group them. One of the ways that you may like to group the spices is according to families, such as grouping all the peppers and chilies together; the mint family (rosemary, marjoram, oregano, etc.) together; and the carrot family (parsley, coriander, anise, etc.) together. Another way to group your spices is to have the ones you use the most in one location on your spice rack, with others that you don't use as often in another location.