Your Questions: The 10 Essential Spices for Stocking Your Pantry

Our spice rack overfloweth. Between gifts we've received, one-off spices we've purchased and impulse-buy spice rubs (yes, there is such a thing, at least around The Bitten Word household), we've got more spices than we could use in a month of dinners.

Rogan josh, whole juniper berries, urfa biber, ras el hanout -- suffice it to say that when the Apocalypse comes and you need to spice up the scraps of food you've scavenged, come on by our place.

So we loved getting this email:

Hi there Bitten Word!

I just moved 3000 miles. During the process I decided to ditch all seasonings from the pantry and start fresh, except for some pricey carribean specialty spice blends that I was given as a gift. What do you think are the top 10 or 15 most important seasonings to have on hand (besides salt and pepper). I think a list like this would be beneficial to share with my sister who is about to be on her own as a college student as well. I love your website and columns! Thank you for your time.

Sincerely and with great taste,

Erin

Excellent question, Erin!

Here are our thoughts on the Top 10 spices everyone should have in their pantry.