— Lauren Schmucker

Yeah, so toasting spices is a really nice way of kind of reviving spices. So like toasting, applying a little bit of heat to them, um, ends up bringing the essential oils back out to the surface, kind of enhancing the fragrance and all of that. I find that with fresher spices you don't often need toasting doesn't bring them alive as much. They're already there. Um, but particularly seeds and things like that. Like it's, it's really nice to toast kind of the seed spices a little bit more. They're a little bit harder. But one big watch out is that I've had people that are trying to toast spices. They'll burn the spices. 'cause you know, especially as you have these finely ground spices, you put 'em under high heat, you're not paying attention, please start over. Don't try to fix it. Uh, get, get rid of those spices. Start toasting again. Because once you start getting into the burnt territory, it's really hard to recover from those like the, those smoky flavors are so, um, uh, and, and burnt flavors, not just smoky. You want smoky, try the smoke paprika. It's beautiful. But the second you burn the spices, um, it's a really hard thing to come back from. So don't be mad, just, just dump it out and try again. But toasting does do really wonders and particularly on seeds and particularly on whole spices. Um, uh, it helps to bring things back out to the surface, Amen. To paying attention. You know, I've been there and if I'm in a different part of my apartment and my apartment, it's not that large and I am smelling the nuts toasting, it's over. So totally, you know, be with be with your food. I actually just very lightly standing right there with a pan and watch a, watching the pan toasts some of your Nigel seed. That's a flavor that I just really like. Totally. I have always loved flatbreads with the Nigel seed, and I wanted to see if it would make a difference to toast them. So I did a very small amount. Again, I didn't wanna waste, I didn't think I would have a problem with them because I was watching them. Um, mm-Hmm. And I didn't notice too much of a, too much of a difference. But they are so delicious by themselves.