At Savor Seasonings, one of our goals is to introduce you to the world of spices – to challenge your tastebuds, explore new countries through food, and see how exciting flavor can be. Our Flavor Highlight of the Month focuses on spices and flavors you may or may not know, and gives you something inspirational for your kitchen adventures. 

Summer is the perfect time to discover new places and try new foods. Venturing off your personal flavor path is a great way to make memories with your family as you eat at new restaurants, try new snacks, and find your new favorite seasoning combinations! 

This month, we’re going to highlight a spice that many know around the world for both its delicious taste and its medicinal properties. Turmeric, a deep, golden-orange spice made from the root of an Asian plant, has been used in cooking on the Eastern side of the world for hundreds of years. A relative to the ginger plant, it’s used to add flavor, color, and nutrition to food. It has also been used in traditional forms of medicine in Asia and India to treat issues such as indigestion, colds, and liver disease. If you have ever cooked with turmeric before, you’ll know how quickly it can stain things. For this reason, it has also been used as a natural dye in Asian communities.

So how can we incorporate it into our kitchens? And what kind of medicinal properties does it really have? Is turmeric the next superfood of the summer?

As far as medicinal properties, Western medicine has yet to perform enough studies to be able to say confidently how it helps our bodies. What we do know is it contains an active component called curcumin, which gives turmeric and other foods with curcumin anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties. This may help protect the body by neutralizing free radicals (which are unstable molecules that can build up inside the body and contribute to diseases such as cancer). It may also protect the body by shielding cells from damage. 

We do know that in the studies that have involved the spice, it has been associated with preventing conditions such as cancer and heart disease, thanks to its antioxidant properties. There have also been studies on turmeric’s effectiveness on inflammatory conditions such as allergies and arthritis, which show that sufferers from those conditions may benefit from adding turmeric to their food. Small studies have been done to research turmeric’s effect on mood disorders, depression, and dementia, but enough conclusive evidence has not been produced yet. Something to watch for the future!

As a food, turmeric adds both flavor and color to vegetarian and rice dishes. Rice cooked with turmeric turns a beautiful golden color that livens up any dinner table. It has a wonderful earthy flavor that is amazing in foods like soups, stews, curries, masalas, and chilis, especially recipes from Asian cuisine. It pairs well with bold flavors like cumin, cloves, mustard seed, and pepper. It can also be made into a tea that some use as a remedy to illnesses, similar to the practice of eating chicken noodle soup when you have the flu.

For those wanting to reap any potential health benefits from this spice, pairing it with black pepper in foods has been shown to enhance turmeric’s superpowers, as well as making them a perfect flavor combination. There are supplements with curcumin, but it is better to eat turmeric as a whole food rather than a supplement. The supplements tend to have more concentrated doses of curcumin than what is found naturally, which can have adverse effects on certain medications. Curcumin can also be difficult for your body to break down in high doses, which can increase your likelihood of kidney stones, especially if you are already prone to them. 

So head out to your local grocery store and find turmeric in the spice aisle. Search on the internet for a new recipe to try for dinner, or a drink you may discover is your new favorite (golden milk, aka turmeric milk, is a simple recipe to start with!). Experiment with dishes you are already familiar with to see if including turmeric adds a fun twist. Ask a friend who enjoys the spice about how they use it in their foods and what kind of health benefits, if any, they might have noticed. And check back next month to see what exciting new flavor we explore next!